Abstract
It is rare for biological, physiological, chemical, electrical, or physical signals to be measured in the appropriate format for recording and interpretation. Usually, a signal must be conditioned to optimize it for both of these functions. This overview describes the fundamentals of signal filtering, how to prepare signals for A/D conversion, signal averaging to increase the signal‐to‐noise ratio, line frequency pickup (hum), peak‐to‐peak and rms noise measurements, blanking, audio monitoring, testing of electrodes and the common‐mode rejection ratio.