Last week we discussed the the differences between PCM and Dolby Digital sound. This week we are going to discuss whether or no digital sound is better than analog.
In order to make a better educated decision, let's find out what these two sound qualities are about.
First we have digital audio. Digital audio is sound that has been recorded or converted into digital form. In digital audio, the sound wave of the audio signal is encoded as numerical samples in a continuous sequence. It is essentially a sequence of binary codes, a language comprised of 0's and 1's. When you convert audio into a digital format you can easily control the storage, transmission and retrieval of an audio file.
When you are dealing with Analog audio, the sound wave is recorded in its original form. Nothing has been modified or altered with the sound. It is a continuous wave that does not allow you to detect the pitch change. A some examples of an analog sound are POTS phone lines, human voices and audio tapes.
So if you had to choose which type of audio to listen to, which one would you prefer? If you are not sure, think of it this way, when you listen to music would rather listen to it on a vinyl record or on a CD?
While CD's and other digital formats are more convenient to listen to, especially on one's cell phone, people do prefer to listen to a richer deeper sound that normally comes from a vinyl record. This is what happens when the sound is not compressed as it is in a digital format. A digital recording can have a greater signal-to-noise ratio depending on the bit depth of the recording.
We hope you enjoyed this article and if there are any topics of interest that you would like to know more about, please let us know.