for a while now the word digital has been slapped on so many things that it's
sort of become a marketing buzzword to convince people that something is high
tech or better in some way of course most modern electronics are digital by
definition as opposed to analog but what do these terms even mean and is digital
necessarily even better for a long time most consumer electronics like
televisions and cassette decks worked by using analog signals which you can think
of as being similar to one of those wall blocks with a perpetually moving second
hand just as the second hand continuously moves to represent the time
analog signals use some type of thing that's constantly changing to represent
data for example both AM radio and old school broadcast TV use a signal with a
continuously variable wave height or amplitude to represent sounds or visuals
these sorts of analog waves can be decoded or demodulated fairly easily
with diodes that can relay actual data to a screen or a speaker but as any
child of the 1980s who grew up watching rabbit ears connected TVs or dubbing
cassette tapes knows a massive drawback to analog Tech is the possibility of
interference the variations in waves that encode analog data are so small
that interference can easily disrupt the analog waveforms and cause snow on your
TV static on your radio or even problems with monitors that use older VGA C
cables which are actually analog despite most other modern computer components
being digital digital technology attempts to solve this problem by
encoding and transmitting data as clear-cut discrete units namely ones and
zeros instead of always changing waveforms that are super sensitive to
interference these ones and zeros are actually just representations of
electrical signals being on or off when you view it on a square wave that's
either up or down these positions are easy representations since any piece of
a square wave can can only be read in one of two states on or off up or down
they aren't nearly as vulnerable to interference making digital transmission
normally a heck of a lot more reliable across longer distances which is why the
length of speaker wire in your home theater matters but the length of a
digital HDMI cable usually doesn't at least not for resisting interference and
since Digital Data is stored as an exact finite set of ones and zeros it can be
perfectly replicated anytime you need to make a copy unlike analog recordings
that degrade over time due to the difficulty in duplicating an analog wave
at every single point this is the reason that an MP3 copied to a million iPods
will sound the same on everyone but a cassette tapes that are copied a whole
bunch will eventually sound like garbage after you dubb them enough times but
even though digital has obvious advantages we live to a great extent in
an analog world take the sound for instance the sound waves that come out
of your mouth when you talk are analog in nature so how does a singer record
albums that are stored digitally on say a Spotify server well digital recording
primarily works by sampling instead of recording all of the infantes small
changes in an analog waveform an analog
to digital converter takes snapshots of analog sound or video and stores them as
digital bits this is typically done many times per second with higher sampling
rates resulting in more data and usually better quality allowing a digital
recording to achieve pretty close Fidelity to the original performance
while taking up much less space on a disc of course since you can't exactly
hear ones and zeros digital recording sound needs to go back through a digital
to analog converter or a DAC which will
convert your mp3 or AAC to an electrical
signal that has a constantly changing voltage that the drivers in your
headphones will turn into actual sound so while digital Tech has been
extraordinarily useful it's really the way way that digital analog work
together that makes the Brave New World of tweets Netflix and dank memes
possible speaking of digital things audible.com is the leading provider of
audiobooks with more than 180,000 downloadable titles across all types of
literature including fiction non-fiction and periodicals audiobooks are a great
way to listen to something while you're say in transit on your way to work or
just trying to run around the track at school and you're super bored and
whatnot anyways the physical activity whatever at least you
can listen to a book for our audience members however audible is offering a
free 30-day trial just check out audible.com tequi and browse there over
180,000 audio programs I would yet again
recommend the entire Harry Potter series there's a ton of different gems in there
and there's going to be the movies coming out in I'm not entirely sure
which will have more stuff in that realm they're not based on the original series
of books but they're based on books within the books like Inception books
maybe I shouldn't reference another movie when I'm talking about a single
movie either way don't forget to get a free 30-day trial at audi.com tequ don't
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