Analog vs. Digital As Fast As Possible
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2016-05-06
·
1,009 words · ~5 min read
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for a while now the word digital has been slapped on so many things that it's
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sort of become a marketing buzzword to convince people that something is high
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tech or better in some way of course most modern electronics are digital by
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definition as opposed to analog but what do these terms even mean and is digital
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necessarily even better for a long time most consumer electronics like
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televisions and cassette decks worked by using analog signals which you can think
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of as being similar to one of those wall blocks with a perpetually moving second
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hand just as the second hand continuously moves to represent the time
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analog signals use some type of thing that's constantly changing to represent
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data for example both AM radio and old school broadcast TV use a signal with a
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continuously variable wave height or amplitude to represent sounds or visuals
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these sorts of analog waves can be decoded or demodulated fairly easily
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with diodes that can relay actual data to a screen or a speaker but as any
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child of the 1980s who grew up watching rabbit ears connected TVs or dubbing
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cassette tapes knows a massive drawback to analog Tech is the possibility of
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interference the variations in waves that encode analog data are so small
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that interference can easily disrupt the analog waveforms and cause snow on your
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TV static on your radio or even problems with monitors that use older VGA C
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cables which are actually analog despite most other modern computer components
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being digital digital technology attempts to solve this problem by
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encoding and transmitting data as clear-cut discrete units namely ones and
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zeros instead of always changing waveforms that are super sensitive to
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interference these ones and zeros are actually just representations of
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electrical signals being on or off when you view it on a square wave that's
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either up or down these positions are easy representations since any piece of
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a square wave can can only be read in one of two states on or off up or down
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they aren't nearly as vulnerable to interference making digital transmission
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normally a heck of a lot more reliable across longer distances which is why the
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length of speaker wire in your home theater matters but the length of a
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digital HDMI cable usually doesn't at least not for resisting interference and
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since Digital Data is stored as an exact finite set of ones and zeros it can be
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perfectly replicated anytime you need to make a copy unlike analog recordings
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that degrade over time due to the difficulty in duplicating an analog wave
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at every single point this is the reason that an MP3 copied to a million iPods
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will sound the same on everyone but a cassette tapes that are copied a whole
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bunch will eventually sound like garbage after you dubb them enough times but
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even though digital has obvious advantages we live to a great extent in
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an analog world take the sound for instance the sound waves that come out
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of your mouth when you talk are analog in nature so how does a singer record
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albums that are stored digitally on say a Spotify server well digital recording
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primarily works by sampling instead of recording all of the infantes small
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changes in an analog waveform an analog
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to digital converter takes snapshots of analog sound or video and stores them as
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digital bits this is typically done many times per second with higher sampling
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rates resulting in more data and usually better quality allowing a digital
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recording to achieve pretty close Fidelity to the original performance
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while taking up much less space on a disc of course since you can't exactly
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hear ones and zeros digital recording sound needs to go back through a digital
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to analog converter or a DAC which will
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convert your mp3 or AAC to an electrical
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signal that has a constantly changing voltage that the drivers in your
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headphones will turn into actual sound so while digital Tech has been
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extraordinarily useful it's really the way way that digital analog work
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together that makes the Brave New World of tweets Netflix and dank memes
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possible speaking of digital things audible.com is the leading provider of
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audiobooks with more than 180,000 downloadable titles across all types of
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literature including fiction non-fiction and periodicals audiobooks are a great
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way to listen to something while you're say in transit on your way to work or
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just trying to run around the track at school and you're super bored and
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whatnot anyways the physical activity whatever at least you
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can listen to a book for our audience members however audible is offering a
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free 30-day trial just check out audible.com tequi and browse there over
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180,000 audio programs I would yet again
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recommend the entire Harry Potter series there's a ton of different gems in there
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and there's going to be the movies coming out in I'm not entirely sure
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which will have more stuff in that realm they're not based on the original series
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of books but they're based on books within the books like Inception books
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maybe I shouldn't reference another movie when I'm talking about a single
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movie either way don't forget to get a free 30-day trial at audi.com tequ don't
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cool things I wasn't there for it I wanted to be but I was like literally
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