Analog Sound vs. Digital Sound

Sound engineers have been debating the respective merits of digital and analog sound reproduction ever if the form of digital sound recordings. It is one of the never ending controversies in the field, much like as comparison of vacuum tube amplifiers against such of solid state i.e. transistor electronics. In consumer audio, the opposition is generally among vinyl LP recordings and compact discs.

An analog recording is one in which the original sound signal is modulated onto other physical signal carried on some media or the magnetic field of a magnetic tape or the groove of a gramophone disc. A physical quantity in the medium, for example: the intensity of the magnetic field is directly associated to the physical properties of the sound, for illustration: the phase, amplitude and possibly direction of the sound wave.

A digital recording conversely produced by first encoding the physical properties of the original sound like digital information that can be decoded for reproduction. Here it is subject to noise and imperfections in getting the original sound, as long as the particular bits can be recovered, the behavior of the physical medium is of minimum result in recovery of the encoded information.

In damaged digital medium, a scratched compact disc may also yield degraded regeneration of the original sound, because of the loss of some digital information in the damaged area, but not due directly by the physical damage of the disc.