Eli5: What is the real difference between analog and digital?

1.51K views

I tried looking it up, and my brain just wasn’t making sense of it, but I haven’t had coffee yet so.

In: 0

25 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Draw a circle with a pen on paper. This is like analogue. It is almost certainly not perfectly round but the line has a real curve.

Now Draw a circle with the circle tool in MSpaint. It will probably look more rounded but if you zoom in enough it is not round at all. It is made up of square pixels. The line is not curved it is a zig zag of the edges of squares.This is digital.

Analogue signals can be any of an infinite range of values.
Digital signals can only be a certain value out of a set range.
The size and accuracy of the digital range is called it’s resolution. (1 bit resolution is either 0v or full volts)

The higher the resolution the more accurate it can mimic an analogue signal but it is still a series of steps in voltages the same way a circle on a screen is a series of pixels.

Analogue signals are generally from something physical. Radio waves or electric generation etc. where a wire passes through a changing magnet field. But most semiconductors can’t handle analogue signals they are either on or of. As modern computers are made up of semiconductors the same way a screen is made up of pixels. We have to be able to deal with both and convert between the two.

You are viewing 1 out of 25 answers, click here to view all answers.