ELIF: How are audio and video stored on CDs and tapes?
In: Technology
* CDs.
* To start with CDs are digital by nature, so they store data using a binary encoding.
* The simply means each value in the system is either in one state or the other.
* For CD’s there are little holes in the CD material that a laser can read.
* The holes are mapped to either one state of the other and the data is mapped to that.
* Tapes
* Magnetic tape uses the strength of the magnetic field stored in the tape to represent information.
* ***It can be either analog or digital.***
* In digital, just like the CD, the magnetic field is either strong or weak. The strong and weak sections are mapped to one state or the other and now we have the same kind of data stream as the CD.
* However tape can also use an analog encoding scheme where the intensity of the magnetic field maps to some varying signal.
* This works great for audio because audio can be easier captured as a varying voltage and that varying voltage can be easily converted back to physical sound waves.
* On a tape, the varying strength of the magnetic field can easily be converted into a varying voltage which as we just stated can easily be turned into a physical sound wave.
Latest Answers