How are radio stations able to turn digital music into radio waves?
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It all depends on what you mean by ‘digital’ music and what type of radio wave.
If you’re referring specifically to FM radio in the FM broadcast frequency bands for consumer or commercial radio stations.
Different parts of the world use different frequency band licensed slot assignments. Where I’m from this generally uses a frequency between 88Mhz-109Mhz for broadcast.
The source (music/audio) can be split into various sub segments and either used in an analogue or digital amplifier. The only real difference between the two is analogue and digital use different modulation techniques.
FM being (Frequency Modulation) will maintain a constant frequency (carrier signal) and the audio is added or subtracted to the carrier frequency.
This is called the modulation technique.
There are many forms of modulation techniques dependent upon the source, the receivers, distance e.g AM, FM, PCM, TDM, 2-4-8-16 QAM.
Ultimately the selected frequency band of operation, RF power requirements, type of audio or data to be transmitted will determine the most suitable modulation technique to employ for any given use requirement.
When you talk Wi-Fi, Microwave, Satellite communications they all follow the same base principles just the operating band and modulation scheme change to suit the particular environment.
Input Source>Modulation Indexing>Power Amplifier>Transmission Line/Antenna.
At other end is your Receiver which de-modulates the source/signal via the same modulation scheme and I.F mixing to feed the subsequent demodulated signal to an audio amplifier and ultimately a speaker which is just converting an electrical signal back into a mechanical signal> speaker coil moves and the resultant cone sound back in our hearing range 0.3kHz ~ 20kHz.
It’s not just RF energy, things like fibre optic use various wavelengths of light to perform the modulation and demodulation.
There are literally hundreds types transmission lines, modulation techniques, splitters, amplifiers that work from DC>Light and everything in-between.
The use case scenario ultimately determines the frequency band, modulation technique to be used for that particular use case.
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