I’m pretty sure that that analog signals is just a continuous stream of input versus digital which provides signals at discrete time steps. Why have we shifted from analog to digital for so many things? Wouldn’t a steady stream of information be of better use?
In: Technology
Sound waves are analog. Let’s say you have a device that directly turns sound waves (a gradual change in sound pressure over time) into an analog electrical signal, and you apply that signal to a wire, going to a speaker that vibrates along with the peaks and troughs of the signal, causing the sound waves to be reproduced.
This is normal, a microphone connected to a loudspeaker.
However, if someone speaks on one side of the planet, how would you transmit that to the other side of the planet?
One way would be a wire going all the way, to a speaker on the other side. But you would ideally need to boost the signal perfectly. Any kind of interference (noise) would directly alter the signal. It’s hard to separate the signal and interference.
It’s also less convenient to store analog signals, if you want to delay or repeat the sending. You can’t cut out the wire with the signal and send it in the mail. Gramophone records store analog signals, because the sound wave is directly represented on the platter. But gramophone records are not very efficient, and any degradation directly changes the signal.
You could directly record the analog signal as a magnetic field on a hard drive platter, instead of 0s and 1s, but working with this is far less flexible. RAM and SSDs are designed around discrete electrical charges.
Computer logic and programming would struggle a great deal with analog. It’s difficult to even imagine how you would calculate e.g. the maximum number of cars on a bridge, based on an analog representation of each car. It’s not impossible, just monumentally inconvenient.
Digital allows for perfect transmission, easy storage, easy processing.
In the sound realm, the analog signal of a voice is digitalized through an ADC (Analog to Digital Converter): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog-to-digital_converter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog-to-digital_converter) . To play it on a speaker, the speaker cone has to vibrate based on an analog signal, and that uses a Digital-to-analog converter (DAC): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital-to-analog_converter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital-to-analog_converter)
Latest Answers