Representing Sound in a computer

Analogue-  Analog refers to audio recorded using methods that replicate the original sound waves.

 Many times, digital audio companies try to hide this fact with fancy words like “Uncompressed” and “Lossless”. These words are very misleading as all digital audio features some compression and loss of the original signal. However, even the best trained human ear may not be able to tell the difference between a high quality digital signal and an analog audio signal.

An easy way to visualize digital audio is to consider the difference between a regular light bulb and a strobe light (Those lights designed to flash on and off very quickly. Commonly found at concerts or Halloween displays). In this example, an analog audio signal is comparable to a regular light bulb, whereas a digital audio signal would be similar to a strobe light. A strobe light can flash so fast that you hardly notice the moments when it is off.

Digital-

Digital sound is broken down into thousands of samples per second. Each sound sample is stored as binary data.

Digital audio quality

Factors that affect the quality of digital audio include:

Sample rate - The sample rate is how many samples, or measurements, of the sound are taken each second. The more samples that are taken, the more detail about where the waves rise and fall is recorded and the higher the quality of the audio. Also, the shape of the sound wave is captured more accurately.

Each sample represents the amplitude of the digital signal at a specific point in time. The amplitude is stored as either an integer or a floating point number and encoded as a binary number.

Bit depth - the number of bits available for each clip

Bit rate - the number of bits used per second of audio