Analog, Digital, What's the Difference?

The question of digital vs. analog audio is one of the more hotly debated questions in the world of music, film and media today.  Does digital sound better?  Does analog sound better?  Is there even a noticeable difference?

Before going much further, it would be a good idea to define what exactly distinguishes digital audio from analog audio.  Sound occurs naturally in analog.  That is to say that analog sound occurs in a continuous wave such as one hears with the human ear.

Digital sound however is not continuous.  Digital sound uses specific values to represent information, or in this case sound waves.  So whereas an analog recording is a continuous wave of sound that ebbs and flows as it was recorded, a digital recording is a series of values that represent volume, pitch and time signature over the duration of a recording.

Thus a purely analog recording would be something that was recorded on tape and produced using manual equipment to mix, master and press into a vinyl LP.

A purely digital recording would be recorded on a computer program, such as ProTools, mixed, mastered and produced digitally and eventually burned onto a CD as an MP3 or audio file.

The most ironic aspect of the debate about digital vs. analog recording is that nowadays a lot of music is a combination of the two.

The advantages to analog are that, analog sound tends to be warmer, has more texture and is thought to capture a truer representation of the actual sound.  Digital is felt to be somewhat cold, technical and perhaps lacking in analogs’ nuance. 

However digital is much cheaper.  Recording an album with analog technology can require a whole studio full of equipment.  With digital recording technology it’s possible to record a whole album in a bedroom on a laptop.  And whereas analog technology can wear out or be damaged, digital media can last for an indefinite length of time.

Today many recording artists, both major and independent, record using a mixture of digital and analog techniques.  For while analog audio does give warmth and a truer sound quality, digital is cheaper to work in and offers more control over the finished product.

Digital recording also offers various methods to duplicate the “feel” of analog recording, through pre-amps and other hardware as well as various software processes. 

So is there a last word on the digital vs. analog audio debate?  Not really.  Perhaps in the perfect world everything would be recorded on analog.  However the affordability and convenience of digital recording, and media, mean it is likely to become even more dominant.