Digital vs Analog. What's the Difference? Why Does it Matter?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 14 มิ.ย. 2024
- What's the difference between digital and analog, and why does it matter?
Also which spelling do you prefer? Analogue or Analog? I couldn't decided so I bounced between them.
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I like how you tricked me into understanding how binary works at the beginning.
true hahahah
Yes
@@JacksonOfTheJerry Plenty of old people understand it though.
me too my understanding of binary was the same as a caveman understanding vr now i my understanding of binary is the same as a pro cientist who studied his life away understanding fire
Same
I learn more on TH-cam than school. Good video.
You are a bit misleading about how digital audio works: It is indeed sampled in discrete steps in both amplitude and time (at least in the most common system, pulse-code modulation), and for each PCM signal, there is precisely one analog signal corresponding to it that has frequency components below half the sample rate, by the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem; that is, if you band-limit an audio sample to some level above the limit of human hearing (a bit below 20kHz) and sample at twice that rate (as with CD audio, at 44.1kHz, is like this) and then convert back to analog, you will get that same band-limited signal.
Now there is some error provided by the discrete volume steps, known as quantization error, but this too can be made imperceptible by means of a high-enough bit-depth (16 bits is fine, maybe 14 bits would have worked, the original proposal for CDs) and a suitable dither (so that the frequency components introduced by quantization error are more uniformly spread out, providing a "noise floor" in which no component is perceptibly loud).
Spot On ! This video is terrible!
Hello, sorry about the late reply.
I'm not saying you're wrong (because you're not) but here's the issue: You introduced about 4 new dynamic concepts there, and probably 6 terms that most people are going to be caught off by.
In order for me to explain what you just explained, i need to go into each one of those which not only results in a 30+ minute video, it overloads the viewer.
I understand the annoyance with simplifying things for ease of access (which is one reason I have trouble making these videos) but keep in mind I can't keep things simple and accessable while explaining *every* piece of nuance. I don't have a semester, I have a 10 minute video, and i'm aiming at people who know *nothing* about the topic at hand.
For comparison, when a first grade math teacher teaches math, he probably tells students that 5-8=0, because there is no number lower than 0. When in fact there are negative numbers, but he teaches that later because he doesn't want to overcomplicate things. I run into the same conundrum all the time.
Furthermore one can always go deeper. If I were to explain everything you just talked about, is that considered incomplete because I didn't go into physical vibrations through earth's atmoshphere and the biology of the eardrum, and how sound is essentially an illusion the brain creates after one reacts to the other? The specifics are infinite and at some point i need to cut it off.
@@H3Vtux better let it, instead of doing it badly. and when the conclusion results in misleading information, there is no excuse. make shot videos with explanations wich are true and you are fine..
@@NSBRec So much! The real stuff here by Monty Montgomery, an engineer who knows what he's talking about: th-cam.com/video/cIQ9IXSUzuM/w-d-xo.html
Wow, I really think this is the best explanation of analogue vs digital signals. Really good job with the analogy about the multiple light switches and the color spectrum. I finally get how analogue is continuous moving on a set gradient by only set increments, while digital can be customized into the most minute or miniscule settings possible.
This is the clearest explanation I have seen given before
I teach computer repairs. and this video saves me a lot of work in explaining this concept. This guy clearly is the best at what he does.
Brother thank you very much. I even searched for analog computers but didn't find any informative video like yours but you are best.. You 🥰🥰cleared my doubt in simple language👄💬this channel must have more subscribers
I learned so much with your video that 15 years of working with computer didn't. please keep up the good work
I have checked two other videos trying to explain the topic to my friend. But they all missed the mark. This video is very clear to understand. Thanks!
Best and easiest educational video to digest that I've ever seen.
I was pleasing to watch, thanks.
Really nice explanation. I will definetely use it in my IT class, thank you.
It's always amazing to know people are using these for their classes, and the exposure helps tremendously. So thank you!
Also make sure you brush on your knowledge of quarks and the plank constants because you'll be dividing them on a surface of a vinyl disk if you compare it with .. for example 24bit digital audio.
Love this video. Been teaching for many years and this really gets to the endpoint.
Wow, that was a very good, clear and easy way of explanation to Digital and analogue differences. appreciated
why does this have only 2.7K likes. This guy clearly cares about teaching and put a lot of focus into making these complicated concepts clear for beginners. I have never seen so much information be made so clear with these great analogies. More please!!!
Because its mostly BS! Read all the negative comments from technical people!
I felt like this video implied that analog systems have effectively infinite resolution, which is objectively false. Per dollar, digital systems tend to have dramatically higher resolutions than analog. So even though they're discreet (pixels), the discrete information is so much infitessimally smaller than the information of a similarly priced analog media that way more detail can be retrieved from digital.
Also, pixels don't need to be square. And for music for example, the digital wave is just the slalem points through which a generated sine wave is swept, so it is as infinitely continuous on the analog end after the DAC as a pure analog audio signal.
By dodging the issue of the superior resolution of digital systems per dollar for each media type, it leaves some very bad impressions of the practical performance advantages of digital media in almost every single way.
I like this explanation of the two, well done!
Thank you for making this kinda videos!
These are awesome 💫
your explanation lighted up my mind! thank you so much! ♡
This subject pertains to me because I relish computer technology and depend on the computer a lot. It is nice of you to post Digital versus Analog. Your narration was very nice. I enjoy it very much.
Watched a lot of videos but this one is the Best explanation by far.
OMG I've been watching videos lately talking about analog computers taking over, they didn't explain the difference so I searched and found your amazing explanation! 😊
You always make it so simple. TY
From someone fascinated with computers and electronics for most of my life this is a brilliantly informative video and very well explained. Thanks!
Bro,thanks a bunch.This video really elucidates everything that's in my vague lecture notes 🙏😂
dude, that was awesome, what an incredible explanation, it was very clear and easy to understand for a beginner like me, thank you
You, Sir, have elucidated every point so precisely and depicted it in the most splendid, joyful way that I couldn't have learned anywhere. Thank you for making the sense instead of flinging the graphs!
This is a great explanation. Thanks!
Loved the video, a great analogy! Helps me with classes, and I just love learning this stuff. Thanks, man!!
very informative, thank you for sharing your knowledge
This is tremendously helpful, thank you so much
This video is the excellent.
You deserve more view and subscribe.
Thank you! I had a lot of fun making this one.
Analog records do not have infinite resolution. There in a limit in the dynamic range and a limit in the frequency range and these can be converted to numbers.
Yeah. It doesn't apply to audio because of how good digital to analogue converters are these days
Great Video Sir, My Respect to your clear explanation
This video is just brilliant, thanks a lot!
I'm an electrical engineering student finding out my passion was in computer and electronics and I found it late, I'm already 4th year student. Now I'm bingeing some of videos about computers and electronics here at TH-cam university.
You're surely not an engineering student in 4th year if you don't see the obvious flaws in this video... We learn digital theory in undergrad level, should be pretty obvious... Here is a refresher by a real engineer: th-cam.com/video/cIQ9IXSUzuM/w-d-xo.html
@@guyboisvert66 our curriculum is different here in the philippines we are focus on electrical and powersystem only.
Excellent video. I wish that my teachers in school could've taught us like this. 😅
Thanks!
My 12yo students wanted me to comment “good banger video, man”. I think they liked it.
Haha thanks man. This one seems to be a bit controversial in how I worded things but it's always flattering to know that teachers like my channel. I don't speak "kids these days" too well but that sounds like a compliment to me.
Fantastic video as always
Nice explain, thank you so much
Of course, on this video the gradients are all digital, but that's still a good representation of "analog" for the analogy.
really great explained
The explanation is on point!!!!! Very specific just like digital! hahhaha thank u for this!!!
He's back with a bang!
Great Video!
very nice explanation
Incredible videos you have here! I love how you explain these things so simply!
So digital is basically a representation and/or abstract version of analog? That's neat!
You are very underrated! SUBBED
Wonderful
Thank you.
Excellent….could you please explain scan lines in analogue camera…I mean what is meant by resolution when using 1980s analog cameras….why do they use that chart to determine resolution…
While all information in the video is correct. I have to point out that the way it was presented, may lead people into bad conclusions. If you saw this video please do not take away from it the idea that analog is "more precise" or "better" than digital. It is not. both are equivalent to each other and both are suseptible to measurement error during recording and reproduction alike. your eyes and ears also are imperfect when it comes to decoding visual or audio signals so as long as measurement errors for Digital or Analog methods are under the error of your own squshy bits then it will be impossible for you to find difference between them.
i was waiting now got it thanks
If I get a DAC, will the NORMAL TH-cam music etc. that we get be converted to a superior kind of quality Music? If I install the DAC in between the TV and Home Theatre?
Now explain practical limits. A 24 bit signal has more detail then a record could. A detail for example that a vinyl record cant physicslly hold more then what a 14 bit signal could. Or a 35mm film is approximately a 4k-8k image. Even analog has limitlations.
Love love your content
Thanks sir!
Thank you very helpful
I finally understood the concept hands down the best explanation
Very good 👍
Thank you.
So, help me understand, essentially the difference is about the method of information/data/signal capture and output?
Worth a follow
So, conceptually there’s a difference between analog and digital; but in practice, to an extreme degree, analog is the same as digital just with the Planck units being the de facto switches? And if so, would that mean analog is simply seen as a unary numeral system (base 1)?
I’m way out of my depth here - I don’t even know if I’m asking a good question or if I’m just overthinking 😂
Thanks sir
Analogue isn't necessarily better than Digital though, since Analogue devices or Analogue media often tend to be just singular specifically designed pieces of media or information, a picture is just a picture, a picture camera can only do pictures and not motion pictures an analog book is just a book and a VHS tapes can only store videos and not music..... While digital devices can combine all of these and allow you much more than just that through a single device, since the binary code may be used to encode multiple formats of media and view them through a single device, I can both play this video and type this comment and share it online something I wouldn't be able to do on analogue device.
Excellent again :)
Thankអរគុណ
Thanks for your explanation.. As for me i like analogue watches lather digital..
If dolby atmos creates a realistic representation of sound, is raytracing kind of the same thing with light? sorry this is a very weird question.
super interesting!
Thank you
great vid
Still not sure I get why analog signals are so thoroughly associated with lower quality media, particularly visuals (although I guess I've heard people say records have a "warmer" sound and film grain is "richer" than digital). Is the reliability and repeatability paradoxically what makes it possible for digital video to look so much better than analog even though analog is technically "realer" in how continuous and physical it is? Like it would be much harder mechanically and more expensive to make an analog tv that has the crispness and definition of a digital one simply because all that complexity can be neatly "folded up" into binary bits hence you can have smaller screens and devices delivering higher resolution information in cheaper form factors compared to analog? Is the "fuzz" associated with analog tvs and radios actually a consequence of being a continuous physical signal? I'm old enough to remember turning dials on radios and if you went just a little to far the signal would get unintelligible.
Because the digital signal is cleaned by inserting it into a filter. However, analog carries much more detailed information as it is the direct signal itself without filtering. But since it is not filtered, it carries distortions with it. It is normal to be confused as this part is not explained in the video.
The key to why digital media looks/sounds better has a lot to do with how the content is stored. A pure analog audio system without storage (Just microphones, an amplifier and some headphones) will sound the best. But to store the audio there must be a carrier medium like magnetic tape or some form of disc. The desired audio recording is analog but the tape/disk and its movement itself contains imperfections that the amplifier of the playback device cannot distinguish from the intended and this noise is thus also "played". A digital system only has to interpret the "0"s and"1"s. The digital data can be weak or strong, no matter as long as they are recognized as a O or a 1. By not "counting" the unrelated noise of the surface or movement of the tape or disc, it will sound MUCH better than an analog tape or disc. Real sound IS analog and thus TECHNICALLY "pure" but modern digital storage allows for frequency response that exceeds human hearing. This all applies to video as well. Digital recording can also be duplicated perfectly, analog cannot (This is known as "generation loss"). As to broadcast TV or radio analog signals can get distorted by various forms of interference, this is a similar problem as the surface noise on an analog tape or disc. Digital also has the advantage of requiring less radio bandwidth. When we still had analog (NTSC) TV, My city had 8 broadcast TV stations. ( And I was only able to "get" 4 of them with an indoor antenna (rabbit ears). With digital broadcast TV (ATSC) I now get 72 channels using the SAME antenna! Going back to audio, Digital is cheaper by a WIDE margin. I can have DAYS of reel-to-reel quality audio stored on a micro SD card that cost about as much as 10 hours of blank cassettes! P.S. I'm 61 years old and an audio lover and musician, I went through YEARS of trying to have the BEST recorders and I have NOT gone back to analog recording since the Sony MiniDisc came along. Now I have an 8 channel digital recorder with a building mixer that costs 1/10 of what my last 4 channel reel-to-reel deck cost, and it's the size of a paperback novel. Me and my friends now have basically studio quality recordings wherever we decide to get together and "jam".
@@jamesslick4790 MP3 files are the most COMPRESSED and lowest quality format you can have for music. FLAC files may be the best in that field but their size is still far smaller than a CD so a CD will still sound better. CDs however do not even remotely have the frequency response that Vinyl has and is limited by resolution, Vinyl isn't. Real sound is NOT going to have a SMALLER frequency response than speculative sound! That is why you can throw as many SACDs with their 24 bit audio as much as you like or even a million bits and yet true audiophiles will agree that Analog is still more definitive.
Digital by it's very nature is pure speculation with numbers and digits with none of the tangibility of the real world that Analog has with magnetic tape and other physical entities and processes. It automatically can not be better in any objective manner since one is interpretive, the other is real. That automatically exposes the idea that Digital perfectly duplicates, only with a copy of a copy or a fully digital source (Digital Tape does not count at all) can it be "perfect" but for all purposes it is anything but the truth. All of this goes exactly the same for movies as well.
The only reproduction that is better than Vinyl is Reel to Reel (don't know about 8 Track), with high quality direct tape transfers that offers far better tape reproduction than even Cassette does and sometimes you can get copies of the Master Tape on top of that. You're pulling a big time troll when you say that you have reel to reel quality on your SD Card!
Wrong, the analog signal is not "richer" not "realer". People who like tube amp get a signal with added harmonic distortion, that's what they call "warmer"... Digital is unbeatable for fidelity... providing the recording quality and the rest of your sound system + room being true to the signal. True that very high quality recordings are a minority, we're in a stupid "loudness war" since a long time, it is just getting worst with time... And the Digital format can be more "abused" with higher compression and signal level than its analog counterpart. So sometimes yes, the analog format can sound better.
@@Pete-eb3vo You're wrong about FLAC, it's LOSSLESS and averaging 50% compression ratio, the CD won't "sound better"... You're wrong again with "however do not even remotely have the frequency response that Vinyl has and is limited by resolution", it's the opposite... Obviously, you're not an engineer and you have absolutely no clue about analog nor digital... Reel to reel tapes offers about 13 bits equivalent noise level, CD format brings you better than that... Vinyl is a poor media compared to CD. th-cam.com/video/cIQ9IXSUzuM/w-d-xo.html
Great👍
you deserve more views
the gradient comparison is soooo good! Learnt a lot! Thank you!!!
we found it helpful. from HAWI
Take, for example, a linear 100mm potentiometer with a perfect graphene contact surface. The structure of graphene repeats itself every 213nm (nano meter), shifted. Thats is smooth AF. on a 100mm long potentiometer this gives roughly 46948 discrete contact values. 16 transistors can represent 65536 discrete values. So ... yeah .. thats a thing. The signal delivery of a low quality DAC is more precise than the fanciest linear potentiometer never constructed.
There are 64bit digital controllers out there, btw. Thats a 39291863495km long graphene potentiometer.... If my math is correct.
Material used for potentiometers are much rougher, with a much higher grain-size than perfect graphene. Conversely, dynamic imperfections, wear and multiple energy states of electrons do have a multiplicative effect on the number of possible values that it can actually deliver. Further, if the grain-size of the pickup is any different than the contact surface, that is a couple of free multipliers provided the two grain sizes are not in a harmonic relationship.
Industrial controllers, DACs and other digital control systems are mainly digital because they can revert to an exact state every single time reliably. Pots, ... well, some smaller ones, for example, are just simply incapable of controlling even something as large as a 1/2000 division.
One can build a high precision control circuit using analog only, true. Time domain sensitive and feedback systems have these. Hell, arrange a couple of pots in parallel and you are halfway there. Some lab equipment I used back in uni had this. But for storage and post processing, for example, analog systems make no sense. Data is capable to represent a precision level which would equal to half a muon on an LP (i should do this calculation too).
Information potentially exposed by analog systems is indeed close to infinite. Unusable, random information, that is. This "Random information" is still regularly emulated digitally in the music industry. Digital can be imperfect, analog can never be perfect. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle explains that quite clearly. Eventually this chaotic nature of the very small gives the illusion of ... infinite. But it is not. In fact it is quite coarse. Electricity does have a quanta. You can never subdivide that. To something abstract as a digital data point, you just add a bit.
The last part was almost inspired. Digital data is an abstract representation. One of the quirks of abstracts is that their lower level can be scaled indefinitely .... we are conceptually comparing apples and elephants. But, I digress.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function"
Spot On! I thought using the light dimmer was a stretch then , as you [point out, his audio comparison does not have 16 bits or switches. This is such a bad video, but all the dumb people in the comments that are too stupid to know better!
I would not call them stupid. There are many people who make up their minds based on social pressure not on reality.
Hell, I am willing to bet I also do that in many other domains.
The difference is, I am actually very much into audio and love music with every fibre of my bone. So much so that i've spent 2 hours researching and analysing the geometric structure of graphene to come up with those numbers.
The reality is that in the game of reproduction accuracy digital is not just several times better with cheap, available tech but tens of orders of magnitude better. But, illusions and falsehoods can ride at the edge of limitation of human (hearing in this case). It's just human.
I would understand life so much more clearly if this guy explained everything! Great video :)
Worth noting that the accuracy claims are a bit overstaded because analog process are extremely vulnerable to noise and biases while digital is extremely resilient.
Like sure a record might store an nearly infinitely precise signal but it doesn't mean it is accurate to the source sound.
I'm going to put in extra light switches in each room now. Thanks!
you are amazing in this video
is it possible to make a hybrid digital+analog machine? where you basically only get the pros from both?
That is what we have had for a long time, currently. The Compact Disc.
Loved your explanation. Thank you!
Thank you for the vid, my brain enjoy ur videos xD
Pls more videos
The description is technically inaccurate when it comes to audio. The actual waveform that comes out of a digital audio system is always 100% analog and smoothly continuous, and is also essentially a 100% perfect representation of the original analog waveform up to its maximum frequency response and above its noise floor. So in the case of a CD, what comes out is a basically perfect analog representation of all the sounds under 20KHz and above the -96dB noise floor. There are no stair steps or discrete jumps in the sound, and no differences from a perfect purely analog representation of the same sounds. (Normally it’s the purely analog version that changes, limits, distorts, or colors the sound more than the digital version.) The reason for this is the low-pass filter, which converts any stair-step shaped waveforms into pure, smoothly-connected sine waves with a maximum frequency of about half the sample rate. It’s easier to visualize this with an understanding of Fourier transforms (in which all complex waveforms, such as square waves, can be devolved to combinations of pure sine waves of various frequencies, amplitudes, and phases; to convert a square wave to a sine wave, just filter out all frequencies above its fundamental, which is what the low-pass filter in a digital audio system does to all waveforms just below their maximum frequency limit). As for the bit depth, the small discrete variations between least significant bits compared to the actual input value, and the quantization error that it causes, IS the noise floor, which is usually lower than the noise of most analog systems, and almost always well below the background noise level in any listening space.
Hi Mathew.
Correct me if i'm misunderstanding but the low pass filter is still a "digitial recreation" or an imitation right? In the same way that an unsharp or sepia filter on digital images are, the end result may be more or less identical to the same creation from an analogue device(as far as the human eye/ear is able to discern) but there is still less information, or rather slightly less accurate information. The stair steps or "jumps" are not there in the final version but they're removed artificially by the computer going through and "guessing" what should be there rather than actually knowing for a fact what is/was there. Correct?
@@H3Vtux No, it’s a regular analog low-pass filter (both on A to D conversion, just before sampling, and on D to A, just after conversion back to analog).
Some oversampling systems may use both a steep digital and shallower analog filter in combination though.
What you’re talking about is interpolation, which is something different. In fact even sample rate conversion, if done correctly, is better than just the kind of guessing or averaging that’s normal in video interpolation, since given two samples, it can be mathematically determined via Fourier transforms which sine waves (frequency, amplitude, phase) make up the complex sounds sampled below the Nyquist frequency, and hence it is possible to precisely recreate those same sine waves at a higher or lower output sample rate using math (basically trigonometry - we know what the idealized sine wave looks like, it’s just a matter of calculating the amplitude at the desired points).
Once low-pass filtered on output, this should produce the same analog output regardless of sample rate. This is to say that, below 20KHz and above -96dB, the analog output should be identical between a 16/44.1 CD and a 24/384 system (absent other differences in their electronics or filters or things like jitter), something generally confirmed by measurements of analog output signal or null tests where one of the signals is subtracted from the other, as well as blind listening tests.
Differences in sound often result from the performance of analog components, such as phase issues caused by the very step brick-wall analog filters used. This is one of the main benefits of high sample rates or over sampling during AD or DA conversion, to allow a shallower analog filter with less pronounced phase effects (which basically delay some portions of the frequency response more than others).
Everything you said was correct in terms of computer video or graphics, but doesn’t really translate accurately to digital audio.
Thanks Mathew save me typing all that. These videos are so miss leading on youtube. What he also avoids is the cost of these analog systems vs digital ! the comments is what is sad all these clowns believe the generalizations made in the video.
@@rods6405 I didn't mention cost because this was never meant to be a "which one is better" video (although as you pointed out many commenters have taken it as such). I just wanted to give a general overview of how they do what they do, and why some are better for other things than others are.
I understand generalizations can cause problems, but try to understand without generalizations I end up with a 5 hour video.
@@rods6405 And you don't use any true counter arguments to back up your statements. Very typical of Digital shills who always live in the fantasy world that everything is defined by numbers and speculation like a robot.
I'm happy that I watched this video
Literally perfect video great editing too Thank you
*This video was helpful for my exam.*
I understood the concept so well. Your practical use cases were just so real.Thanks a lot
👍👍👍
great
This video provides incorrect information regarding digital sound.
Digital sound is mathematical recreated in perfect analogue waves, not like the digital representation at 4:44.
This is a common mistake!
How does this vid only have 11k views? Great video and presentation!
Because its mostly BS!
@@rods6405 how so?
@@olfin88 Read all the negative comments that say so
wow! Thanks. Very clear explanations.
I wonder how qbits will play into this.
How is it 2switch 50 2 50
good
I must say this even made like my Analog Minolta camera x300 even more