Digital Audio has many advantages over analog audio. The biggest advantage of digital audio over analog audio is the drastic improvement in sound quality. Since the signal is digital there is never any coloration or signal loss from the time it is recorded until the time it is played through your speakers. The reason that digital audio is such a big improvement over analog audio is because instead of storing a direct representation of the sound waves like records and tapes do, digital mediums such as compact discs store the soundwave in binary code.
Binary code is simply strings of ones and zeros.
When the signal is off it produces a 0 and when the signal is on it produces a 1. The signal is read as on if the laser is reflected off of the compact disc back to the detector and off if it doesn't get reflected. The computers inside of the compact disc player then turn the binary code into an analog signal that is sent to an amplifier and then to your speakers. Digital audio tapes and minidiscs store music using the same binary signals, but they're read by different methods. Eric Linge Back to the Quarter 1 Projects Page.