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> The continuous nature of analog signals means they can theoretically capture an infinite amount of detail. Uhm, no: It's called frequency range and signal to

> The continuous nature of analog signals means they can theoretically capture an infinite amount of detail. Uhm, no: It's called frequency range and signal to noise ratio. > When you play an analog record, for example, the sound you hear is a continuous representation of the original performance. Uhm, no: The roughness of a vinyl record is audible, pops and cracks are audible, and the last 1/3rd of the playable range of a 33.5rpm record can't even hold the highest frequencies that the human ear can hear. Often, deep bass needs to be filtered out so the needle doesn't skip out of the groove. > In contrast, digital signals are inherently limited by their sampling rate and bit depth. These directly correlate to frequency response and signal to noise ratio. There are important differences in details: It's very hard to make digital equipment "sound" analog, but that comes down to design choices. IE, tubes tend to handle clipping and overdriving differently than digital equipment. To claim that analog is infinite and continuous demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding.

mikepurvis 2y ago
Indeed, and this should be trivially provable to anyone by the existence of 45RPM records for singles— if vinyl was truly "infinite" then why would you need to spin a record faster to get higher quality audio? Why not spin LPs even slower to get more content on them?
- gwbas1c 2y ago
  Ironically, if you spin a record super-fast for higher quality audio, it will probably sound horrible. The holes often aren't perfectly in center; and it creates a waawaawaawaawaa (or wawawawawa on 45s) sound in any long sustained note. Playing a record super-slow for a long playback would result in everything sounding off-key. (This is why cd players make a shushushushush sound when you hold them up to your ear, it's the laser rapidly adjusting to an off-center hole.) This also gets into an important difference between digital and analog: The ability to abstract away the physical playback mechanism from the representation allows for buffering so that playback is at the correct speed, even if the physical medium has an inconsistent speed. Digital also allows a continuous signal to be constructed from a broken signal: IE, streaming audio is constructed from many separate network packets. In contrast, analog audio equipment is usually "instant," and digital audio equipment sometimes has a delay.

mikepurvis 2y ago

Indeed, and this should be trivially provable to anyone by the existence of 45RPM records for singles— if vinyl was truly "infinite" then why would you need to spin a record faster to get higher quality audio? Why not spin LPs even slower to get more content on them?

gwbas1c 2y ago
Ironically, if you spin a record super-fast for higher quality audio, it will probably sound horrible. The holes often aren't perfectly in center; and it creates a waawaawaawaawaa (or wawawawawa on 45s) sound in any long sustained note. Playing a record super-slow for a long playback would result in everything sounding off-key. (This is why cd players make a shushushushush sound when you hold them up to your ear, it's the laser rapidly adjusting to an off-center hole.) This also gets into an important difference between digital and analog: The ability to abstract away the physical playback mechanism from the representation allows for buffering so that playback is at the correct speed, even if the physical medium has an inconsistent speed. Digital also allows a continuous signal to be constructed from a broken signal: IE, streaming audio is constructed from many separate network packets. In contrast, analog audio equipment is usually "instant," and digital audio equipment sometimes has a delay.