Digital Recording - Process

Process

Recording

1. The analog signal is transmitted from the input device to an analog-to-digital converter (ADC).
2. The ADC converts this signal by repeatedly measuring the momentary level of the analog (audio) wave and then assigning a binary number with a given quantity of bits (word length) to each measuring point.
3. The frequency at which the ADC measures the level of the analog wave is called the sample rate or sampling rate.
4. A digital audio sample with a given word length represents the audio level at one moment.
5. The longer the word length the more exact is the representation of the original audio wave levelwise.
6. The higher the sampling rate the higher the upper cutoff frequency of the digitized audio signal.
7. The ADC outputs a sequence of samples that make up a continuous stream of 0s and 1s.
8. These numbers are stored onto recording media such as magnetic tape, hard drive, optical drive or solid state memory.

Playback

1. The sequence of numbers is transmitted from storage into a digital-to-analog converter (DAC), which converts the numbers back to an analog signal by sticking together the level information stored in each digital sample, thus rebuilding the original analog wave form.
2. This signal is amplified and transmitted to the loudspeakers or video screen.