Every real life sound that the human ear is capable to perceive, leaving artificial sound sources aside, are referred to being ‘analog’. Essentially, analog audio stands for an analogous recording of sound, made by capturing and imprinting natural soundwaves on audio tape or other dedicated devices. Regardless of the means used for capturing analogue sound, all analogue recordings either store the incoming signal as a continuous sound wave or on the media.
Digital audio recording works by turning the originally captured sound into a numeric sequence, which is subsequently sampled to provide a digital representation of the analog sound signal. The term sampling denotes the division of sound signal into separate intervals (for instance, the sample rate of common CDs is 44.1 thousands of samples/ second). While CDs come with a 16-bit sound resolution, DVD-Audio discs allow higher resolution encoding, sometimes up to 24-bits. Therefore, DVD-Audio discs provide superior bit depth compared to their CD counterparts, providing a quality that closely resembles that of analog recordings.
To keep things simple, the main difference between analog audio and digital audio consists in the nature of the sound waves. While analog recordings are continuous in time, digital recordings are obtained through a process of sampling at distinct intervals.
It wouldn’t be wrong to say that digital audio is by far more complicated to achieve than its analog counterpart, but it has the merits of keeping noise at a low threshold, allowing for better duplication capabilities and offering higher speed accuracy.
Although modern technology evens out the gap between digital audio and analogue audio, sometimes the differences in these two types of sounds are perceivable. A trained ear can make the distinction between the two, and many audiophiles stand by the claim that analogue audio recordings have more of a real feel to them, giving the impression that you are actually hearing music that is played live.
The advantage of digital audio is that it eliminates or at least limits analog recordings-specific distortions, but lacks significantly in terms of analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog conversion possibilities. Moreover, many audiophiles and recording specialists perceive digital sound as cold and artificial, as it lacks the organic dynamic of analogue audio.
Overall, the analog vs digital battle is an equally balanced battle, as it is difficult to come up with solid, objective arguments to indicate a clear winner. Although digital audio is everywhere these days, and has the advantages of being cheaper and more convenient, analogue comes in strong from behind by allowing listeners to experience a genuinely life-like sound. Moreover, analogue recordings are apparently back in fashion, with a growing number of audiophiles saying no to digital and turning instead to the organic sound of old school vinyl recordings.