Analog is inherently lossy due to the materials and playback method. Vinyl records sound different when they are dusty.
Digital is inherently lossless because the Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem guarantees that, given a sufficiently high sample rate, all information from the original signal is preserved.
And if your vinyl collection catches fire it also gets lost, what’s your point? That’s an argument for preservation of storage media, not for intrinsic benefits of analog.
The analog storage you are referring to from thousands of years ago has degraded substantially since its creation. Yes it’s still useful but I wouldn’t use that as evidence it’s a better medium. Case in point: texts (a digital storage form) from thousands of years ago can be retransacribed to be exact copies of the original (with respect to the knowledge contained within of course) whereas paintings from the Renaissance have changed dramatically due to aging and can never be returned to their original form since the needed data is lost.
Yes, you’ll make the argument that the available versions of it are not perfect representations, though that is only because the language and dialect used to produce the work had been lost, the work otherwise remains intact.
Text is a digital format because you have a limited set of characters to represent sounds/syllables. For example: the meaning of the letter ‘B’ doesn’t change if a small piece of the letter is missing or if the letter is slightly tilted, it’s still a ‘B’. If the format was analog, those changes would also change the sound/meaning of the word.
True, but analog cylinders are going to be the ones people after the world burns can find and still listen. I wouldn’t count any old CDs play at that point anymore.
Analog is inherently lossy due to the materials and playback method. Vinyl records sound different when they are dusty.
Digital is inherently lossless because the Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem guarantees that, given a sufficiently high sample rate, all information from the original signal is preserved.
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It is inherently more representative of reality. Measurably so. Vinyl doesn’t and cannot have the same dynamic range as digital.
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There is also cassette tapes, reels, wax cylinders, laser discs… Analog supports degrade over time. Digital files do not.
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Digital files have checksums. You literally know when something has changed and you lost information. And then you have error-correction on top.
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And if your vinyl collection catches fire it also gets lost, what’s your point? That’s an argument for preservation of storage media, not for intrinsic benefits of analog.
The analog storage you are referring to from thousands of years ago has degraded substantially since its creation. Yes it’s still useful but I wouldn’t use that as evidence it’s a better medium. Case in point: texts (a digital storage form) from thousands of years ago can be retransacribed to be exact copies of the original (with respect to the knowledge contained within of course) whereas paintings from the Renaissance have changed dramatically due to aging and can never be returned to their original form since the needed data is lost.
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One example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iliad?wprov=sfla1
Yes, you’ll make the argument that the available versions of it are not perfect representations, though that is only because the language and dialect used to produce the work had been lost, the work otherwise remains intact.
Text is a digital format because you have a limited set of characters to represent sounds/syllables. For example: the meaning of the letter ‘B’ doesn’t change if a small piece of the letter is missing or if the letter is slightly tilted, it’s still a ‘B’. If the format was analog, those changes would also change the sound/meaning of the word.
True, but analog cylinders are going to be the ones people after the world burns can find and still listen. I wouldn’t count any old CDs play at that point anymore.
Like analog degrades, digital just stops playing.
Vinyl sounds different per use, since it wears out.
But isn’t live music analogue?