Gadgetory

for a while now the word digital has been slapped on so many things that it sort of become a marketing buzzword to convince people that something is high-tech or better in some way of course most modern electronics are digital by definition as opposed to analog but what do these terms even mean and is digital necessarily even better for a long time most consumer electronics like televisions and cassette decks works by using analog signals which you can think of as being similar to one of those wall clocks with a perpetually moving second hand just as the second hand continuously moves to represent the time analog signals use some type of thing that's constantly changing to represent data for example both AM radio and old-school broadcast TV use a signal with a continuously variable wave height or amplitude to represent sounds or visuals these sorts of analog waves can be decoded or D modulated fairly easily with diodes that can relay actual data to a screen or a speaker but as any child of the 1980s who grew up watching rabbit ears connected TVs or dubbing cassette tapes knows a massive drawback to analogue tech is the possibility of interference the variations in waves that encode analog data are so small that interference can easily disrupt the analog waveforms and cause snow on your TV static on your radio or even problems with monitors that use older VGA cables which are actually analog despite most other modern computer components being digital digital technology attempts to solve this problem by encoding and transmitting data as clear-cut discrete units namely ones and zeros instead of always changing waveforms that are super sensitive to interference these ones and zeros are actually just representations of electrical signals being on or off when you view it on a square wave that's either up or down these positions are easy representations since any piece of a square wave can only be read in one of two states on or off up or down they aren't nearly as vulnerable to interference making digital transmission normally a heck of a lot more reliable across longer distances which is why the length speaker wire in your home theater matters but the length of a digital HDMI cable usually doesn't at least not for resisting interference and since digital data is stored as an exact finite set of ones and zeros it can be perfectly replicated anytime you need to make a copy unlike analog recordings that degrade over time due to the difficulty in duplicating an analog wave at every single point this is the reason that an mp3 copied to a million iPods will sound the same on every one but a cassette tapes that are copied a whole bunch will eventually sound like garbage after you dub them enough times but even though digital has obvious advantages we live to a great extent in an analog world take the sound for instance the sound waves that come out of your mouth when you talk are analog in nature so how does a singer record albums that are stored digitally on say a Spotify server well digital recording primarily works by sampling instead of recording all of the infant testimony small changes in an analog waveform an analog to digital converter takes snapshots of analog sound or video and stores them as digital bits this is typically done many times per second with higher sampling rates resulting in more data and usually better quality allowing a digital recording to achieve pretty close fidelity to the original performance while taking up much less space on a disc of course since you can't exactly hear ones and zeros digital recording sound needs to go back through a digital to analog converter or a DAC which will convert your mp3 or AAC to an electrical signal that has a constantly changing voltage that the drivers in your headphones will turn into actual sound so while digital tech has been extraordinarily useful it's really the way the digital and analog work together that makes the brave new world of tweets Netflix and dankmemes possible speaking of digital things audible.com is the leading provider of audiobooks with more than 180,000 downloadable titles across all types of literature including fiction nonfiction and periodicals audiobooks are a great way to listen to something while you're saying in transit on your way to work or just trying to run or on the track at school in your super bored and whatnot anyways that physical activity whatever at least you can listen to a book for our audience members however audible is offering a free 30-day trial just check out audible.com slash tech quickie and browse there over 180,000 audio programs I would yet again recommend the entire Harry Potter series there's a ton of different gems in there and there's gonna be the movies coming out in I'm not entirely sure which will have more stuff in that realm they're not based on the original series of books but they're based on books within the books like inception books maybe I shouldn't reference another movie when talking about a single movie either way don't forget to get a free 30-day trial at audible.com slash tech quickie don't forget to like the video if you liked it dislike the video if you disliked it put a comment down below with something you'd like us to check out in the future check out channel super-fun they did a video on little mini drones and doing cool things I wasn't there for it I wanted to be but I was like literally across the entire country so that didn't really work out don't forget to subscribe you shall see everyone if you like that video and subscribe to tech quickie if you liked this video