Chambers <ben### [at] pacificwebguycom> wrote:
> One of my hobbies is explaining to people how it is actually impossible 
> for a digital system to rival the quality of an analog.

  The problem with analog sound/video is that it's very difficult, if not
impossible, to transfer the data without any modification. There will always
be some noise which was not in the original material.

  Digital audio/video can be used to transfer the information unmodified.
You just need to have enough bitrate in an non-lossy format for it to
easily become of much higher quality than the analog equivalent (because
there's no noise).

  The problem with CDs, although they are lossless, is that the bitrate is
not high enough to rival the quality of a very high-quality analog tape
(those used in the past for studio sound recording). You would need at
least 24-bit 96 kHz sound for that.

  And the major problem with DVDs and especially digi-TV is that it's lossy
and with a rather low bitrate, and thus cannot compete with an analog
broadcast with good reception. Lossless HDTV could, though.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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