Analog vs digital!???

At the source (CDs), it's all digital. In the end, it's all analog out the speakers. In digital form, you can add processing you can't do to analog sound. In analog form, you can add processing you can't do to digital sound.

Basically, this is more of a preference than anything. The only real benefit I can think of is that digital is totally oblivious to line noise.

zion i & the grouch - Digital Dirt

"it's hard being analog, whatever that means."

It would be pretty interesting if processors have digital-outputs and amps have digital-inputs.

also we can only hear in analog, not digital.

i have heard a side by side comparison, in a guys house once, he had 2 complete systems, 1 for cds 1 for vinyl

he played a rolling stones album first on cd then on vinyl

same album,

the sound was obviously very different, but im not sure how to describe the difference, and im not sure the vinyl was so much better that i would ever try to achieve a completely analoge system in a car.

different sounds, both good.

also we can only hear in analog, not digital.

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my dog can hear in dolby digital, soo can my gold fish

also we can only hear in analog, not digital.

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Thats a lie.

I hear in trueHD

analog values change with heat and humidity digital doesnt. set what you need in digital make it a preset presto its the same reguardless of the weather. can you do time alignment in analog? i guess if you moved your speakers.... people say that records and DAT sound better than cd thing is a cd doesnt get worn out like a tape or record...

Ok i have notice ppl are using for ex. alpines digital optical outputs or deq-p9 and other dsp 6 processors. Well is there a big difference in hearing digital sound vs analog? I know i hear ppl having problems with hissing on digital and other problems as well but what benfit will i get for going to digital? I know my hu, amp and processor all have to be digital to get the full benfit.

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got far more hissing from analog than i ever did digital

Thats a lie.
I hear in trueHD

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lol unless you can understand 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0

i have heard a side by side comparison, in a guys house once, he had 2 complete systems, 1 for cds 1 for vinyl
he played a rolling stones album first on cd then on vinyl

same album,

the sound was obviously very different, but im not sure how to describe the difference, and im not sure the vinyl was so much better that i would ever try to achieve a completely analoge system in a car.

different sounds, both good.

Click to expand...

Two complete systems? Same components, especially speakers, in each? Same amount of power? Same volume level? Without establishing a control with everything else in the system and varying only the source, you can't remotely conclude that the source was the difference that you heard. Good old cassette tape is analog. Sounds like crap. Nothing wrong with vinyl unless you have a thing against hiss. Anyone claiming to hear the difference between DAT and CD is on crack. Exact same signal.

also we can only hear in analog, not digital.

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This has absolutely nothing to do with using analog or digital signals in a car audio system. The signal coming from an amp is always analog anyway.

I hear in trueHD

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HD means high definition, not digital

Can't find who said it, but someone mentioned line noise, and he's right. With digital there will be absolutely no line noise, as a digital signal is not affected by electromagnetic fields the same way an analog one is.

Could a full digital system besides speaker connections eliminate the need to level match components? It would be nice to get away from that. Setting them with a DMM results (for me anyway) in a very quiet frontstage, so I have to set it by ear so it blends with the substage. I'm seriously thinking about getting an o-scope.

Could a full digital system besides speaker connections eliminate the need to level match components? It would be nice to get away from that. Setting them with a DMM results (for me anyway) in a very quiet frontstage, so I have to set it by ear so it blends with the substage. I'm seriously thinking about getting an o-scope.

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That's a very good point, I never thought of that. I'm pretty sure that's true though. The unit receiving the incoming signal does not care about what level the "1" voltage is at, so long as it is there...so theoretically all components should be the same, right? Would an amp with a digital input have a volume control on it then?

If all signal tranmission was done in the digital domain, you would not need a gain control on the amp. You would however need to have a standard sampling rate and number of bits per sample. The first will dictate the linearity and resolution of the signal and the second the dynamic range of the system. Higher is better on both though going beyond 44kHz and 16bit is kind of pointless since that is the resolution of the best current digital source material out right now, the CD. The difference between a CD and a record is that the record has an infinite sampling rate (the definition of analog) but the dynamic range is limited by the ability of the stylus to track the groove. The CD has a better dynamic range because of the lack of a physical pickup.

The way a digital version of an analog signal works is the signal in broken down into discrete samples (sampling rate; 44kHz for a CD) and a discrete number of voltage steps (16 bits on a CD; 2^16=65,536 steps between the negative signal peak and the positive signal peak). The analog to digital convertor takes snapshots of the signal at the sampling rate and translates that snapshot into a binary representation of the voltage of the signal at the exact time of the snapshot (note: an mp3 works totally differently). the digital to analog convertor does the same thing in reverse. It takes the binary stream and "redraws" the original signal.

Going full digital would be nice though you'd still run into issues of compatibilty, cause I can pretty much promise that no two companies would go about it the same way.