Analog and Digital Audio Principles
Definition: Analog to Digital Converter. A device that converts analog signals to digital signals.(www.jmcgowan.com/avigloss.html)
The human body deals with visual and audio senses by analog means. For example, your eyes view the stages of a sunset in measures of colours and light intensity. There are no values for these interpretations but ultimately they rest between 0 (no light) and 1 (light).
Ccomputers on the other hand, deal with everything in binary. This (just like the example above) means that all a computer ever processes are 1's and 0's. So how can a computer interpret real sounds such as a human voice? The answer is by using Analog to Digital Converters (ADC's). In order to convert analog information into digital information, it is necessary to measure its amplitude at specific points in time (called "Sampling") and to assign a binary value to each measurement. This conversion is regarded as the most crucial part of any audio application because once the information is stored in the digital world, the technical quality of the audio signal can only be made worse. This is an important fact to remember when manipulating audio.