麻豆社

Bob Kraushaar, a sound engineer, explains the differences between analogue and digital sound recording.

A microphone captures the changes in air pressure created by a sound wave and translates it into a small electrical voltage. This produces a continuous representation of the sound or an analogue signal. By contrast, a digital signal is composed of thousands of tiny snapshots of sound, called samples.

The quality of a digital recording depends on how many of these snapshots are taken per second, known as the sample rate, and how sharp the focus of each snapshot is, known as the bit depth.

Bob plays around with the sample rate and bit rate of a piece of music to demonstrate sound degradation.