Analog VS Digital Technology – Know All About It

A few years back, one of the most exciting things a person can own was a digital watch. It looked so advanced and modern to have the time written in digital form rather than the slowly rotating pins. Since then, the idea of digital technology is amusing and interesting for everyone and soon, everything was digital. We have digital televisions, music players, cell-phones, cameras, books, and whatnot. But, is the analog technology outdated? Or we just happen to use both the technologies in different things in our daily lives? Which one seems better? Let’s dig into analog vs digital technology.

Analog Technology

In analog technology, a wave is recorded in its original form. For example, a microphone’s signals are directly tapes where the wave from the signal of the microphone is analog, therefore the one laid on the tape would be analog too. Now that wave can be amplified, read, and used in the speaker to address a bigger audience.

When we talk about something analog, it simply means that the information is not in a digital form involving numbers electronically. Analog technology is cheaper but there is a limitation to the size of the data it can handle which is to be transmitted at a given time.

Digital Technology

Digital technology has revolutionized the way most of the things around us work. In digital technology, no need to use physical forms like tapes and lines to use the data. Instead, everything can be recorded in the form of numbers that are easy to analyze and use. Many devices around us such as thermometers, millimeters, and BP meters work on digital technology. It is very convenient to use digital technology and it is accurate as well depending upon the quality of the instrument being used for measurements.

We are using digital technology in our daily lives such as the cell phones we use. All the information stored and used through our cell phones is in digital form and is secure. Everything we use in cell phones is encrypted and this safe.

Properties of Analog VS Digital Technologies:

Here some of the properties of analog and digital technologies that show the comparison among both:

• Analog is a continuous signal that represents any physical quantity such as time whereas the digital is made of discrete signals that are generated through digital modulation.
• Analog uses a continuous range of values to give information but digital uses discontinuous values.
• Analog records waveforms as they are whereas digital technology takes those waveforms and changes them into a set of numbers and records them.
• Analog signals draw large power whereas digital instruments draw negligible power.
• Analog technology is cheap and easily accessible whereas digital technology is high in cost and is not easily portable.
• Digital communications require specific languages that are to be processed by both the sender and receiver, and it should specify the meaning of symbols.
• When analog communication is disturbed or an error occurs, it can distort the actual communication. But when digital communications are disturbed, it still gives error-free communication.
• Digital signals use symbols and specific sequence to pursue synchronization.
• The copies of analog communication are not as good as the original ones. In digital communications, due to an error-free system, good copies are produced.
• Digital technology is very much efficient when it comes to the cellular phone industry whereas analog phones have good redundant even though the quality was good.

Digital VS Analog – Which One Is Better?

Digital technologies have many advantages over analog technologies but it doesn’t mean that it is always better than analog. For instance, an analog watch calculates time with more precision than a digital one. To our surprise, analog watches keep time better than quartz watches. In analog watch, in day-to-day mechanical variations, they tend to cancel each other. Whereas, in quartz watches, they tend to compound each other. If you notice, the most expensive watches are the analog ones. But not to deny, the world’s most accurate atomic clocks work on digital technology.

When it comes to storing information, digital has the edge over analog as it can store a large amount of data in the small numeric form. But, it is seen that the old documents, papers, and books are still preserved but no one has the digital information from many years back. A lot of information that was recorded on the old computers can’t be read with new computers such as the information stored on the floppy disk cannot be retrieved as it is outdated now. While the future might hold value to digital technology but analog cannot be replaced.