I believe that analog waves are like real waves, the travel in the shape that waves do in the sea. a digital wave is more square in appearence, (nununu, a bit like thyat but without the spaces between letters) that is why somtimes when watching digital tv the picture appears to be made up of squares!!

Analog signals are continuous where digital signals are discrete. Anolog signals are continuously varying where digital signals are based on 0's and 1's (or as often said------- on's and off's). As an analogy, consider a light switch that is either on or off (digital) and a dimmer switch (analog) that allows you to vary the light in different degrees of brightness. As another analogy, consider a clock in which the second hand smoothly circles the clock face (analog) versus another clock in which the second hand jumps as each second passes (digital). Digital computers work with a series of 0's and 1's to represent letters, symbols, and numbers. In addition, numbers are represented by using the binary code (where only 0's and 1's are used). Number Binary equivalent 1----------------------------------------------1 2---------------------------------------------10 3---------------------------------------------11 4--------------------------------------------100 5--------------------------------------------101 6--------------------------------------------110 7--------------------------------------------111 8-------------------------------------------1000 and so on. So each number (that we are accustomed to, such as 5) is represented by 0's and 1's. Morse code uses dits (or dots) and dashes. Digital signals are similar to Morse code. The signal is either a dit or a dash for Morse code and it is either a 0 or 1 for digital. A series of these dits and dashes might represent SOS to a navy radio man, and a series of 0's and 1's might represent the question mark to a computer. When an e-mail is sent that says "Hello Joe", Hello Joe doesn't mysteriously appear on Joe's computer. What is sent through the phone line is a series of 0's and 1's and Joe's computer "interprets" these into the words Hello Joe. If you type the letter A into your computer, it converts this A into 01000001. This 01000001 goes to Joe's computer and his computer interprets it as A. Each 0 or 1 is "bit" and the series of eight 0's and 1's is a byte. Well, that is about as simple as it gets and about as simple as I can state it.

In reference to music, analog refers to a physical representation (or analogy) of a sound wave, recreated/recorded/transmitted in a different form, either electrical or mechanical. Bumps within the groove of an LP (mechanical) correspond to the sound wave to be reproduced. The height of the bump (amplitude) represents loudness, and the distance between the bumps (frequency) represents pitch. Tapes and radios (electrical) use voltage for volume, and frequency for pitch. That’s how analog works. Now keeping in mind that, at any instant in time, a phonograph needle can only ever be in one place at one time. Digital music requires that in your mind, you freeze the turntable and needle in one spot. The instantaneous vertical position of the phonograph needle can be assigned a value between ZERO and 64,000. The position of the needle can be recorded with a sixteen bit digital number (Like: 1001 0000 0111 1101) that a computer can understand. If you can move the turntable in smaller and smaller increments, you can get an approximation of the sound that is on the LP. A CD tracks every position the "needle" passes through 44,100 times every single second. So a CD uses 64,000 possible positions (16 bit word length), sampled at 44.1KHz (Thousands cycles per second) to record a sound wave. CD Audio files on a computer hard drive are about 10 Megabytes per minute of sound (large) even if the sound is silence. DVD's and newer sound cards do it with even more accuracy and detail by using 24 bit word length and 48KHz sampling rate, resulting in even larger files.

Allow me to throw out another illustration: In an analog system I might use a 5 volt signal to signify "5" and a 3.5 volt signal to mean "3.5," etc. If I wish to light an LED at half brightness, I might be able to send half the maximum voltage. In a digital system I encode "5" with some series of "on" and "off" pulses. If I want my LED to run at half brightness, I might turn it on an off rapidly so it always gets the same voltage but only gets power half the time and produces half the light. If I put a digital signal on an oscilloscope, I will see a pattern of essentially horizontal lines at two different voltages - high for "on" or "1" and low for "off" or "0" If I put an analog signal on an oscilloscope, I will typically see a smooth curving trace that varies the voltage up and down. I can encode a digital signal on an analog carrier (like the sound an old modem makes) by changing the amplitude of the carrier wave. If you put this kind of signal on an oscilloscope you might see a continuous sine wave at a single frequency that suddenly goes from one amplitude (voltage) to another for a long enough period (more than two waves typically) to distinguish the peaks of the waves as either high "on" or low "off". The waves will always peak at either the high voltage or the low voltage, not between or beyond those two fixed states. Usually there will be a fixed number of waves per bit of information, so if the signal stay high or low for several consecutive bits, the number of "0"s or "1"s can still be decoded.

Another way to describe it: An analog signal is continuously variable. It differs from a digital signal in that <b><i>small fluctuations in the signal are meaningful</i></b>. That is the key. Whereas a digital signal only represents 2 values (0 and 1 - or off and on). The primary disadvantage of an analog signal is noise. As an analog signal is processed (copied, sampled, amplified, etc) the noise is hard to discriminate from the actual signal. Noise is much easier to filter out of a digital signal, because anything other than the pure 'high' or 'low' signal is considered noise. Hopefully that was easy to understand....

An analogue signal is the process of taking some sort of signal and translating it into electronic pulses. Digital breaks the whole wave into a binary forma where each section is coded fro by either a 1 or a 0.

An analog signal is represented as waves... digital is represented as a stream of 1's and 0's.

http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/1799 From someone with the same question...hope it helps.

Analog signals use continuously variable electric currents and voltages to reproduce data being transmitted. Analog signals cannot perform high-quality data transmission.Digital signals use binary data strings (0 and 1) to reproduce data being transmitted. http://www.ntt-east.co.jp/isdn_e/e_page/e_faq02/faq003.html

where do babies come from?

Duplicate question. See answers here - http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/1799

they r differneciated!

it is all part of maslows hierachy of needs!

Now that T.V. has gone to digital signals, I have noticed the digital signals I receive over the air with my T.V. tower are much weaker during the "heat" of the day. Why is this? Does your antenna need more of a straight line clear path to pick up signals? Are the digital waves more narrow than analog waves. Will an Old Analog Antenna pick up digital sigals as well as it did analog signals? I have a 50ft T.V.tower.I live aprox. half way between Indy and Louiville. About 75 miles from both citys. All my signals are weak (more so during the day). I all ready have an Amplifier on my antenna. Any Help explaining these questions and helping to solve my signal problems would be greatly appreciated.

finite and infinite wave forms

In an analog signal the voltage may assume any numeric value within some continuous range, changing smoothly with time. In a digital signal the voltage may assume only two discrete values, jumping between one & the other with time. These are square pulses. A pictorial diagram would be far easier to understand than this verbal description, but that's the best we can do here. Hope this helps.

Analog Signal: 1.Analog signal are continuous. 2.Analog signal is continuously variable. 3.The primary disadvantage of an analog signal is noise. 4.Sound waves are a continuous wave and as such are analog in the real world. 5.Analog signal required lesser bandwidth capacity than digital capacity. Digital Signal: 1.Digital signal is discrete. 2.Digital signal are based on 0's and 1's. 3.Noise is much easier to filter out of a digital signal. 4.Most computer used such as the PC work using digital signals. 5.Digital signal required greater bandwidth capacity than analog signals.