Digital recording

In digital recording, an audio or video signal is converted into a stream of discrete numbers representing the changes over time in air pressure for audio, or chroma and luminance values for video. This number stream is saved to a storage device. To play back a digital recording, the numbers are retrieved and converted back into their original analog audio or video forms so that they can be heard or seen.

In a properly matched analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and digital-to-analog converter (DAC) pair the analog signal is accurately reconstructed per the constraints of the Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem dependent on the sampling rate and quantization error dependent on the audio or video bit depth. Because the signal is stored digitally, assuming proper error detection and correction, the recording is not degraded by copying, storage or interference.

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