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What is Digital Music?

By , About.com Guide

Question: What is Digital Music?

Digital Music, or commonly known as digital audio, is a method of representing sound as numerical values. In contrast, analog systems like, magnetic tape, or vinyl records, rely on physical methods to reproduce the sound.

Answer:

Physical Digital Media

One of the most well known physical sources of digital music is the compact disc. The basic principle of how this works is that a laser reads the surface of a CD which contains pits and lands. The information on the CD changes the reflected power of the lazerbeam which is measured and decoded as binary data ( 1 or 0).

Digital Audio Files

These are non-physical sources of digital audio that use various encoding formats to store audio information. An example of a digital audio file is an MP3 that you can download from the Internet; listen to on your computer, or MP3 player. When we talk about digital music, we normally refer to this type of digital audio storage; other examples of digital audio files include, AAC, WMA, OGG, WAV, etc.

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