CD Recorders

[Birchy]

Can you explain the differences between Analog, Optical and Digital ? And what is Coaxial in CD recording parlance?

[tracymort]

analog uses waves, optical uses light (therefore never bend an optical lead as it will not work) and digital 01 etc all ask about coaxial when my bloke gets home. he works for Richer Sounds the hi fi retailer, you could ask them, they know! i'm just the hi-fi widow so i only know a bit!

[barnetboy]

all analogue signals produce a sound wave with value of anything between 0-1. this means there is a lot of room for interference and mis-signaling. analogue on a hi-fi is passed through two phono leads which supply the amp with two channels of analogue signals to decode. opitcal is a form of digital signal transfere, digital uses a code of 0's OR 1's in a binary code stylee. this means there is no room for interference. optical works by sending light signals down a fibre-optic cable in 0/1 form ( in digital 0 stands for on and 1 stands for off) giving the amp a single signal to decode. coaxial is the standard form of analogue signal transferance, the two cables supply corresponding signals ( hence the 'co-') from an analogue source to an analogue recording device, cdr's record in an analogue format when decoded from analogue sources. hope that helps...got a bit confused myself writing it...