Digital Tape - Digital Recording

Music Tech || MT CA1 - Introduction to Music Technology and the Music Business

When did recording studios begin to incorporate digital technology into their setups?

By the end of the 1980s - analogue tape was replaced with digital tape.

How is digital tape different from analogue tape?

• In the way it stores the audio information written to it.

• Analogue tape captures audio as continuous piece of information via the record head.

How does digital tape work?

• Digital tape converts the incoming audio signal into a data stream of binary information, recorded onto the tape via the record head.

• This means that the data is no longer stored as a continuous signal it has been converted to a series of values.

What is an ADC?

• Analogue to Digital Convertor.

• Digital tape machines had to contain convertors to change the incoming analogue signal into digital data.

• ADCs are still used in equipment today.

Explain how the method of writing binary data to a tape via a record head developed into more modern technology.

• A hard disk drive (HDD) works in a very similar fashion.

• A moving head writes binary data onto a large magnetic disc within the drive itself.

• In this instance the head moves rather than the storage media.

State Nyquist’s Therom.

“In order to accurately capture digital audio the sample rate must be double that of the maximum frequency being captured.”