Analog and digital audio signals

The first audio signals to be transmitted were on telephone lines. In audio recording and broadcasting, the worst sin is to overmodulate the tape or the transmitter by allowing a signal of excessive amplitude to pass. Real audio signals are rich in short transients which pass before the sluggish volume unit (VU) meter responds. Broadcasters developed the peak program meter (PPM) which is also logarithmic, but which is designed to respond to peaks as quickly as the ear responds to distortion. Balanced line working was developed for professional audio as a means to reject noise. In an analog system, information is conveyed by some infinite variation of a continuous parameter such as the voltage on a wire or the strength of flux on a tape. Digital audio simply falls short of the ideal by a smaller distance than does analog and at lower cost, or, if the designer chooses, can have the same performance as analog at much lower cost.