2. The analogue world of sound

A very common requirement of computers is to store and play back recorded sound.

A 'real' sound is analogue in nature, you listen to sound with analogue ears where tones and rhythms blend together smoothly.

But computers are digital, they can only handle binary numbers.

So if sound is to be handled by a computer, the analogue sound from any source has to be converted into a set of binary numbers i.e. you 'digitise' the sound with some input device.

This is called 'sampling' the sound.

For example you can use a microphone as an input device for sensing the incoming sound.

But how do you convert sound into a binary file? Read on and find out.