Analog

Analog implies the kind of data in which the signal carries a continuing function, and may incorporate physical or tangible variables. A simple example would be the ‘analog clock’, which constantly records time and displays the same continuously. Analog data can take any value at any time and can have an infinite number or values, thereby mimicking a real-world scenario.

In the sphere of software development, specialists are oriented towards the management of analog data and their subsequent filtering; real-life data is processed and converted by the specialists into digital form. Typical areas of use are in the field of audiovisual processing where actual sound and image signals are digitized for a number of purposes.

Analog data is very useful to close the gap between the real world and the digital world. Unlike digital data which is quantized and has only two states (1s and 0s), analog data is more flexible as it is continuous and can therefore represent a large number of values thus better to capture complex systems. For instance, the differences in the loudness of sound or the shades of grey in a photo are initially in analog format and then digitized for use. This process of conversion is very important in applications such as telecommunications, audio and video recording and streaming, where the quality of the analog signal has to be well maintained when converting it to digital form.

Dealing with such data in software development requires special tools for its sampling, filtering, and the subsequent transformation into the digital format that can be easily processed by the software. This process is called Analog to Digital Conversion (ADC) and it is very useful in areas such as audiovisual processing, where like the name suggest, sound and visual signals are obtained from the environment and then converted into digital signals for use. Once digitized this data can be revised, reduced in size, transfer or process in a very accurate manner. Since analog data can be converted and processed with high precision, software developers can create applications that can effectively work with the physical world and give various possibilities, for example, to record high-quality sound, to create highly effective systems for image recognition. Therefore, the need for better and faster analog data processing techniques will remain relevant as long as the digital and analog worlds will be intertwined.