one-nil for audio

Digital systems have one major advantage over their analog counterparts: they can tolerate extremely high interference levels without loss of information. Rapid advances in digital technology in recent years is forcing designers in such traditionally analog areas as tape recording, long-line transmission and reverberation to take a long, hard look at their digital competitors. The advent of digital audio has produced quite a few surprises on both sides of the fence: digital designers discovered that only by pushing to the very limit of their capabilities could they meet the performance standards commonly set by conventional analog equipment; analog designers, on the other hand, were surprised to discover that digital equipment could sound so good. In this article, both of these `surprises` are examined. How can digital audio work so well, and why is it so difficult to get it to work in practice?