Sound storage digitized fully but human ears force analog endpoints

Evidence

Digital documents are, in principle, perfect, in the sense that they can be copied and stored infinitely without any loss of information. Digital signal processing further enabled digital audio and speech processing to store and transmit signals economically using audio and speech coding, where the number of bits needed is reduced by an order of magnitude. In spite of rapid digitalization, the interface to humans still remains non-digital. Analogue components are needed: microphones and amplifiers to capture sound; amplifiers together with loudspeakers or headphones for sound reproduction, to make signals audible and loud enough. — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 80

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in acoustic applications and the physical transduction problem — why speakers and mics remain the hard interface.