Audio Hardware - Notes 3

A bit of information regarding analog audio extraction verses digital audio extraction.

A few years ago, recording from a CD resulted in less-than-optimal digital quality because the audio was recorded through the sound card rather than extracted directly on a bit-by-bit basis. Sound card recording takes only portions of the true range of sounds from the CD, in a process called analog audio extraction. This process causes a significant drop in quality depending on the overall quality of the sound card. Low quality cards would add significant noise into the mix. Today most modern CD-ROM drives can perform "DAE" (digital audio extraction) -- a bit-for-bit duplication of the original song, with no loss in quality. The data is extracted to a 16-bit, stereo WAV file at 44,000 kHz (CD quality).