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→Basic Principles
While digital audio is theoretically capable of perfectly representing analog sound, in practice, devices can inaccurately measure amplitude or mis-time a sample. The quality of such devices is paramount to accurate recording and reproduction of sound. Commercial audio production uses bit depths and sample rates higher than the final mastered product to ensure any error is minimized. While there is no need for frequencies between 22.05 kHZ and 48 kHZ (as no human can hear them), the higher sample rate prevents signal degradation as digital audio streams are manipulated and mixed together.
What has driven digital audio to completely replace analog formats in both the production and consumer side of the music industry? The best answer is its ability to be copied infinitely without any loss of quality. Recorded takes can be copied, sliced up, rearranged, manipulated, etc. without worry of any loss of quality. Similarly, multiple tracks can be mixed down with no quality loss. Record companies can distribute the master copy of an album to consumers without any degradation as it is transferred to its physical medium. It has also reduced costs. The price of transferring a compressed audio file from a server to a home computer is miniscule. Transferring data to and from magnetic tape reels, or creating plates to press vinyl records is not. Similarly, rather than having to record each take in a recording studio on expensive high-quality magnetic tape that would degrade in quality with erase and rewrite operations, recording audio digitally onto a hard drive is virtually cost-less. There's also no time costs in terms of rewinding, erasing, etc. Computers manipulate digital data almost instantaneously.
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