Digital equipment is not necessarily better than analogue

By MUNGAI KIHANYA

The Sunday Nation

Nairobi,

11 November 2007

With everything going “digital” nowadays, it makes one wonder whether this is a better way of doing things than the old analogue style. The answer is: most of times yes, but not always. Let me illustrate with a few examples:

I have two recordings of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture – one on CD (a 2001 recording) and the other in the old gramophone vinyl long-play (LP) record (1986). Even though these are different performances by different orchestras with different conductors, the analogue LP has better sound quality than the digital CD…according to my ears.

Incidentally, there is an interesting question that comes up in music trivia: “In which year did Tchaikovsky compose the 1812 Overture?” the answer is NOT 1812! It is 1880, but the reason it is called “1812” is a subject for a different column…

Motor cars with digital mileage counter displays are now quite common in the Kenyan market. I have also seen some with a digital speedometer screen. Even though they look more “high-tech”, are the digital displays better?

“Better” in this case can mean two things – first, more convenient to read and, second, more accurate. With a quick glance at a digital speedometer, a driver can easily tell that he is doing, say, 87km/h. But how quickly can his brain interpret that the speed is too fast or too slow?

I drove (note: drove, not owned!) such a car once and I found myself trying to imagine where the pointer would be pointing had it been an ordinary speedometer. By the way, I used to do the same thing when I got my first digital watch many years ago.

For that reason, I don’t think the digital display on a speedometer is more convenient – but that’s me and perhaps it will take some time to get used to.

How about accuracy? A digital display can give an almost exact value of the speed, say 87km/h, while the analogue pointer would be somewhere between 85km/h and 90km/h. Thus the former can be said to be more accurate.

But there is still the question of whether the displayed figure is the true speed of the car. The answer to that depends on the measurement mechanism and not the display system.

The digital mileage counter is more common and it presents a different challenge. If you see it reading, say 38.2km, can tell whether it has just turned to this value or that it is about to turn to the next higher reading (38.3km)?

That might not be an issue in most situations, but when measuring short distances (up to about 5km), the question becomes significant. In an analogue mileage counter, however, it is easy to see whether the reading has just turned over or just about to go to the next higher value.

The moral of the story is this: don’t dismiss analogue equipment out of hand; sometimes they are better than the new “high-tech” digital gadgets