As for analog broadcasting, the signal is analog, wave is recorded in its original form. An analog recording is one where a property or characteristic of a physical recording medium is made to vary in a manner analogous to the variations in air pressure of the original sound.

Unlike analogue waveforms, digital broadcasting works by translating sound and picture into digital data of various encoding, modulation, transmission and other processing. It will record, store, generate, manipulate, and reproduce sound using audio signals encoded in digital form.

Thanks to the use of data compression, digital form generally have more efficient bandwidth usage than analog, which allows a higher-quality signal. It rapidly replaced analog audio broadcating in most areas of sound production, sound engineering and telecommunications.