The Amplification of Static in an Analog Waveform
The phone system was originally designed to make use of limited frequencies
to transmit voice signals. As human speech consumed a very small spectrum, the
analog telephone equipment could perform the relatively simple mechanical to
electrical conversion necessary to propagate a voice over long distances.
As with record players and compact disc/DVD players, it is likely that both
analog systems and their digital counterparts will remain for some time. As such,
it is important to consider how analog systems integrate into digital environments
such as VoIP or AVVID. Simply put, such installations will require conversions
from analog to digital, and, as with old 45s, the quality and performance of the
older systems may be limited. Of course, it will also be familiar and, at a political
level, you may find reluctance in getting users off their non-VoIP systems.
In the next section we will present digital systems. It needs to be noted here,
however, that there is a way to convert from analog to digital—a conversion
addressed by a coder-decoder (CODEC).The actual conversion is effectively a
sampling of the analog stream and a digital representation of that stream. Of
course, the conversion can take the digital data and interpolate an analog waveform.
The conversion is not without potential loss, unfortunately, and it is best to
limit the number of conversions within a data flow. Recall that FXO, FXS, and
E&M are all analog connection methods.