"When you spoke to us of the digitalising principle, that rids us of information, Master, it struck me that nowadays the recording and reproduction of sound in digits, is in vogue. Is there no loss of information then?"
"Naturally there is, the theory is general. Only, the loss of
information is slight, and compensated amply by the other advantages. Imagine
that it is theoretically possible to eliminate
from the recording all the grain-sounds of old records, and even
the crying of a child during the concert. One can find the 'numberings' of the
undesired sounds and simply tell the computer to
leave these out. Digitalising sound is a great improvement. There
is loss of information, yet, plenty of it is restored through
analogisation, i.e. due to the elasticity of the air, once reproduced."