A/D and D/A Converters

Converters bridge the world of analog and digital electronics. There are analog-to-digital converters (usually called A/D converters, or just ADCs) and digital-to-analog converters (called D/A converters, or DACs) that go the other way. Obscure as these components might seem, they're actually quite common. Every CD player, MP3 player, and portable music player has at least one D/A converter to convert the digital data stream into an analog signal for the headphones or speakers. Some will have two or more DACs, one for each speaker. Any “tapeless” digital telephone answering machine will include an A/D converter that records your greeting and converts it into digital data before storing it in memory chips. Any synthesized voices you might hear emanate from D/A converters.