Analog or Digital ~ Which do you prefer?

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In the world of dials, gauges & meters

Which do you prefer, or find easiest to read?,.. Analog or Digital

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is "yes" an acceptable answer??

As I type, my watch has analog hands but a subtle digital display behind it (a Casio AQ-160 model). For a quick look or to see trends, an analog display is handy. For precision, the digital is good.

Sometimes, you want the same info displayed in both forms at the same time. This is commonly done in digital multimeters and even in the HUD (heads-up display) in aircraft.

If it makes a difference, my watch is internally digital, and the minute hand only moves every 20 seconds, so maybe it's not analog at all???

regards,
Steve K.

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Steve, it wasn't a blondes vs. brunettes thing..

I voted analog, but it really depends on the application. Generally, for watches, I prefer analog, though if I am writing down the time often, I like a digital unit.

Analog all the way!

Analog.

Analog!! there's just something very special with mechanical watches that digital doesn't have...kind of a sense of precision build even if digital is probably more accuate overall...anyone know if digital clocks lose accuracy like a fraction of a sec everyday like analogs?

orbital said:

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Steve, it wasn't a blondes vs. brunettes thing..

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well.... I wasn't really thinking in those terms (and what's wrong with redheads??), but...

I think it really does depend on the application.

Even with oscilloscopes, I like analog scopes because I know that there's nothing weird going on behind the scenes, and I'm getting fast updates. With digital scopes, especially the early ones, you could miss a lot of data inbetween traces, and you had to watch out for unintended effects like aliasing.

As technology advances, the distinction between analog and digital is getting fuzzier. Is a mechanical needle indicator analog if it is driven by a digital data bus and can only display 256 possible values? Is an LCD display still digital if it is displaying the image of a mechanical needle with 65, 536 possible values?
Or is the real question "do you prefer numeric displays or pointer/needle/hand displays?"

yeah... I rarely give simple answers to simple questions. sorry.

Steve K.

N10 said:

Analog!! there's just something very special with mechanical watches that digital doesn't have...kind of a sense of precision build even if digital is probably more accuate overall...anyone know if digital clocks lose accuracy like a fraction of a sec everyday like analogs?

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Depends on what is used for the timebase. Crystal oscillators are the basis for all of the digital watches I've owned, most of which were Casio's. Casio publishes a number for accuracy, which I think was on the order of 30 seconds change over the course of a month.

The most precise clock that you'll encounter is probably the clock at the US Naval Observatory. The USNO transmits the time on a variety of shortwave frequencies, and is the source of the transmissions received by the "atomic" clocks that you can buy. Here's some background on how the USNO's cesium clock works.

For a fascinating story on the development of precision mechanical clocks, read about John Harrison and his life of designing precision chronometers. A very clever and dedicated guy!

Steve K.

Digital!

I don't want to have to solve a puzzle every time I want to take a reading =P.

But I'd have to say, Analog is much more pretty, especially when the needle dances about on a gauge filled with lotsa numbers and scales.
Unfortunately, that usually means something is oscillating itself towards death.....

let me throw out another application where an analog (or dial) indicator is handy... In aircraft, there are certain speeds that are critical. If you are above the speed, you have one set of things you can do, and if you are below the speed, the things you can do are completely different.

to help the pilot know if he is above or below, an old technique is to put little marks on the indicator (also known as "bugs"). This lets the pilot set the bug to the threshold speed before flying, and it makes it a trivial task to see if he is above or below the threshold. Here's an example.

I'm not familiar with a similar method on numeric displays, so for a function like airspeed indicators, the analog display has an advantage.

regards,
Steve K.

N10 said:

Analog!! there's just something very special with mechanical watches that digital doesn't have...kind of a sense of precision build even if digital is probably more accuate overall...anyone know if digital clocks lose accuracy like a fraction of a sec everyday like analogs?

Click to expand...

I regularly check to see how my quartz watches are keeping time. Yes, in general they gain or lose some fraction of a second every day. Some are better than others in that regard. The worst quartz watches seem to be around a second a day off. On the flip side, I have a Seiko which I synchronized to atomic time on April 3. I just checked, and it's still keeping time to the second. I've never seen a mechanical watch which keeps time to better than maybe 1 minute a week. Most seem to gain or lose a minute or more per day, basically making them useless for accurate time keeping.

The fundamental difference between quartz and mechanical watches is stability. Sure, it may be possible to adjust a mechanical watch to keep time to within a second or so per day. The problem is that the stability of the watch varies by far more than that due to temperature, position, vibration, etc. One day your watch may keep perfect time. The next it might gain 20 seconds, or lose 30.

Quartz oscillators on the other hand are very stable. Temperature is really the only thing which causes them to vary. However, the frequency of a 32768 Hz watch crystal varies with temperature in a predictable manner (actually a parabolic curve), and this can be compensated for (the better quartz watches do in fact temperature compensate). Assuming you correct for temperature effects, stability of a watch crystal is on the order of several parts in 10-8. This is roughly around a second per year. Therefore, it's possible to adjust the oscillator to keep near perfect time, and the watch will stay adjusted. Quartz crystals do age, but generally do most of their aging in the first year. If you adjust the watch after that, it should keep good time for many years.

Oh, digital or analog? It depends. If I'm interested in seeing rapid changes or trends but don't care about precision, then analog makes more sense. If I need precision, digital is the only way to go. An analog voltmeter for example isn't going to let me measure voltage to 5 or 6 digits. I even prefer digital for something like a speedometer. My bike computers let me know my speed to tenths of an mph. Can't do that with something analog.

BOTH! Love my analog field watch and the analog gauges in my truck, etc. (tried a digital tachometer once but it just didn't cut it. Only digital will do on my multimeter, audio/video equipment, lightmeters and other electronic equipment.

jtr1962 said:

I regularly check to see how my quartz watches are keeping time. Yes, in general they gain or lose some fraction of a second every day. Some are better than others in that regard. The worst quartz watches seem to be around a second a day off. On the flip side, I have a Seiko which I synchronized to atomic time on April 3. I just checked, and it's still keeping time to the second. I've never seen a mechanical watch which keeps time to better than maybe 1 minute a week. Most seem to gain or lose a minute or more per day, basically making them useless for accurate time keeping.

The fundamental difference between quartz and mechanical watches is stability. Sure, it may be possible to adjust a mechanical watch to keep time to within a second or so per day. The problem is that the stability of the watch varies by far more than that due to temperature, position, vibration, etc. One day your watch may keep perfect time. The next it might gain 20 seconds, or lose 30.

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one minute or more a day is a lot....i have a seiko watch also and i don't think it gains that much error in so little time...usually i would adjust once every month and it seems to be off by a minute maybe..haven't really calculated...and my seiko isn't even one of those high end watches

Since I restore old radios, definitely analog! Classy, stylish, and NO DIGITAL NOISE splashing into the RF.

Rich

Analog all the way!

There's something just cold and soul-less about digital.

Well, when it comes to watches i love analog because you can just glance at it to know the time... digital you have to actually read but it tends to be more accurate! So i just have both and carry whatever my mood or circumstances demand! All my mechanics and automatics are analog in display but even in my digital watches i prefer analog display (stepper motors in watches give you ease of reading of a mechanical watch with the accuracy of digital). My most favourite digital is my casio MTG-1000RB; Digital atomic timekeeping updating daily so its never a second off but it still has hands and none of that cheap looking digital LCD crap! Love it.

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The type of information being displayed is very important in choosing between the two. I think of analog displays as being like having wider peripheral vision, or a floody beam if you will, which allows you to also ascertain what surrounds the particular object of focus, while a digital display most of the time gives a narrow focus on an exact bit of data that requires no relative perspective, and actually can be more beneficial in keeping unnecessary information from being a distraction.

For timekeeping and speedometers I definitely want to see a hand moving, but for CO2 displays, controller programming and odometers I prefer digital.