Digitization involves capturing analog signals and storing the results in digital form. This is usually done via sensors, which sense analog signals like light and sound, and transform them to their equivalent digital forms via an analog-to-digital converter chip or a whole circuit dedicated to converting a specific analog signal.

This works by converting the continuous stream of signal or data found in most analog data types into discontinuous values. These are then sampled at regular intervals to produce a digitalized output.

For example, an audio file is generally sampled in rates of 44.1 kHz to 192 kHz. If an audio file is sampled at a rate of 48.1 kHz it is sampled 48,000 times per second. The digitization process is more effective and of higher quality if performed at higher sampling rates.