Is all analog storage necessarily lossy?

Answer 1

Actually your question is a little off the mark but don't worry the fact that you asked the question has you way ahead of everybody else.

your question is asking about analog recordings (analog != digital).... An analog recording is one that is constantly changing in time and amplitude, and the voltage level recorded isn't represented by zeros and ones (to have any audio on your computer's hard drive, an analog recording must be digitized (represented by a series of 0s and 1s))

Lossy, which is a type of file compresion, where the original file size is shrunk by a compression algorithm where the compressed file looses information that can not be recovered after the file (audio) was compressed. where as a lossless kind of compression does its shrinking of the file but there is no loss of information in the original.

An Analog recording which are on records and tape based media, would have to first be digitized into a computer and then would go through a lossy compression... once you digitize anything... its no longer analog. There by no analog storage would ever be lossy (or lossless) by the fact it being analog!

hope this helps you!