Well, I would like to help and hope not be too much technical:
In the analog sound, the electric signals that are handled in the recording equipment are similar in shape to the original sound source. For example, if somebody sings into a mic connected to an analog recorder, the mic converts this acoustic signal into a electric signal similar in shape (the shape will depend mostly upon the nature of the source: vocal, guitar, flute, etc. and the tone or frecuency that is being played)that then goes into the input jack, then the potentiometer, fader, eq or whatever, and finally is being recorded into tape or reel. Equalization can alter this shape a little in order to get a desired sound, but let´s not get into too much technical stuff. The problem in analog is that, in every electronic stage (input jack, level fader, level potentiometer, eq potentiometer ) that the signal goes through, each of these elements will add some of its own characteristic, sometimes it is nothing but noise, to the original signal; and if you give more level to a signal with noise, you will get not only a louder signal, but more noise as well. So, the signal that is recorded into tape is a little different from the original acoustic signal. In the other hand, the tape will not neccesarily make a very clean recording as one could desire, basically because of the hiss inherent to it; and after a log time the sound quality in the tape will degrade because it is a analog magnetic media that can change with time. It doesn´t happen with a CD, because bits recorded into it don´t "get wasted" with time.
In the digital recorder, the signals that go into the equipment are converted into digital signals (a lot of 0´s and 1´s). To talk about 1's and 0's is to talk about signals that are "yes", "on", etc. or "no", "off", etc., but there are no intermediate states (so, there is no signal with a value "more or less"; its value is "1" or "0", not other). Because of this, it is much easier to a digital equipment to take a digital signal to CD without undesired noise or modifications to the original signal that may come in between, because if the original sound has, let´s say, a code “10010101” in digital (just an example, don´t worry about this number) that code should stay the same when being recorded if no other modifications are intentionally done to the sound.
Anyway, people like to talk about this “warm” feel that you get with analog and you don´t with digital, sometimes because of the unnatural clean sound that can give digital equipment compared to analog.
I hope not have being too much technical with my explanation and also it is much clear to you the difference between analog and digital .
