[sdiy] Is everything digital?

[Bob Weigel]

Well said...I was thinking more of what the term has come to mean rather 
than the historical definition there.   As with many words things come 
to adopt a particular meaning due to the functional nature of their 
application.  When these circuits began to be used for 'analogous 
things', the basic design techniques were limited to dealing with 
continuous voltages to xmit complex data.  And while resolution was 
potentially unlimited it appeared, circuit stability always proved that 
an impractical thing to grasp. So anyway..by default the analog name 
stuck when referencing non-digital circuit design.
     -Bob

The Old Crow wrote:

>  My only other comment on this topic is how I perceive digital vs. 
>analog:
>
>  discrete time domain = digital
>
>  continuous time domain = analog
>
>  In synthesizers, "digital" and "analog" are misnomers: BOTH are 
>analogies of some other sound-creating process.  "Analog" (analogue) is 
>the noun form of the concept describing a process as being similar to 
>another process.  The human voice mimicking the chirps of a bird would be 
>an analogy.  A VCO/VCF/VCA/EG setup to mimick the chirps of a bird would 
>be an analogy.  A pile of DX operators (computed phase-accumulate-and-sine
>-lookup-and-modulate) shoving a data stream through a DAC configured to 
>mimic the chirps of a bird is an analogy.
>
>  As computers to perform computations using continuously-variable
>parameters were made, the term "analog computer" came along to describe 
>the widget.  When the digital computer came about, algorithms had to be 
>fashioned to characterize the previously continous varibles as discrete 
>quantities.  Now we call them programs.
>
>Crow
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