[sdiy] Is everything digital?

[Gabriel Lindeborg]

Another way of looking at the suggestion of all signals being digital, 
or discrete, is that to have a voltage you need a current and a 
resistance. Consider the law of Ohm U=R*I, if you take the current out, 
the voltage drops to zero, if you take the resistance out, the voltage 
drops to zero. The current is the number of electrons passing divided by 
  time. In a short enough time between, electrons passing, the voltage 
would become zero, no matter how big the resistance is. On the other 
hand if you set time to infinity the voltage would be infinite...
Strange things happen when you think of them.

By the way, as there are no straight lines i nature the coastal line of 
Sweden is infinte.

I can't really grasp what this has to do with doing your own 
synthesisers, but hey ;-)

//Gabbe of Sweden - Licensed Saturday Night Philosopher

Scott Gravenhorst wrote:
> Glen <mclilith at charter.net> wrote:
> 
>>At 12:12 PM 5/14/2005 , Scott Gravenhorst wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I partially agree, that is, binary is not the only digital system.  With
>>>respect to discrete states, a digital system, to be useful as such, depends
>>>upon them and reacts distinctly to them.  I don't see any dependance in
>>>analog electronics upon the discrete states that may be present.  I don't
>>>believe that it is correct to call analog "digital" simply because there are
>>>steps.  I agree with Paul S., that this is more properly called "quantized"
>>>and not "digital".  I also see no support for this in the dictionary
>>>definition of "digital".  The definitions I see all depend upon the
>>>recognizable distinct states.
>>
>>Okay, I wasn't referring to the analog circuitry being somehow "aware" of
>>all the individual distinct states. 
> 
> 
> However, a digital system, to be useful as such, does require a reliable and
> predictable recognition of such states.  And if not useful as such, why then
> call it digital?
> 
> 
>>I was primarily referring to the
>>*signal* having distinct states (and therefore the *signal* being "digital"
>>in nature.) Perhaps I was being slightly euphemistic in using the word
>>digital, but I'm not sure of that.
>>
>>You might think of the *signal* being *digital* and the analog circuitry as
>>being a "fuzzy logic* processor.  :)
>>
>>"Quantized" implies that something started out as being "unquantized" and
>>was subsequently made to be quantized. 
> 
> 
> I don't see this as true, you are saying that something that is quantized
> didn't necessarily start out as such.  "2 : to calculate or express in terms
> of quantum mechanics", from Webster (quantize), would say that things can be
> in a quantized state without having started out "unquantized".
> 
> 
>>(The word practically wreaks of the
>>past tense.) A common example is quantizing a musical performance to the
>>nearest 32nd note or whatever. We would call such a performance quantized,
>>because it has been reduced in complexity to a discrete number of
>>possibilities.
>>
>>If something never existed in a purely unquantized form, and always existed
>>in its current form of discrete countable states, then I doubt it is
>>totally accurate to call it quantized. 
> 
> 
> Not according to Webster.
> 
> 
>>Otherwise, who or what quantized it? What form was it in before being quantized?
> 
> 
>>From Webster, the definition does not eliminate things which were of quantum
> state to start with and cannot be further reduced.  There is no pre-quantized
> state recognized as part of the definition. 
> 
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