The Death of Analog

[NiHaoMike]

On the audio front, good error correcting codes and encoding of signals might allow the capturing of great sounds, but the final audio amplifier is still likely to be analogue

There are a lot of modern audio amplifiers that use Delta Sigma conversion and are thus fully "digital" all the way up to the power stage. (Where digital is defined as a signal that has discrete levels and small deviations in the levels do not change the information represented by the signal.)

Analog is here to stay, but analog encoding of information (especially in wireless transmission) is slowing going away. Analog TV is mostly gone in the US, much to the delight of videophiles and HTPC builders alike. Few realize that analog TV is lossy compressed through color space encoding and interlacing - just compare composite video to 640x480 VGA. (Now if only they decided to use the cheaper to implement and more robust OFDM instead of 8VSB...)

Where things blur even more is that it's possible (and surprisingly common) to use digital logic to decode and encode "analog" information, often working much better than the old style of analog encoding and decoding. In every modern (composite/Svideo) video decoder, the signal is digitized before the decoding is done by digital logic within.

[rolycat]

Is this for real?

Well, based on his previous posting history - which is the only metric available to us - Jozef is opinionated, frequently offensive, and given to making sweeping statements based on limited knowledge and/or data.

So yes, I suspect it is for real.

He may have been trying to articulate a point better made by NihaoMike and others, that analogue encoding is disappearing.

Alternatively he may be an otherwise perfectly pleasant bloke who joins forums principally in order to troll them.

[Neilm]

So how do you get your sensed low-level quantity into your DAC without any analogue circuitry? Got any idea low ADSL transmission works? Ever seen a "digital" power supply?.........etc...etc......

There are actually digital power supplies - the output goes straight into a high speed (low resolution) ADC.

Analogue circuits won't die, but if the quality of some of the people applying for "Analogue Engineers" is anything to go by, teaching analogue circuits is dead.

Neil

[Rick Law]

Consider a range of voltage from 0 to 10V.....

With analogue there are infinite points between and so no sampling issues.

With digital there are not infinite sample points and an element of error may exist ...... digital is therefore an inferior technology 

But electricity is quantized by nature because smallest non-divisible unit of electricity is charge of an electron/proton, about 1.6e-19 C. So there is no perfectly analog signal as such

Regards,
Janne

Well, so is everything else.  Time, distance...

So, The Matrix is indeed possible...  If a simulation can run at the resolution of dividing our world into 10E-35 meter-cube chunks, our best technology cannot discern a simulated world from a real one.  In fact, physical laws itself can't tell the difference.

Rick

[c4757p]

There are actually digital power supplies - the output goes straight into a high speed (low resolution) ADC.

Even then, designing a high-speed ADC is a non-trivial analog task.

Analogue circuits won't die, but if the quality of some of the people applying for "Analogue Engineers" is anything to go by, teaching analogue circuits is dead.

Take it from someone who's currently in school - yes it is.

[Jozef]

Over 2 pages and no one has mentioned Bob Widlar?

But these days this finger is aimed at analog. And I add my finger too. 

[Jozef]

Well, based on his previous posting history - which is the only metric available to us - Jozef is opinionated, frequently offensive, and given to making sweeping statements based on limited knowledge and/or data.

So yes, I suspect it is for real.

He may have been trying to articulate a point better made by NihaoMike and others, that analogue encoding is disappearing.

Alternatively he may be an otherwise perfectly pleasant bloke who joins forums principally in order to troll them.

Something you don't want to hear of course it's not real...and if you consider this trolling yes it's...anything that does not please your lazy dumb egos is considered a troll.

Lack of realizing the reality and admitting it is much worse than lack of diving into vintage theories and dreams and locking yourself in the Widlar's cave.

[duskglow]

I may be new on this forum, but isn't this crossing a line by any measure?

[c4757p]

I may be new on this forum, but isn't this crossing a line by any measure?

A few.

[Simon]

I may be new on this forum, but isn't this crossing a line by any measure?

A few.

And indeed he has been banned. Users displaying such behavior will get the poster banned once we are informed. Now you can carry on the debate.

[ftransform]

the people who took this thread seriously.... take a deep breath. its ok. look at the relaxing sine wave. is the square wave nearly as relaxing? I don't think so.

analog > digital

[Simon]

Well it seems like the OP did, having a joke is one thing, to beleive in the insane thing you are saying and abusing others because they are not tit's like you is not nice, hence the banning, Your welcome to carry on having a laugh at the topic and idiot that posted it !

[xygor]

Maybe analog never existed.  Just a concept to smooth over the details.

"But let your word 'yes be 'yes,' and your 'no be 'no.' Anything more than this is from the evil one."  Matthew 5:37

http://www.onbeing.org/program/uncovering-codes-reality/feature/symbols-power-adinkras-and-nature-reality/1460

[G7PSK]

They said that stone tools were dead but we are still using tools made of silicon.

[duskglow]

Xygor, I'm a spiritual person and even I think that's stretching it, to put it kindly.   But if that's a troll, good one.

EDIT: I only mean that to apply to the scriptural reference, not to the link.  Though after reading the link, it kind of has the style of the "electric universe" stuff...

[4to20Milliamps]

I don't know what's worse someone starting a troll thread and admitting it......or someone starting a troll thread and acting like it was to weed out trolls,
 either way pretty lame.

I'll never understand why people are so quick to close their minds, patterns are the key to the universe, don't take my word for it watch some videos about
Feynman and listen to what he says.

More analog stuff:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscillon

There is no way to understand things you are not familiar with, and the only way to become familiar with them is to make observations and explore,
that ugly rock you stepped over may be full of gold.

[lewis]

This whole thread is moot - there is no such thing as digital.

[xrunner]

It can now be renamed "The Death of Jozef".

[IanB]

Of course if you look at it the right way, the thread title has some validity. There is indeed an accurate observation there.

[onlooker]

Talking about whether digital is base on analog or whether analog should be just an approximation of "digital" (everything is in quantization) is not answering  a relevant question: What is the future trend of the number of EE who practice digital electronics vs those practice analog.

Here, we do need to have a common understanding on the distinction btw "analog" and "digital" based on common sense.  There is also the question as to what measure to use to gauge the trend.

It seems the proportion of analog in EE becoming ever smaller is the trend, just as the well known quote said "Old soldiers never die; They just fade away."

[rolycat]

This whole thread is moot

Since one meaning of moot is "subject to debate", that's very true.

there is no such thing as digital.

That rather depends on the domain of discourse, doesn't it?

[c4757p]

Is seems the proportion of analog in EE becoming ever smaller is the trend, just as the well known quote said "Old soldiers never die; They just fade away."

You'll never abstract away analog completely, so it will not fade away, but become smaller. Sadly I am imagining a world like in Lowry's The Giver where the one analog guru who remains is all we need, passing down his remnants of the Old Electronics to the next and then going to join Widlar... 

[lemmegraphdat]

Is seems the proportion of analog in EE becoming ever smaller is the trend, just as the well known quote said "Old soldiers never die; They just fade away."

You'll never abstract away analog completely, so it will not fade away, but become smaller. Sadly I am imagining a world like in Lowry's The Giver where the one analog guru who remains is all we need, passing down his remnants of the Old Electronics to the next and then going to join Widlar... 

Portioning analog. That sounds digital.

[xrunner]

You'll never abstract away analog completely, ...

Especially for some guitar players. They love analog tube amps. 

[AlfBaz]

Of course if you look at it the right way, the thread title has some validity. There is indeed an accurate observation there.

I started this interesting electronics hobby with transistor cct's and op-amps. Even when I started messing around with logic it was all 74 and 4000 series chips and I still found that very interesting.

On the software front I was interested in basic and assembler on the C64. Then I discovered these tiny 8 pin OTP mcu's. The development version was more expensive because it had a little window in it to erase the program so I bought a UV eraser. A few years later the flash versions came out and I was thoroughly hooked on "digital" but more importantly I was hesitant to say that I was still into "Electronics".

To this day, if I'm doing "digital" I don't feel I'm doing "Electronics". Even to the point where I was messing around designing my "mini PC", after a few months I lamented the old electronics world. Then I hit signal integrity issues, welcome back analogue... but hang on a minute, why on earth is nearly all the text on this subject alluding to it as some kind of "black magic"?