Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] off topic, optical protocols
From: Richard C. Burnett (burnett_AT_tality.com)
Date: Tue Mar 05 2002 - 16:49:20 EET
> I'm not much of an engineering guy, but does switching to optical
> necessarily mean switching to digital? Couldn't you use the frequency of
> the light much like an electrical wire? I guess it depends on the
> available hardware.
You would have to modulate the light regardless, so it would be different
than electrical in that sense. And you are right, digital and analog have
nothing to do with optical or electrical, you can send the same down
both. However, I think what was being aluded to is that the interface on
the sound card is an optical digital input/output and not analog.
From what I remember of my engineering courses on optical, I don't
remember seeing many optical analog devices, other than like an optical
isolator. A chip with a built in light source and detector to completely
separate two signal paths. One of the problems I imagine is
matching. Just like using 2 transistors on two different wafers is
difficult to match, a light source and detector pair would be different,
and the range of variance might be too much for analog audio use.
Rick
> Are you trying to eliminate electrical interference?
>
> Taybin
>
>
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