Is a purely-analog chip possible without sampling?

Also can an purely-analog non-sampling analog chip store in parallel? This is purely-analog parallel RAM [opposite of serial RAM chip]. Is this possible?

NO

I generally avoid saying things are impossible but it seems nobody has devices a a way to do what you here propose.

Cassettes don't require sampling because audio's electrical wave forms are converted to magnetism imprinted on iron oxide. In the case of the phonograph record electrical wave forms are converted to mechanical variations of a spiral groove. In both cases, the signal is converted to media that are capable of persistent storage and time is represented as a length or distance along the media.

In the case of a silicon die (a chip) there is no mechanism for persistent storage of voltage nor is there much in the way of distance along which to store the voltage if there were such a mechanism.

The answer, it seems, is that physics just doesn't provide a mechanism that can be used to provide direct storage of analog audio on solid state media.

--
========================================================================
          Michael Kesti            |  "And like, one and one don\'t make
                                   |   two, one and one make one."
    mrkesti at hotmail dot com     |          - The Who, Bargain

Can analog audio chips [that obviously *do* use sampling] store the information in parallel?

This is parallel analog RAM and is the opposite of serial RAM shown below:

Is this parallel storage of analog RAM possible or do analog signals always have to be serial? Cassettes and phonos are serial.

Radium, proof that brain activity is not necessary to sustain life.

MrT.

No.

Chips handle discrete pieces of information (aka. "bits").

Because an audio tape (and a phonograph disc, and an optical track on a film and an old-fashioned telephone) are all analog, continuous-signal devices.

There were chips called "bucket-brigade" which would store analog signals (typically low-quality audio) in a semi- analog fashion. But the audio was "sampled" at a regular interval and then the samples were shifted into the analog "buckets".

Higher-density RAM (typically Flash, etc.) uses a form of this where they store more than one bit of information per cell. For example, by distinguishing between four different levels of charge, they can store two binary bits of information in a single cell, etc.

An analog Hard Disk? :-)

Hardly the "chip" that Radium was asking about.

But if you could get the head to move linearly across the platter (vs. in concentric "cylinders" as we use for data storage) then it would be the magnetic equivalent of a spiral phonograph disk.

The old original Ampex HS-100 disc recorder was the video equivalent of that concept. It was the original gadget that allowed "instant replay" for sports shows, etc.

Ah but he never used the word "persistant", nor mention size contraints. A "chip" can mean anything, including potato ones :-) Analog delay lines do exist.

Nor did Radium use the words "solid state media" :-)

You did take his bait though :-(

MrT..

Actually, he's a clever little troll. His output looks reasonable on first glance, enough so to draw a big response from people who don't realize that he's just jacking off.

What is a "chip" and how does it work? Try that in Wikipedia and no doubt you will find your answer. Future advances in technology may be able to do what you are thinking of, but they wouldn't be "analogue chips" as we currently define them, would they.

Gareth.

Actually, that audio cassette *does* use sampling. One sample interval is the width of a magnetic domain on the tape, at the rate it passes by the head gap. Each domain can hold only one value (amount of magnetization) and has a finite length, so the data is quantized. The difference with purely-digital methods is that analog tape has many domains passing under the gap at any point in time, with random alignments, so their individual samples are summed together. This gives the illusion of a continuous response.

Consider a conceptual system with domains that completely fill the head gap length. The domains would be in a neat line on the tape, so they pass the head one by one. Each domain would effectively be one sample, and the recording would clearly be quantized. (However, if the domain transitions are narrow relative to the gap width, there would be some sample-to-sample smoothing as the head would read parts of two domains during the transition. Still a sampled system.)

Best regards,

Bob Masta DAQARTA v3.50 Data AcQuisition And Real-Time Analysis

Scope, Spectrum, Spectrogram, FREE Signal Generator Science with your sound card!

Hey Radium,

Try the BRAIN. Works good there.

Take a couple "chip" out of your memory.

Pj

Ah, you beat me to it.

Graham

Depends for how long.

Wikipedia gives speed of sound in silicon (thin rod) as 8433 m/s.

So you ought to be able to store a few microseconds of sound in a resonably sized crystal for a very short period - sort of dynamic RAM for sound :-)

(The noise added when you try and "refresh" will drown out any signal in a very short space of time although I've got no idea how many "refreshes" might be possible before the noise drowns out the signal)

Tim.

Begs the question how do we remember sounds?

I'm thinking that I remember music as a sequence of notes (samples), and speech as a sequence of either words or phonemes. In all cases, I remember a sequence of samples.

Back in the days when people took acoustic delay lines seriously, they shaped the medium into forms that provided relatively lengthy unique paths. For example, maybe a pentagon. The acoustic wave would bounce around for a while, crossing paths many times, and thus have a relatvely long path length in a relatively small volume.

Last example of this I ever saw implemented was a device called (I seem to recall as) the IBM 2448 display controller. Each display unit was basically a TV set without a tuner. The controller had one delay line per display. The video for one screen would bounce around a quartz delay line for 1/30th of a second, if memory serves.

You're absolutely correct. I was, however, willing to read those into the intended question. Do you think I was incorrect.

That's cute, but I doubt that potato chips were intended to be included as part of the question.

Yes, they do. Do you believe that they embody the storage that was intended in the question?

You are, again, absolutely correct. It seems that the OP's questions were not asked as precisely as you would like. Perhaps you would do well to ignore such questions rather than exposing your inability to understand their rather obvious intended meaning.

Oh. Dear. I seem to have made the mistake of attempting to seriously answer a question posed by an individual that I failed to recognize as being the object of others disdain. Tsk. I hope I haven't completely ruined the fun. Without knowing the history of those involved and seeing only the articles in this thread, though, it appears to be easy to reach conclusions that differ from some concerning who best resemble the last centimeter of your digestive tract. :-|

--
========================================================================
          Michael Kesti            |  "And like, one and one don\'t make
                                   |   two, one and one make one."
    mrkesti at hotmail dot com     |          - The Who, Bargain

There used to be charge-transfer "bucket brigade" analog delay chips, but they still sampled the audio, although they didn't quantize it. The stored charge packets degraded, so they couldn't store for long.

Multievel flash can store analog data for a long time, without digitizing or quantizing, but it still has to store sequential samples. I think some cheap voice recorders may use this.

John