Digital Signal Processing

First, what Digital Signal Processing isn't: Digital Signal Processing is not processing digital signals. That is what Logic Gates or Boolean Algebra do.

Digital Signal Processing is processing analog signals by digital means. This is as opposed to processing analog signals via analog means which is what analog electronics do.

• I strongly disagree....
  • it's fine to disagree. i don't know who the "I" is who's disagreeing. (anonymity has its drawbacks.)

What difference does it make? This wiki encourages unsigned contributions in many contexts, you know. -- DougMerritt

• ... This implies that I can't do DSP on signals that were always digital, for instance, if I have a digital physical model of a pipe organ that I use to generate a digital simulated acoustical wave front, your distinction would imply that I can't do any DSP on it, such as FFTs, and obviously that is just wrong; I most certainly can, and people do every day.
  • whether that "digital" signal was sampled from a microphone on a pipe organ or exists only in the mind of some computer and emulates some physical quantity of a pipe organ, it makes little difference. That signal is *quantitative* not logical or boolean or binary (or whatever we commonly regard digital signals to be). what DSP is *not* about is processing common digital signals like ~CS (chip select) etc, that exist in digital electronic gear. However there are people who are paid big money who worry precisely about processing those signals and i wouldn't want to confuse someone, semantically, into thinking that DSP is that.
    • I have yet to see the term DSP refer to such things as computer bus architectures, basic boolean algebra, logic gate design, etc. It pretty unambiguously means what it says above--with the note that the processed signal need not necessarily be converted from the analog domain.

[Very true]

[[ No, it is very untrue for many who would do not already know the meaning of the term. "Digital Signals" mean what to whom?]]

• It is on the other hand true that DSP is most commonly used with digital samples of analog signals originating in the real world,
  • why is it that "analog" is synonymous with "originating in the real world"? i don't see such equivalence. i more so equate "analog" with "quantitative".

[That would seem to be an idiosyncratic terminology. The key thing about analog is that it is continuous rather than discrete, which has many mathematical implications. Also there is no truly continuous signal in a computer system, only in the real world, so yes, they are synonymous, or at least, universally correlated. -- DougMerritt]

• Also, an analog signal generally isn't quantized; instead they generally can be modelled as a continuous parameter with an additive noise source.
• ... and that this is as opposed to the historically much more common analog processing of such signals.

Also, the acronym "DSP" can be used to denote the discipline of "Digital Signal Processing" or to denote a particular computer chip called a "DigitalSignalProcessor".

• our disagreement is, for the most part, semantic. But being that this is a sorta dictionary, semantic differences are significant. r b-j
  • But WikiIsNotaDictionary.

[They can be, yes. So first you complain about lack of names, and then you sign only your initials? A little confused, are we? -- DougMerritt]

[[There is little doubt that you know who "r b-j" is since his first contribution to this was fully signed (but got moved by someone else).]]

And of course you know that I saw your name before someone else removed it.

[Rest of content moved to DigitalSignalProcessor]