[PD] fft beginner question

[Martin Peach]

Frank Barknecht wrote:
>hard off hat gesagt: // hard off wrote:
>
> >
> > so, actually the FFT doesn't HAVE to use imaginary numbers....but they
> > are just used because "the complex-number system is
> > two-dimensional and that signals to be analysed are presumed to be
> > two-dimensional. They are decomposable into a sum of circular
> > trajectories"
> >
> > every day a bit more of this falls into place.
>
>An interesting thing to note is that the rfft outputs two signals,
>where seemingly only one signal comes in. How can that be?  Actually
>what comes into the rfft object are two values as well: One is the
>usual signal amplitude visible as a patch cord, and the other is:
>time!
>
>Time is not visible in Pd, it's just there and normally always walks
>on. But inside of a FFT-subpatch, time is frozen for the duration of a
>block (or rather: the "current time" is assumed to be infinite or
>eternal) to allow calculating a different representation: the
>frequency domain representation. If you think about this freezing of
>time for too long this is actually quite mind-blowing as well.
>

I think it's more like:
The real part represents the energy you can measure and the imaginary part 
is the part you can't measure. They oscillate back and forth but combine to 
make a constant as long as the amplitude is constant. That way the energy of 
the system is conserved and doesn't periodically magically disappear and 
reappear. It's the same as the idea that total energy is conserved but is 
made up of kinetic and potential components. Only the kinetic energy can be 
measured directly. The potential energy can only be calculated. Say if you 
stand at the top of a cliff you have a potential energy that is equal to the 
kinetic energy you would have if you fell to the bottom. There is no real 
instrument that can measure the potential energy so it's imaginary in a 
sense, but the kinetic energy can be measured directly, so it's real.

Martin