audio signal driving over d flip flop

[adamwalker403]

Hi,
I wondered if i can drive audio signal (without lack of quality) over a D flip flop. like using cd4017

[ElectricDruid]

Welcome,

No, without "lack of quality" you can't. If you feed audio into logic gates, what you get out of the end is a logic signal, not a pristine audio signal. That is to say, it's a square wave with only two levels - you can still listen to it, but it'll sound like a heavily fuzzed-up version of your input.

It's fun to try though. 4000-series CMOS is good for these sort of experiments since it runs happily on 9V so it suits stompbox circuits, and often the gates have schmitt trigger inputs which help with the fuzzing up process.

"Audio into a flip-flop" is what many analog octave-down circuits are at their heart, so that's the territory you'll be entering.

Give it a go and see what you think.