Talk:Local oscillator

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Confusion of Terms

The explanations in this article were extremely confusing, especially for someone with limited knowledge of signal theory. Someone who does not know the term local oscillator probably won't relate to many of the terms either. Readers may take terms such as "beat" a little too literally. There was lots of duplicate information and introduction of nearly similar terms, such as beat, mix, heterodyne. Not all local oscillators are used in receivers. A mixer output does not have to go into an IF, strictly speaking. It could be the transmitter output. It's also not a tutorial on radio architecture; frequency conversion is covered in superheterodyne receivers. There are lots of other articles covering these other topics, so let the readers find this information in those locations. Any feedback, please, let me know. Cam Finnigan (talk) 02:45, 1 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What local oscillator actually refers to

My understanding is that the term local oscillator specifically refers to the oscillator, when used in conjunction with a frequency mixer, and does not refer to the combination of the oscillator and mixer together. While this might seem like a meaningless difference, it really confused me at first when looking at schematics that refered to an LO I thought there was another mixer not shown. Since doing some further research I have reached this conclusion and changed the article to make that clearer. If I'm wrong please reply and revert my edit from 10:47 UTC! Thanks Logate113 (talk) 10:55, 18 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]