What evidence can you show of this ***ertion?
Well gee, a bit snarky aren't we? I didn't think I'd have to, and I'm not prepared to give lessons in electronic engineering here. I'd suggest that you give Walter Jung's "The Op Amp Cookbook" a (nother(?)) read. And perhaps "The Art Of Electronics" by Paul Horowitz and Winfield Hill as well. Unfortunately both of my copies of those are in storage and not accessible at present. So I was forced to consult Google--that source of all knowledge great and true (snark, snark) and I referenced the following two articles when researching to post my original comments.
I'd like to clear something up first. When I claimed that "It's called a virtual earth (or ground) because no current flows into the other input; not because it becomes a ground." I was basing that on the articles and hadn't thought it out much. I now believe the term "virtual earth" refers to the idea that when connecting various points of any circuit to earth (ground) we don't expect any one of them to reflect anything back to any other one. We consider earth to be a giant hole that swallows up all signals/voltages/currents.
This is how a summing amp functions.
Take an inverting configuration with +In earthed and -In connected to RF and RIn. If RF = RIn, then whatever Vsource is applied to the other end of RIn will appear as -Vout at the output. OK so far?
If RF's value is changed, then -Vout will also change proportionally. This is why an inverting gain stage can have a negative voltage gain whereas a non-inverting gain stage can only reduce to a voltage follower when Rf = 0 ohms.
In the case of a summing amp, given that RF = RIn, and each subsequent RIn = RF, then -Vout will be the sum of all Vsource applied to source ends of all RIns.
The reason (as I now understand it) for term "virtual ground" is that no Vsource will affect any other Vsource. The same as if each was driving into ground.
So that was my idea of how perhaps I should have explained it. Sorry.
In any case, the input resistance as seen from the Op Amp has no relationship to how many RIns are connected. The output gain is still a condition of RF's value. For RF = any single RIn, (and all RIn being equal) then Av = 1.
This holds true for a 4 input mixer or a 64 input mixer.
I hope this helps you understand my posts. I have a feeling we may be trying to say the same things, but human interaction via text is not very efficient. I'm sorry for any misunderstandings on my part.
Finally, here are the two articles I found on which to base my
***tounding
***ertions:
https://www.electronics-lab.com/article/the-summing-opamp-amplifier/https://www.electronics-tutorials.ws/opamp/opamp_1.htmlCheers