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The nice thing about analog is that signals may get weaker but they don’t just go away as easily so you hear continuous music, etc. Digital can be maddening be
by makecheck 9y ago
The nice thing about analog is that signals may get weaker but they don’t just go away as easily so you hear continuous music, etc.
Digital can be maddening because it alternates between crystal-clear and OFF, which ultimately I think is worse. Some streaming services will also decide to auto-next-song after the slightest glitch which is annoying too.
- cwillu 9y agoAnyone who's driven cross-country knows that FM will do that just as bad.
- khedoros1 9y agoAnyone who's driven cross-country knows that FM is nice and clear for a while, then kind of fades out as you reach the edge of the transmitter's range. There's at least a sense of continuity with the drop in signal strength. Digital has a sharp transition between crystal-clear and completely dead. That's the distinction being made above.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- rb2k_ 9y ago> Digital can be maddening because it alternates between crystal-clear and OFF, which ultimately I think is worse. Some streaming services will also decide to auto-next-song after the slightest glitch which is annoying too. I wonder if there are audio codecs that work similarly to wavelet based video codecs (DWT instead of DCT) where you could have stepwise degradation.
- vincnetas 9y agoIt's a broadcast, you don't know what is the bandwidth of receiving device so you can't adjust accordingly.
- microcolonel 9y agoThe broadcast equivalent would be to transmit more error correction bits per capita with the important bits (i.e. those present in the lower constant bitrate stream). This is implemented in codec2 or the related modem system, I think.
- IshKebab 9y agoNah you can do something like: 1. Sort your bits by importance. 2. Encode them as a real number using arithmetic coding. 3. Transmit that real number in an analogue way. That means the more noise you have in your signal the fewer bits you receive correctly. There are probably much more clever ways to do it than that but I don't think much work has really been done on it unfortunately because it's quite complex.
- magnat 9y agoThere is somewhat similar concept of Bitrate peeling [1] in Ogg Vorbis. You can drop portion of the stream without transcoding and still be able to decode original audio at lower bitrate. With proper over-the-air modulation and multiplexing scheme (like ADSL interleaving), one should be able to have graceful degradation of digital audio. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitrate_peeling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitrate_peeling
- voxadam 9y agoBitrate peeling is a beautiful concept, it's too bad that it was never implemented.
- madengr 9y agoProblem is the fading. You could drop the bitrate to boost the link margin a few dB, which works fine for SATCOM, but it won't help with deep fades. Putting two antennas on the car for diversity reception would work much better; surprised no one is doing it.
- xyzfoobarbaz 9y agoOnly cheap car radios do not do diversity. A lot of cars have three antennas and three or more tuners. You do not see all antennas, with a lot of cars you do not see any radio antenna.
- madengr 9y agoHa ha, I guess my cars are too cheap. I have never had a car with more than one VHF antenna.
- snom380 9y agoThe original DAB codec had more error protection for the more important parts of the audio data (unequal error protection), so while not the same it would give a more gradual reduction in quality instead of a sharp drop-off. DAB+ doesn't do this though.
- pjc50 9y agoIt makes it harder to "tune" it by moving the antenna around, too.
- katastic 9y agoWell, digital protocols CAN be designed to degrade. Why the digital FM standard doesn't do that, I'm at a loss. There are definitely progressive codecs. Hell, look at JPEG (which uses Wavelets). Older kids will remember waiting for JPEG's of naked ladies to get "clearer and clearer" as the interlaced mode progressively builds the picture. p.s. Wavelets are a super fun Google/Wiki to read up on over a night. [edit] IT SHOULD BE NOTED, not all countries may have adapted the same codec so this "popping out" issue may only affect certain countries.
- userbinator 9y agoI think you're referring to progressive (regular) JPEG, which is not wavelet-based but just incremental DCT. JPEG2000 is wavelet-based, requires many times more processing power, and is hardly encountered on the Internet due to nearly nonexistent browser support(see https://caniuse.com/jpeg2000 https://caniuse.com/jpeg2000 ). Why the digital FM standard doesn't do that, I'm at a loss. The form of progressiveness in JPEG and other file formats is conceptually quite simple --- you send the "rough draft" first, then incrementally improve quality by sending more bytes. "Degradation" is basically limited to truncating the stream. Broadcast radio reception degrades in a very different way --- (unpredictable) parts of the signal vary in strength or actually become corrupted. Either the decoder can decode the bits correctly or it can't, and which parts get weakened or corrupted is not easily predictable.
- katastic 9y agoThanks for the insight. I guess I never realized JPEG (as opposed to 2000) wasn't wavelet.
- grondilu 9y ago> The nice thing about analog is that signals may get weaker but they don’t just go away as easily so you hear continuous music, etc. I think it is worth mentioning that this is called fault tolerance, aka graceful degradation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fault_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fault_tolerance
- yvsong 9y agoDigital can be maddening because it alternates between crystal-clear and OFF You mean between 1 and 0?