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#21
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What is the point of digital voice?
"rickman" wrote in message
... On 2/24/2015 12:37 PM, gareth wrote: "Spike" wrote in message ... Get a CW signal peaked on the 20 c/s nose of the HRO crystal filter, with the phasing notching out any nearby signal, and you realise that DSP just isn't necessary due to the quality of the 80-year-old technology employed. WHS. The Eddystone EA12 does not have a phasing control as that part of the cct is fixed-tuned, but it does have a tunable notch in the 100kHz IF to achieve the same effect. Mind you, there seems to be a diminishing band of people who know how to do this, so the simplistic approach of using someone else's ever-upgraded software to do something less effective is about as far as the tick-box Amateur seems to go. Heavens - they even buy ready-made wire aerials! And going from previous threads, there are even fewer who understand that setting up for single-signal reception means that the notional carrier frequency has to lie half-way between the peak of the Xtal and the notch of the phasing control. We should not forget that he who sneers loud and long about others' grasp of the mathematics of DSP maintains that changing the direction of a rotating vector (A Phasor, and not related to the weapons of Star Trek!) causes it to decrease in sixe. What is "sixe"??? Typo - adjacent key - size |
#22
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What is the point of digital voice?
On 2/24/2015 5:47 PM, rickman wrote:
On 2/24/2015 12:00 PM, Jerry Stuckle wrote: On 2/24/2015 11:32 AM, FranK Turner-Smith G3VKI wrote: "AndyW" wrote in message ... On 24/02/2015 12:47, gareth wrote: What is the point of digital voice when there are already AM, SSB and FM for those who want to appear indistinguishable from CBers? Perhaps it is cynicism from the manufacturers who introduce such things as they see their traditional highly-priced corner of the market being wiped away by SDR technologies? Bandwidth reduction for one. If you can encode and compress speech sufficiently then you can use less bandwidth in transmission. That's the bit I have trouble getting my head around. Back in the 1970s and 1980s digital transmissions used a much greater bandwidth than their analogue equivalents. Sampling at 2.2 x max frequency x number of bits plus housekeeping bits etc. etc. A UK standard 625 line PAL video transmission would have used a bandwidth of over 400MHz! Times have changed and left me behind, but I've still got me beer so who cares? But you forget compression. For instance, unless there is a scene change, the vast majority of a television picture does not change from frame to frame. Even if the camera moves, the picture shifts but doesn't change all that much. Why waste all of that bandwidth resending information the receiver already has? And voice isn't continuous; it has lots of pauses. Some are very noticeable, while others are so short we don't consciously hear them, but they are there. And once you've compressed everything you can out of the original signal, you can do bit compression, similar to zipping a file for sending. There are lots of ways to compress a signal before sending it digitally. About the only one which can't be compressed is pure white noise - which, of course, is only a concept (nothing is "pure"). I think that depends on what you mean by "pure". Sounds very non-technical to me. Even noise can be compressed since if it is truly noise, you don't need to send the data, just send the one bit that says there is no signal, just noise. lol Pure white noise is a random distribution of signal across the entire spectrum, with an equal distribution of frequencies over time. Like a pure resistor or capacitor, it doesn't exist. But the noise IS the signal. To recreate the noise, you have to sample the signal and transmit it. However, since it is completely random, by definition no compression is possible. A friend worked in sonar where the data was collected on ships and transmitted via satellite to shore for signal processing rather than doing any compression on the data and sending the useful info. As the signal was nearly all "noise" trying to do any compression on it, even the aspects that weren't "pure" white noise, would potentially have masked the signals. Sonar is all about pulling the signal out of the noise. You mean the signal can't be compressed? No way. Any non-random signal can be compressed to some extent. How much depends on the signal and the amount of processing power required to compress it. However, in your example, the processing power to compress the signal would probably have been greater than that required to process the original signal. So if there wasn't enough power to process the signal on the ship, there wouldn't be enough power to compress the near-white noise signal, either. -- ================== Remove the "x" from my email address Jerry, AI0K ================== |
#23
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What is the point of digital voice?
On 2/24/2015 6:35 PM, gareth wrote:
"rickman" wrote in message ... On 2/24/2015 12:37 PM, gareth wrote: "Spike" wrote in message ... Get a CW signal peaked on the 20 c/s nose of the HRO crystal filter, with the phasing notching out any nearby signal, and you realise that DSP just isn't necessary due to the quality of the 80-year-old technology employed. WHS. The Eddystone EA12 does not have a phasing control as that part of the cct is fixed-tuned, but it does have a tunable notch in the 100kHz IF to achieve the same effect. Mind you, there seems to be a diminishing band of people who know how to do this, so the simplistic approach of using someone else's ever-upgraded software to do something less effective is about as far as the tick-box Amateur seems to go. Heavens - they even buy ready-made wire aerials! And going from previous threads, there are even fewer who understand that setting up for single-signal reception means that the notional carrier frequency has to lie half-way between the peak of the Xtal and the notch of the phasing control. We should not forget that he who sneers loud and long about others' grasp of the mathematics of DSP maintains that changing the direction of a rotating vector (A Phasor, and not related to the weapons of Star Trek!) causes it to decrease in sixe. What is "sixe"??? Typo - adjacent key - size I thought it might be that, but it still makes no sense to me. Who or how does changing the direction of rotation of a rotating vector change its "size". Are you defining size as the rotation so that going from a + to a - is like reversing the direction of a vector? I think most people would consider the "size" of a vector to be the magnitude which is independent of phase angle and so rotation, no? Perhaps you can explain this with a little math? -- Rick |
#24
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What is the point of digital voice?
On 2/24/2015 6:37 PM, Jerry Stuckle wrote:
On 2/24/2015 5:47 PM, rickman wrote: On 2/24/2015 12:00 PM, Jerry Stuckle wrote: On 2/24/2015 11:32 AM, FranK Turner-Smith G3VKI wrote: "AndyW" wrote in message ... On 24/02/2015 12:47, gareth wrote: What is the point of digital voice when there are already AM, SSB and FM for those who want to appear indistinguishable from CBers? Perhaps it is cynicism from the manufacturers who introduce such things as they see their traditional highly-priced corner of the market being wiped away by SDR technologies? Bandwidth reduction for one. If you can encode and compress speech sufficiently then you can use less bandwidth in transmission. That's the bit I have trouble getting my head around. Back in the 1970s and 1980s digital transmissions used a much greater bandwidth than their analogue equivalents. Sampling at 2.2 x max frequency x number of bits plus housekeeping bits etc. etc. A UK standard 625 line PAL video transmission would have used a bandwidth of over 400MHz! Times have changed and left me behind, but I've still got me beer so who cares? But you forget compression. For instance, unless there is a scene change, the vast majority of a television picture does not change from frame to frame. Even if the camera moves, the picture shifts but doesn't change all that much. Why waste all of that bandwidth resending information the receiver already has? And voice isn't continuous; it has lots of pauses. Some are very noticeable, while others are so short we don't consciously hear them, but they are there. And once you've compressed everything you can out of the original signal, you can do bit compression, similar to zipping a file for sending. There are lots of ways to compress a signal before sending it digitally. About the only one which can't be compressed is pure white noise - which, of course, is only a concept (nothing is "pure"). I think that depends on what you mean by "pure". Sounds very non-technical to me. Even noise can be compressed since if it is truly noise, you don't need to send the data, just send the one bit that says there is no signal, just noise. lol Pure white noise is a random distribution of signal across the entire spectrum, with an equal distribution of frequencies over time. Like a pure resistor or capacitor, it doesn't exist. But the noise IS the signal. To recreate the noise, you have to sample the signal and transmit it. However, since it is completely random, by definition no compression is possible. Why does it not "exist"? That is not at all clear. You don't understand compression. Compression is a means of removing the part of a signal that is unimportant and sending only the part that is important. In most cases of "pure" noise, you can just send a statement that the signal is "noise" without caring about the exact voltages over time. So, yes, even noise can be compressed depending on your requirements. A friend worked in sonar where the data was collected on ships and transmitted via satellite to shore for signal processing rather than doing any compression on the data and sending the useful info. As the signal was nearly all "noise" trying to do any compression on it, even the aspects that weren't "pure" white noise, would potentially have masked the signals. Sonar is all about pulling the signal out of the noise. You mean the signal can't be compressed? No way. Any non-random signal can be compressed to some extent. How much depends on the signal and the amount of processing power required to compress it. However, in your example, the processing power to compress the signal would probably have been greater than that required to process the original signal. So if there wasn't enough power to process the signal on the ship, there wouldn't be enough power to compress the near-white noise signal, either. You really like your all encompassing assumptions. No, all signals can not be compressed, even non-noise signals can't be compressed if the signal is not appropriate for the compressor. This is really a very large topic and I think you are used to dealing with the special cases without understanding the general case. Try visiting comp.compression and offering them your opinions. There are many there who are happy to explain the details to you. -- Rick |
#25
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What is the point of digital voice?
On 2/24/2015 6:37 PM, Jerry Stuckle wrote:
On 2/24/2015 5:47 PM, rickman wrote: On 2/24/2015 12:00 PM, Jerry Stuckle wrote: On 2/24/2015 11:32 AM, FranK Turner-Smith G3VKI wrote: "AndyW" wrote in message ... On 24/02/2015 12:47, gareth wrote: What is the point of digital voice when there are already AM, SSB and FM for those who want to appear indistinguishable from CBers? Perhaps it is cynicism from the manufacturers who introduce such things as they see their traditional highly-priced corner of the market being wiped away by SDR technologies? Bandwidth reduction for one. If you can encode and compress speech sufficiently then you can use less bandwidth in transmission. That's the bit I have trouble getting my head around. Back in the 1970s and 1980s digital transmissions used a much greater bandwidth than their analogue equivalents. Sampling at 2.2 x max frequency x number of bits plus housekeeping bits etc. etc. A UK standard 625 line PAL video transmission would have used a bandwidth of over 400MHz! Times have changed and left me behind, but I've still got me beer so who cares? But you forget compression. For instance, unless there is a scene change, the vast majority of a television picture does not change from frame to frame. Even if the camera moves, the picture shifts but doesn't change all that much. Why waste all of that bandwidth resending information the receiver already has? And voice isn't continuous; it has lots of pauses. Some are very noticeable, while others are so short we don't consciously hear them, but they are there. And once you've compressed everything you can out of the original signal, you can do bit compression, similar to zipping a file for sending. There are lots of ways to compress a signal before sending it digitally. About the only one which can't be compressed is pure white noise - which, of course, is only a concept (nothing is "pure"). I think that depends on what you mean by "pure". Sounds very non-technical to me. Even noise can be compressed since if it is truly noise, you don't need to send the data, just send the one bit that says there is no signal, just noise. lol Pure white noise is a random distribution of signal across the entire spectrum, with an equal distribution of frequencies over time. Like a pure resistor or capacitor, it doesn't exist. But the noise IS the signal. To recreate the noise, you have to sample the signal and transmit it. However, since it is completely random, by definition no compression is possible. Here is a white noise signal... 4. That number was chosen at random, courtesy of XKCD.com. http://xkcd.com/221/ -- Rick |
#26
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What is the point of digital voice?
On 2/24/2015 7:03 PM, rickman wrote:
On 2/24/2015 6:37 PM, Jerry Stuckle wrote: On 2/24/2015 5:47 PM, rickman wrote: On 2/24/2015 12:00 PM, Jerry Stuckle wrote: On 2/24/2015 11:32 AM, FranK Turner-Smith G3VKI wrote: "AndyW" wrote in message ... On 24/02/2015 12:47, gareth wrote: What is the point of digital voice when there are already AM, SSB and FM for those who want to appear indistinguishable from CBers? Perhaps it is cynicism from the manufacturers who introduce such things as they see their traditional highly-priced corner of the market being wiped away by SDR technologies? Bandwidth reduction for one. If you can encode and compress speech sufficiently then you can use less bandwidth in transmission. That's the bit I have trouble getting my head around. Back in the 1970s and 1980s digital transmissions used a much greater bandwidth than their analogue equivalents. Sampling at 2.2 x max frequency x number of bits plus housekeeping bits etc. etc. A UK standard 625 line PAL video transmission would have used a bandwidth of over 400MHz! Times have changed and left me behind, but I've still got me beer so who cares? But you forget compression. For instance, unless there is a scene change, the vast majority of a television picture does not change from frame to frame. Even if the camera moves, the picture shifts but doesn't change all that much. Why waste all of that bandwidth resending information the receiver already has? And voice isn't continuous; it has lots of pauses. Some are very noticeable, while others are so short we don't consciously hear them, but they are there. And once you've compressed everything you can out of the original signal, you can do bit compression, similar to zipping a file for sending. There are lots of ways to compress a signal before sending it digitally. About the only one which can't be compressed is pure white noise - which, of course, is only a concept (nothing is "pure"). I think that depends on what you mean by "pure". Sounds very non-technical to me. Even noise can be compressed since if it is truly noise, you don't need to send the data, just send the one bit that says there is no signal, just noise. lol Pure white noise is a random distribution of signal across the entire spectrum, with an equal distribution of frequencies over time. Like a pure resistor or capacitor, it doesn't exist. But the noise IS the signal. To recreate the noise, you have to sample the signal and transmit it. However, since it is completely random, by definition no compression is possible. Why does it not "exist"? That is not at all clear. You don't understand compression. Compression is a means of removing the part of a signal that is unimportant and sending only the part that is important. In most cases of "pure" noise, you can just send a statement that the signal is "noise" without caring about the exact voltages over time. So, yes, even noise can be compressed depending on your requirements. Pure white noise is a concept only. There is no perfect white noise source, just as there is no pure resistor or capacitor. And yes, I do understand compression. One of the things it depends on is predictability and repeatability of the incoming signal. That does not exist with white noise. The fact you don't understand that pure white noise is only a concept and cannot exist in the real world shows your lack of understanding. Some compression algorithms (i.e. mp3) remove what they consider is "unimportant". However, the result after decompressing is a poor recreation of the original signal. But for perfect recreation, nothing is "unimportant". Voice/video compression is no different than file compression on a computer. Can you imaging what would happen if your favorite program was not perfectly recreated? A friend worked in sonar where the data was collected on ships and transmitted via satellite to shore for signal processing rather than doing any compression on the data and sending the useful info. As the signal was nearly all "noise" trying to do any compression on it, even the aspects that weren't "pure" white noise, would potentially have masked the signals. Sonar is all about pulling the signal out of the noise. You mean the signal can't be compressed? No way. Any non-random signal can be compressed to some extent. How much depends on the signal and the amount of processing power required to compress it. However, in your example, the processing power to compress the signal would probably have been greater than that required to process the original signal. So if there wasn't enough power to process the signal on the ship, there wouldn't be enough power to compress the near-white noise signal, either. You really like your all encompassing assumptions. No, all signals can not be compressed, even non-noise signals can't be compressed if the signal is not appropriate for the compressor. This is really a very large topic and I think you are used to dealing with the special cases without understanding the general case. Which is just the opposite of what you claimed above. Please make up your mind. Try visiting comp.compression and offering them your opinions. There are many there who are happy to explain the details to you. I understand the details, thank you. Much better than you do, obviously. But that's not surprising, either. -- ================== Remove the "x" from my email address Jerry, AI0K ================== |
#27
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What is the point of digital voice?
On 2/24/2015 7:07 PM, rickman wrote:
On 2/24/2015 6:37 PM, Jerry Stuckle wrote: On 2/24/2015 5:47 PM, rickman wrote: On 2/24/2015 12:00 PM, Jerry Stuckle wrote: On 2/24/2015 11:32 AM, FranK Turner-Smith G3VKI wrote: "AndyW" wrote in message ... On 24/02/2015 12:47, gareth wrote: What is the point of digital voice when there are already AM, SSB and FM for those who want to appear indistinguishable from CBers? Perhaps it is cynicism from the manufacturers who introduce such things as they see their traditional highly-priced corner of the market being wiped away by SDR technologies? Bandwidth reduction for one. If you can encode and compress speech sufficiently then you can use less bandwidth in transmission. That's the bit I have trouble getting my head around. Back in the 1970s and 1980s digital transmissions used a much greater bandwidth than their analogue equivalents. Sampling at 2.2 x max frequency x number of bits plus housekeeping bits etc. etc. A UK standard 625 line PAL video transmission would have used a bandwidth of over 400MHz! Times have changed and left me behind, but I've still got me beer so who cares? But you forget compression. For instance, unless there is a scene change, the vast majority of a television picture does not change from frame to frame. Even if the camera moves, the picture shifts but doesn't change all that much. Why waste all of that bandwidth resending information the receiver already has? And voice isn't continuous; it has lots of pauses. Some are very noticeable, while others are so short we don't consciously hear them, but they are there. And once you've compressed everything you can out of the original signal, you can do bit compression, similar to zipping a file for sending. There are lots of ways to compress a signal before sending it digitally. About the only one which can't be compressed is pure white noise - which, of course, is only a concept (nothing is "pure"). I think that depends on what you mean by "pure". Sounds very non-technical to me. Even noise can be compressed since if it is truly noise, you don't need to send the data, just send the one bit that says there is no signal, just noise. lol Pure white noise is a random distribution of signal across the entire spectrum, with an equal distribution of frequencies over time. Like a pure resistor or capacitor, it doesn't exist. But the noise IS the signal. To recreate the noise, you have to sample the signal and transmit it. However, since it is completely random, by definition no compression is possible. Here is a white noise signal... 4. That number was chosen at random, courtesy of XKCD.com. http://xkcd.com/221/ No, that is not a white noise signal. And the number, by definition, being computer generated, is only pseudo-random. -- ================== Remove the "x" from my email address Jerry, AI0K ================== |
#28
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What is the point of digital voice?
On 2/24/2015 7:32 PM, Brian Reay wrote:
Jerry Stuckle wrote: On 2/24/2015 5:47 PM, rickman wrote: On 2/24/2015 12:00 PM, Jerry Stuckle wrote: On 2/24/2015 11:32 AM, FranK Turner-Smith G3VKI wrote: "AndyW" wrote in message ... On 24/02/2015 12:47, gareth wrote: What is the point of digital voice when there are already AM, SSB and FM for those who want to appear indistinguishable from CBers? Perhaps it is cynicism from the manufacturers who introduce such things as they see their traditional highly-priced corner of the market being wiped away by SDR technologies? Bandwidth reduction for one. If you can encode and compress speech sufficiently then you can use less bandwidth in transmission. That's the bit I have trouble getting my head around. Back in the 1970s and 1980s digital transmissions used a much greater bandwidth than their analogue equivalents. Sampling at 2.2 x max frequency x number of bits plus housekeeping bits etc. etc. A UK standard 625 line PAL video transmission would have used a bandwidth of over 400MHz! Times have changed and left me behind, but I've still got me beer so who cares? But you forget compression. For instance, unless there is a scene change, the vast majority of a television picture does not change from frame to frame. Even if the camera moves, the picture shifts but doesn't change all that much. Why waste all of that bandwidth resending information the receiver already has? And voice isn't continuous; it has lots of pauses. Some are very noticeable, while others are so short we don't consciously hear them, but they are there. And once you've compressed everything you can out of the original signal, you can do bit compression, similar to zipping a file for sending. There are lots of ways to compress a signal before sending it digitally. About the only one which can't be compressed is pure white noise - which, of course, is only a concept (nothing is "pure"). I think that depends on what you mean by "pure". Sounds very non-technical to me. Even noise can be compressed since if it is truly noise, you don't need to send the data, just send the one bit that says there is no signal, just noise. lol Pure white noise is a random distribution of signal across the entire spectrum, with an equal distribution of frequencies over time. Like a pure resistor or capacitor, it doesn't exist. But the noise IS the signal. To recreate the noise, you have to sample the signal and transmit it. However, since it is completely random, by definition no compression is possible. To be more accurate, it has an infinite bandwidth and constant power density/Hz. As you say, it doesn't really exist. In practice, lab noise sources are specified over a bandwidth and to be within a given limit of power variation across that. Darn useful devices to have around. Brian, Thank you - you are much more accurate in describing it than I was able to. -- ================== Remove the "x" from my email address Jerry, AI0K ================== |
#29
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What is the point of digital voice?
On Tue, 24 Feb 2015, gareth wrote:
What is the point of digital voice when there are already AM, SSB and FM for those who want to appear indistinguishable from CBers? Perhaps it is cynicism from the manufacturers who introduce such things as they see their traditional highly-priced corner of the market being wiped away by SDR technologies? Because it's something new, at least to amateur radio. The phasing method of sideband was common in the early days of amateur SSB (I recall reading the first rigs were filter type, but with really low IFs, then phasing, then crystal and mechanical filters took over from phasing). It offered up a lot on transmit and receive, though not perfection. But now phasing is used a lot, because digital circuitry has made it viable. I remember seeing some of the potential when phasing was still analog, but I also remember reading articles where it was clear others didn't see the potential. Sometimes ideas become lost when something becomes commonplace. Who knows what would come from digital voice. But I remember 30 years ago one local ham being interested in it, not to the extent of putting something on the air, but as information from the computer world started flowing in, the potential started being there. YOu can't resist new things and say "they have no use", you have to embrace the new and see what can be done with it. Maybe not as initially seen, but maybe it fits in somewhere else. Amateur radio has never done much with envelope elimination and restoration (was that what it was called? I now forget). It's in one of the sideband books, and Karl Meinzer of AMSAT fame wrote about it in QST about 1970. Break the SSB signal into two components, so you can multiply it up to a higher frequency, then modulate the output stage. If you have an efficient modulator, you can do away with linear amplifiers (which is why it was in that SSB book). I gather he used the scheme in at least one of the amateur satellites after Oscar 6. But what happens in the digital age? Can you generate the two streems, in essence but not so simple an FM component and an AM component, without needing to generate SSB and then extract the two streams? I don't know, but so much digital processing is being done now, it may be something to look into. With solid state devices and class D amplifiers, modulating high level class C amplifiers can't be as much trouble as in the old days. Maybe it amounts to nothing, but maybe it overall becomes more efficient, if it can be done. Maybe there's no value to digital voice, except that in the process of learnign about it, and implementing it, one can learn something. Maybe something merely new to the person learning, but maybe something completely new. No advances are made without learning, the learning triggers new advances. Michael |
#30
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What is the point of digital voice?
On 2/24/2015 7:12 PM, Jerry Stuckle wrote:
On 2/24/2015 7:03 PM, rickman wrote: On 2/24/2015 6:37 PM, Jerry Stuckle wrote: On 2/24/2015 5:47 PM, rickman wrote: On 2/24/2015 12:00 PM, Jerry Stuckle wrote: On 2/24/2015 11:32 AM, FranK Turner-Smith G3VKI wrote: "AndyW" wrote in message ... On 24/02/2015 12:47, gareth wrote: What is the point of digital voice when there are already AM, SSB and FM for those who want to appear indistinguishable from CBers? Perhaps it is cynicism from the manufacturers who introduce such things as they see their traditional highly-priced corner of the market being wiped away by SDR technologies? Bandwidth reduction for one. If you can encode and compress speech sufficiently then you can use less bandwidth in transmission. That's the bit I have trouble getting my head around. Back in the 1970s and 1980s digital transmissions used a much greater bandwidth than their analogue equivalents. Sampling at 2.2 x max frequency x number of bits plus housekeeping bits etc. etc. A UK standard 625 line PAL video transmission would have used a bandwidth of over 400MHz! Times have changed and left me behind, but I've still got me beer so who cares? But you forget compression. For instance, unless there is a scene change, the vast majority of a television picture does not change from frame to frame. Even if the camera moves, the picture shifts but doesn't change all that much. Why waste all of that bandwidth resending information the receiver already has? And voice isn't continuous; it has lots of pauses. Some are very noticeable, while others are so short we don't consciously hear them, but they are there. And once you've compressed everything you can out of the original signal, you can do bit compression, similar to zipping a file for sending. There are lots of ways to compress a signal before sending it digitally. About the only one which can't be compressed is pure white noise - which, of course, is only a concept (nothing is "pure"). I think that depends on what you mean by "pure". Sounds very non-technical to me. Even noise can be compressed since if it is truly noise, you don't need to send the data, just send the one bit that says there is no signal, just noise. lol Pure white noise is a random distribution of signal across the entire spectrum, with an equal distribution of frequencies over time. Like a pure resistor or capacitor, it doesn't exist. But the noise IS the signal. To recreate the noise, you have to sample the signal and transmit it. However, since it is completely random, by definition no compression is possible. Why does it not "exist"? That is not at all clear. You don't understand compression. Compression is a means of removing the part of a signal that is unimportant and sending only the part that is important. In most cases of "pure" noise, you can just send a statement that the signal is "noise" without caring about the exact voltages over time. So, yes, even noise can be compressed depending on your requirements. Pure white noise is a concept only. There is no perfect white noise source, just as there is no pure resistor or capacitor. And yes, I do understand compression. One of the things it depends on is predictability and repeatability of the incoming signal. That does not exist with white noise. The fact you don't understand that pure white noise is only a concept and cannot exist in the real world shows your lack of understanding. This is not very productive. You make an assertion and the fact that I don't agree means I am wrong. Ok, you have an idea in your mind and can't explain it. I get that. The fact that you don't have a white noise source in your lab doesn't mean it doesn't exist other than in the same way that 100.1 doesn't exist. No one has ever made anything that was *exactly* 100.1. This is a pointless abstraction so I won't continue to debate it. Some compression algorithms (i.e. mp3) remove what they consider is "unimportant". However, the result after decompressing is a poor recreation of the original signal. That is a value judgement which most would disagree with not to mention that your example is not valid. MP3 does not *remove* anything from the signal. It is a form of compression that simply can't reproduce the signal exactly. The use of the term "poor" is your value judgement. Most people would say an MP3 audio sounds very much like the original. But for perfect recreation, nothing is "unimportant". Voice/video compression is no different than file compression on a computer. Can you imaging what would happen if your favorite program was not perfectly recreated? A friend worked in sonar where the data was collected on ships and transmitted via satellite to shore for signal processing rather than doing any compression on the data and sending the useful info. As the signal was nearly all "noise" trying to do any compression on it, even the aspects that weren't "pure" white noise, would potentially have masked the signals. Sonar is all about pulling the signal out of the noise. You mean the signal can't be compressed? No way. Any non-random signal can be compressed to some extent. How much depends on the signal and the amount of processing power required to compress it. However, in your example, the processing power to compress the signal would probably have been greater than that required to process the original signal. So if there wasn't enough power to process the signal on the ship, there wouldn't be enough power to compress the near-white noise signal, either. You really like your all encompassing assumptions. No, all signals can not be compressed, even non-noise signals can't be compressed if the signal is not appropriate for the compressor. This is really a very large topic and I think you are used to dealing with the special cases without understanding the general case. Which is just the opposite of what you claimed above. Please make up your mind. This is the sort of stuff that makes discussions with you unenjoyable. You clearly don't understand compression or you would understand this statement. Compression maps a combination of bits into a smaller number of bits. By the counting theorem it is impossible for any compression algorithm to compress all possible input sets. Whether it can be compressed depends on a match between the input bits and the compression algorithm. Even white noise (which can exist if you define "white noise" adequately) can be compressed by the appropriate algorithm. That algorithm won't compress much else though. Try visiting comp.compression and offering them your opinions. There are many there who are happy to explain the details to you. I understand the details, thank you. Much better than you do, obviously. But that's not surprising, either. Ok, you have reverted into snarky mode. I'm done. -- Rick |
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