In article ,
"AL KA5JGV" wrote:

Telamon, the transmissions I listened to included voice and music and both
sounded very good. I have a problem with DRM dropouts. If you listen to a
standard shortwave transmission that fades in and out, it is acceptable and
easy to take. However on DRM a drop results in total silence. The effect is
like turning the volume control full off then back on, rapidly. Not easy to
take. But when it's on, the quality is excellent. I have been monitoring DRM
transmissions now for about 3 months and my view of them improves with time.

Al



I listened to a number of example recordings on the DRM website and did
not like the sound quality at all. I found voice more annoying than the
music examples. Report back when you get a chance to listen to a voice
transmission.

--
Telamon
Ventura, California

Too me the way DRM is encoded voice especially has aural artifacts that
bother me. The audio frequency response seemed to change dramatically in
the examples. At times it sounded to me like the bit rate was to low to
reproduce voice accurately similar to what streaming audio used to sound
like over the internet years ago over a dial up connection only to
change suddenly to better faster rate and then back again. I found the
effect disturbing. Also very odd shifts in volume at times occurred.

As you are finding out DRM is not going to be better then analog just
different. There will be aspects of that mode that you are going to like
better and there will be aspects that you will think worse.

If an analog signal fades you can tell what is happening is a
dynamically changing propagation effect with your ears. With DRM you
can¹t tell what is happening unless you have indicators on the radio
that would give you the status or you had equipment monitoring the
signal. Without the extra indicators you have no idea if the
interruptions in the audio are propagation, transmission problems or
your receiver. Your receiver (computer actually in your case) needs to
lock to the DRM data stream. How do you know whether your drop out
problem isn¹t because an interfering signal is confusing the decoder
causing it to lose lock on the stream? Does the software tell you?

--
Telamon
Ventura, California