Is "Digital Technology" Really Better?

[Rogue]

Or is someone just making an assload of money from it?

My old analog cell phone worked great, almost everywhere. When there was a low signal, it worked fine. Digital cell phone...not so much. It's either all there or not at all. And out here in the country where I live that is teh succ.

Digital cable teevee? Good when it works which is most of the time. When it doesn't it is "tiling" or freezing or completely gorked-out.

I'd trade 5 of these digital signal cell phones for 1 old analog one.

What's the deal with digital being marketed as superior when, in some ways, it is anything but?





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[LilSooner]

I miss my old nokia 6120 that thing was indistructable!

[85Sooner]

NO. its cheaper and more portable thats it

[Frozen Sooner]

Uses less bandwidth, too.

But ask any audiophile whether they'd have a top-of-the-line digital amp or a MacIntosh analog amp.

[crawfish]

Digital is a lossless technology - meaning, it doesn't lose any of its quality as it moves down the pipe. The same can't be said for analog. It also provides the capability to have a single pipeline for all kinds of data (the internet). I already get my cable TV/phone/internet through the same fiberoptic wire to my house.

[sooneron]

Uses less bandwidth, too.

But ask any audiophile whether they'd have a top-of-the-line digital amp or a MacIntosh analog amp.

True Dat!

[Frozen Sooner]

Digital is a lossless technology - meaning, it doesn't lose any of its quality as it moves down the pipe. The same can't be said for analog. It also provides the capability to have a single pipeline for all kinds of data (the internet). I already get my cable TV/phone/internet through the same fiberoptic wire to my house.

Are you sure that mobile phone transmission is lossless? I mean, if you say so, but it sure sounds lossy to me.

[Vaevictis]

Are you sure that mobile phone transmission is lossless? I mean, if you say so, but it sure sounds lossy to me.

I believe the transmission itself is lossless.

The same cannot be said for the sampling. (... and strictly speaking, there's no such thing as lossless digital sampling.)

(and when I'm referring to "lossless" here, I'm talking about audio losses, not packet losses... wireless is a very error prone medium when it comes to pushing the raw data, and since the audio is encapsulated in the packets...)

[Frozen Sooner]

Isn't DSD lossless sampling? I don't know why I think that, but it's stuck in my head for some reason.

[Vaevictis]

It's impossible to do a lossless digital sample of an analog signal for two reasons:

1. Quantization noise. Basically, when you take a digital sample, you sample every X time period, and you record some single value that represents the signal over that time period -- this can be an instantaneous value at X time, an average over the time, whatever. But you're still losing information because the signal may not have taken that value over the whole time period.
2. Aliasing. To get a truly lossless signal, you'd have to have an infinitely fast sampler... at best, you can "safely" sample a bandwidth 1/2 of the speed of your sampler. You either need a bandpass filter of 1/2f on the front end, or you risk "folding" frequencies outside of your band back into your band. (ie, without the filter, if you were to sample at 44KHz, a signal at 23KHz would get "folded" back to 21KHz, and you would not be able to distinguish which part of the power at 21KHz is really 21KHz and which part is 23KHz.)

EDIT: Now that said, it may be possible to do good enough sampling that a human ear can't tell the difference...

[Frozen Sooner]

Yeah, you're right. Logically the words "lossless" and "sampling" can't co-exist.

And DSD isn't lossless. I was mistaken. In fact, for some frequecies, it's not even as good as PCM.

Thanks for the erudition.

[Vaevictis]

Well, technically, you can do a lossless sampling of a digital signal if you are sampling fast enough that you catch every single value as it comes down the pipe.

The problem with an analog signal is that because it's continuous, you can't possibly do discrete sampling fast enough to catch every single value.

[Frozen Sooner]

Damn it, stop making me look stupid!

If I'm talking about sampling, then I'm generally (99%) of the time talking about recreating an analog audio signal, so yeah. Of course, if what you have to begin with is a digital bitstream, of course you can up your sample rate to recreate it because you're only dealing with discrete values.

[Vaevictis]

Heh, sorry.

I had a prof (Dr. Havlicek) who beat this into me a couple of semesters ago, so...

(Let's just say, you don't look nearly as stupid as I did... )

[slickdawg]

Digital, without exception.

TV: Less bandwidth, better picture.

Cell Phones: YOU CAN HEAR CONVERSATIONS WITH A SCANNER ON ANALOG, you can't on digital. Digital provides a better signal and no static.

[Vaevictis]

And as far as whether or not digital technology is really better...

The answer is: It depends on how you define "better." Digital gets smaller faster, and has a nice price curve. If you don't mind carrying around a brick phone and paying more, analog might be a little bit better.

[Vaevictis]

Cell Phones: YOU CAN HEAR CONVERSATIONS WITH A SCANNER ON ANALOG, you can't on digital.

This has nothing to do with whether the signal is analog or digital.

Digital provides a better signal and no static.

Instead, you get dropped packets and ISI. It's a push.

[slickdawg]

This has nothing to do with whether the signal is analog or digital.



Instead, you get dropped packets and ISI. It's a push.

Well, I didn't want to get into CDMA vs TDMA vs GSM, that's more than most people ever want to know.

[Vaevictis]

Well, I didn't want to get into CDMA vs TDMA vs GSM, that's more than most people ever want to know.

Yeah, I'm just saying it's just not as simple as you made it out to be. They both have problems with losses and noise -- that's just a fact of using a mobile wireless channel. It's just that with analog, you "hear" the problems as noise, and with digital you (typically) "hear" the problems as stuttering and gaps.

And you can make it so that you can't just pick up an analog signal with a scanner, it's just easier to do with digital.

(which is pretty much how it all goes -- digital is easier and cheaper, and that's why it's "better.")

[Frozen Sooner]

Your sister is easier and cheaper.