There are other codecs and vocoders that provide better audio reproduction than AMBE. That's just a fact of life. There are some (EMBE) with worse characteristics. I do not enjoy using P25 for this reason, either in Amateur or public safety service. (In fact, I believe the poor audio reproduction of EMBE, coupled with its inherent lack of ambient audio noise immunity make it dangerous for public safety, too).
I, too, suspect John won't stick with D-Star. That's too bad: There's a lot of development going on, and hi could likely find a home in improving things where we really can make changes. But the points made about interoperability are important. The vocoder used in D-STar isn't my favorite, but it IS burned in stone. Somewhere down the road someone will cobble up a software AMBE clone and offer it up and then we'll have a more configurable system, but even there, if we tweak the vocoder bit rate, it will no longer interoperate. When that happens, we'll have smething based on D-Star but it won't be D-Star. There are other aspects of Ham Radio to investigate and enjoy. I've wandered through Skywarn, microwave communications and antennas, HF and higher antennas, and 802.11 networking among other things. I still find ways to become excited by Ham radio. My current "thing" is D-Star, and while I'm not writing code for it, I've got a pretty good grasp of what it does, why, and how. And, I don't always agree with the why or how! What I don't have, however, is John's professional audio experience. If I did, I might have a similar opinion, that we could crank up the sampling and decoding rates and improve the audio. Since I do know something about how things work (and since I've looked at the networking side of D-Star), I respectfully disagree with John about how simple it'd be to enhance the audio. Sorry, it's not how things work on the startship. 73 gerry n5jxs J. Moen wrote: > > > There is a lot of room in our hobby for many niche interests and points > of view. I became a Ham in the late 1950s and while I started out on > AM, I switched to SSB fairly soon after. I have always liked > communications quality audio for voice communications. When I > discovered a whole subculture of Hams interested in Extended SSB, I had > trouble understanding why. I listen to some people with carefully > adjusted equalizers that sound like they are transmitting from their > bathroom, what with echos etc. But then I realized that as long as they > don't hog the bandwidth when a band is busy, there is nothing wrong with > them wanting something more than communications quality. > > I just expect them to respect my preference for narrower audio response > over RF. > > I am thinking D-Star will probably not work out for John, and he'll > decide to move on to other parts of Ham radio. Or he'll get involved in > experimentation with other types of digital radio that may involve other > vocoders and different design parameters (I wonder what Codec2 sounds > like?). And if we all live long enough, we will probably see other DV > standards evolve. I like to think that if we left the planet and came > back in 50 years, the vast majority of Ham transmissions will be some > form of digital. It's inevitable. For John's sake, let's hope he has > some audio quality choices. > > In the meantime, I like D-Star audio just fine, since I'm able to > understand what everyone is saying. > > Jim - K6JM > > > ----- Original Message ----- > *From:* n2gyn <mailto:li...@gmx.net> > *To:* dstar_digital@yahoogroups.com > <mailto:dstar_digital@yahoogroups.com> > *Sent:* Wednesday, September 01, 2010 3:19 PM > *Subject:* [DSTAR_DIGITAL] Re: Bit Rate? > > > It's NOT a microphone issue. It's the small bit processing. I have > been in Pro sound for most of my life. Their is NO WAY to get any > quality at 8bit. This is unexceptionable to me! I rather listen to > all the QRM and QRN in the world with analog. > I am very surprise that their are not more people that feel this way. > The bit rate has to be at lest 28bit to starting sounding acceptable. > John > > -- Gerry Creager -- gerry.crea...@tamu.edu Texas Mesonet -- AATLT, Texas A&M University Cell: 979.229.5301 Office: 979.458.4020 FAX: 979.862.3983 Office: 1700 Research Parkway Ste 160, TAMU, College Station, TX 77843 ------------------------------------ Please TRIM your replies or set your email program not to include the original message in reply unless needed for clarity. ThanksYahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dstar_digital/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dstar_digital/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: dstar_digital-dig...@yahoogroups.com dstar_digital-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: dstar_digital-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
