[BC] Listening t ests... how valid?

[dcpowerandlight@hotmail.com]

>From: Robert Orban
>
>If there is a point to be found in the above post, it certainly went 
>over my head. The tests presented analog AM reception in the BEST 
>POSSIBLE LIGHT: full NRSC bandwidth; enough signal level to make the 
>noise floor of the radio insignificant; and absolutely no dimmer 
>hash, static, co-channel beats, adjacent-channel monkey-chatter, 
>envelope detector distortion caused by sideband asymmetry on a 
>critical radial from a DA, etc. This was compared to 36 kbps HD AM. 
>The only assumption on the digital side was that the BER was low 
>enough to present the digital signal error-free to the receiver codec.

Bob, the point of my post was that tests that show comparisons of THE 
BEST POSSIBLE CASES of two situations are totally irrelevant, since 
the consumer's application of either of the technologies RARELY is in 
the BEST POSSIBLE circumstance. Listeners put radios next to 
computers, elevators, flourescent lights... relying on internal 
antennas in office buildings... come on, all this test showed is that 
AM and 36kbps clean carriers both sound aout the same as an Internet 
stream when connected up with wire or in some other interference-free 
environment.  Big deal... this proves nothing about propagation 
error, etc. and real world listening preferences.  A proper 
evaluation would compare the WORST POSSIBLE CASES ... like we run 
into daily in the real world.  It's consumers experiences in this 
real world environment with it's interference, fading, co-channel 
skywave interference, multipath, etc., that will make or break the 
science project called IBUZ - BUT only after the investment has been made!

Let consumers compare typical levels of analog noise to the BER 
dropout and/or blends back to the noisy signal that caused the BER 
dropout, and not some sterile imaginary-world lab example of how 
things would be if each radio set had a shielded coax connection to a 
pure signal source, and I suspect the IBUZ train would never leave 
the station...

Let's stop  ...  you have vested interest in the switch to digital; I 
do not.  I'm a listener and lover of radio, not a publicly-traded 
manufacturer hoping to capitalize on IBUZ in order to prop up a 
marginal stock price, or even a privately-held manufacturer hoping to 
bloat the books and get rich with a hype-based IPO.  Much of the 
actual broadcast industry, duped into investing in the IBUZ system 
manufacturer years ago, will implement it no matter what since 
they've now boxed themselves into a bad investment if they don't buy 
this crap from themselves and prop up their own marginal stock prices 
with this transfer of funds from one division to another. But ... we 
listeners will determine who wins this argument - it's the 
marketplace, as usual, who'll either love it, or send it packing to 
the Museum of Homework and Vegetables along with quadraphonic LPs, 
those stupid analog videodisks, New Coke, Press-On Nails and AM Stereo.

:-)

Take care,

Bill