A number of years ago, this seemed to be going digital, but listening to the Derby meeting this year, its all analogue again, as UHF links are very numerous. I get the impression that there were two issues with digital, merely from listening to some of the back chat that Digital at least last time they used them, are poor gritty sounding quality, have the tendency to drop out suddenly, a bit like mobile phones and have a delay which makes hearing yourself into a challenge of not sounding drunk.
Obviously a case of attempting to get off the shelf tech to work in a situation where instant comms and no drop outs is very important. You can hear when analogue is getting a bit scratchy but digital just gives up.
Brian
Analogue has a reasonably graceful failure mode as the signal gets worse,
it is true, but digital can be checked more easily and under most marginal conditions, it is more robust. (I use both analogue and digital radio microphones on stage.) Some digital receivers have a way to check the
signal error rates so you can predict a problem.
Another point is that you either get as perfect as possible an output or nothing, so you get fewer complaints from listeners...
On 20/06/2022 09:12, Brian Gaff wrote:
A number of years ago, this seemed to be going digital, but listening to
the
Derby meeting this year, its all analogue again, as UHF links are very
numerous. I get the impression that there were two issues with digital,
merely from listening to some of the back chat that Digital at least
last
time they used them, are poor gritty sounding quality, have the tendency
to
drop out suddenly, a bit like mobile phones and have a delay which makes
hearing yourself into a challenge of not sounding drunk.
Obviously a case of attempting to get off the shelf tech to work in a
situation where instant comms and no drop outs is very important. You can
hear when analogue is getting a bit scratchy but digital just gives up.
Brian
--
Tciao for Now!
John.
On another occasion, this time radio, presenters
were given off-air radios for a cue feed, but the
delay introduced by the Nicam feed to the
transmitters had been forgotten (leading to
apparent drunkenness, as suggested above).
Remember this is nbfm where the control room scanner and some remote
cameras and the like talk to wandering presenters etc, so none of it goes to air its mostly where is whathisname or somebody relaying the colours fof a stable to the announcer or countdowns or which camera will be used or warnings to a camera that something is not looking right. Lots of banter as well of course.
Wimbledon tennis is the next nearby event.
Brian
On 16/07/2022 08:49, SimonM wrote:
On another occasion, this time radio, presenters
were given off-air radios for a cue feed, but the
delay introduced by the Nicam feed to the
transmitters had been forgotten (leading to
apparent drunkenness, as suggested above).
Some years ago as the police moved to Airwave, I was told that the
firearms units were not happy with it because of the delay. If they are
told to fire, everyone needs to get the command at the same time. I
don't know what eventually happened though.
On 22/06/2022 09:38, Brian Gaff wrote:
Remember this is nbfm where the control room scanner and some remoteThere's always the unforeseen.
cameras and the like talk to wandering presenters etc, so none of it
goes to
air its mostly where is whathisname or somebody relaying the colours
fof a
stable to the announcer or countdowns or which camera will be used or
warnings to a camera that something is not looking right. Lots of
banter as
well of course.
Wimbledon tennis is the next nearby event.
Brian
I remember doing a live OB from a car ferry, where the scanner was three decks down, and the analogue PTB was useless in places. We resorted to
cans from cameras for some of it. Where it was usable, you couldn't
reply to production.
We got by, but I think digital comms would have been worse, because you
could hear the analogue signal degrading, so you had warning of total failure. Squelch doesn't help, as PTB is continuously on TX from the van.
On another occasion, this time radio, presenters were given off-air
radios for a cue feed, but the delay introduced by the Nicam feed to the transmitters had been forgotten (leading to apparent drunkenness, as suggested above).
What surprises me, given that satellite links are ubiquitous nowadays,especially in 'difficult' locations (such as war zones), you
don't get any feeling that handovers are rehearsed, nor cue lines
exchanged and memorized. I understand you can't avoid delays in live interviews, but you can in a straight handover. All the remote end needs
is the cue sentence and a key word for timing, similarly the out words
from the remote, and everything looks very neat and tidy.
I know coverage is possible from amazingly difficult places nowadays,
but it still seems a bit unnecessarily messy.
On 16/07/2022 08:49, SimonM wrote:
On another occasion, this time radio, presenters
were given off-air radios for a cue feed, but the
delay introduced by the Nicam feed to the
transmitters had been forgotten (leading to
apparent drunkenness, as suggested above).
Some years ago as the police moved to Airwave, I was told that the
firearms units were not happy with it because of the delay. If they are
told to fire, everyone needs to get the command at the same time. I
don't know what eventually happened though.
May be delays thru the system but wouldn't all the men on the ground get
the Fire command at the same time? after all surely there are receiving
the same base station?.
And i though they had a direct back to back facility?..
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