NASA Audio - why so bad?

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Good info, thanks!
S-Band is used for space mission voice. Well, gee, it's also used for satellite radio. While XM and Sirius content leave a bit to be desired, the voice quality is OK. And one might hope that NASA has better antennas than my car.

I am really beginning to think it's all an act. They want it to sound that way.

Here's some tech info on the Apollo radio with some links to more info at the bottom.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_S-Band
 
The same is the case with jet pilot comms. With clear comms so important for safety, I'm sure if there was an easy way to improve it, someone would have made a big buck on it years ago.

From my experience in mil comms I can mention two factors:

- because of the high ambient noise they need to use either throat mikes or noise cancellation mikes. The first are very prone to compression and distortion, the latter may suffer from the cancellation process,

- there's a lot of electrical noise also. I remember in my work the all-pervasive 400Hz from the mains, both on all signals and as acoustical noise. Then add in all the digital noise, the radios and radars around you and you've got an EMI nightmare.

jd
 
The same is the case with jet pilot comms. With clear comms so important for safety, I'm sure if there was an easy way to improve it, someone would have made a big buck on it years ago.

From my experience in mil comms I can mention two factors:

- because of the high ambient noise they need to use either throat mikes or noise cancellation mikes. The first are very prone to compression and distortion, the latter may suffer from the cancellation process,

- there's a lot of electrical noise also. I remember in my work the all-pervasive 400Hz from the mains, both on all signals and as acoustical noise. Then add in all the digital noise, the radios and radars around you and you've got an EMI nightmare.

jd

A friend who used to work as a tank mechanic claimed to have made a line-level audio interconnect out of the cable connecting the headset to the tank. He claims speech is very clear but everything else is not there.
 
A friend who used to work as a tank mechanic claimed to have made a line-level audio interconnect out of the cable connecting the headset to the tank. He claims speech is very clear but everything else is not there.

I doubt tank mechanic experienced 10G. Jets/spacecrafts realities way too different form what we get used here on solid Earth.

janneman explanation of the topic is clear and correct.
 
Not trying to argue with anyone here, I see this thread as created for entertainment purposes, limited verified facts. Can't have an argument without facts.

I don't believe in cables compared to using other passive components to achieve heavy band-pass-filtering.

Anyway... did NASA fire new satellites or are they still using the old ones from Richard Nixon era?
 
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