and why does it do that crazy thing where it sounds like it's underwater when you have bad reception?

 

Hello,

Perhaps the following pages might help:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-analog-radio-works-whats-digital-radio-and-whats-next/
https://www.electronics-notes.com/a...tal-radio-audio-broadcasting-dab-tutorial.php

As for the underwater sound , when signal is weak and bits are missed from the transmission, the decoding of the signal will fail.
https://www.radioandtvhelp.co.uk/interference/rtis_radio/lost_DABradio
https://www.radioandtvhelp.co.uk/interference/rtis_radio/burbling_DABradio

Bertus

 

HI, thanks for the reply

I might have made myself sound like more of a novice than I am when asking the question, I mean what is the specific compression scheme used to transmit the data and which pieces of information need to be lost to produce the underwater sound - when streaming from youtube for example, there are key pieces of information which when lost will produce that signature fame on top of frame blur effect. Is the underwater sound a result of a specific piece of information being lost, or just too many random bits being lost?

I want to replicate the sound just using a microcontroller. I'd like to know more about the audible effects of losing bits in different compression schemes

 

COFDM