Yo! William:
Friday September 06 1996 02:26, William Stinson wrote to Bill Cheek:
 WS> this may sound like a stupid question. i would please like to know if
 WS> the winradio is a digital scanner reciever or is it analog like the rest
 WS> of them ? can it pick up digital signals like a computer does or would a
 WS> digital signal still sound like a bunch of garbage ?
Ouch!  Gotta choose my words carefully here.
The question isn't stupid, but it reflects your basic misunderstanding of 
radio itself.  So here are a few fundamentals.
1.  The actual radio medium, i.e. electromagnetic wave propagation is now;
    always was, and always will be....ANALOG.  Period.
2.  The simplest way to communicate by radio waves is to turn them on and
    off in some form of a coded pattern.  (Morse Code?)
    di-di-di   dah-dah-dah   di-di-di   for an S-O-S.   This form of comms
    is basically digital in nature, but the ears interpret it as analog,
    and it works out ok.
3.  Then there is speech, which in most cases, is analog.
Up to this point, we have analog RF waves and analog speech waves, and when 
mixed for sending, this is called MODULATION.  Now short of Morse Code, which 
is not modulation, most any other means of impressing intelligent meaning 
into an analog radio wave means a method of modulation is required.  Speech 
is the one with which we are most familiar.
But there is also FAX, teletype, and much more, where analog modulation is 
not very efficient....or in some case, not possible, so we invented digital 
forms of modulation, of which FSK (frequency shift keying) is one.  That's 
where a system used two analog tones to modulate the RF wave. One tone stands 
for a zero (0) and the other stands for a one (1). This allows data of many 
types to be sent via the analog wave using analog processes.  But an FSK 
signal sounds nasty like you described above.  Other forms of digital 
modulation are equally nasty or worse.
Basically, all receivers are the same....analog circuits. And the common 
thread for them all is to detect radio waves and to decode any sound that 
might be impressed thereon.  The sound of music or voice is nice.  The sound 
of digital data is nasty.  But you get it all.
Now we come to a fork in the road.  All radios are much the same.  But 
differences begin where the type of signal differs.  For CW (Morse Code) if 
you don't want to detect it in your head, by listening to it from headphones 
or a speaker, then you need to get a CW Decoder.  You will need an FSK 
Decoder for RTTY and FAX, and otherwise a special decoder for any and all 
other non-voice signals out there.
Radios do not come with these "decoders".  There are too many. You hve to buy 
whatever you want and add it to the radio.
The radio is not in the equation.  To answer your question, WinRadio is like 
ALL other radios in that it detects the analog RF wave, and removes any 
intellgence from it, and makes that intelligence available at a defined 
oint.
Most people want sound, so that defined point is the speaker jack.  You would 
also use that point for RTTY signals, except you'd patch the signal there 
into a RTTY decoder.
CLOSING NOTE HERE:  Not all signals "out there" are decodable.  Some signals 
are encoded with a proprietary method, and no decoder exists for which to 
decode those signals unless you buy it from the provider.  Furthermore, many 
of these digital signals are encrypted which cannot be decoded by any but the 
intended target receiver.
WinRadio is a radio that plugs into a PC, with all the advantages thereof.  
It has tremendous possibilities over a conventional stand-alone radio.   But 
in its purest sense, it is just a radio.....like all other radios.
Bill Cheek | Internet: bcheek@cts.com | Compu$erve: 74107,1176
Windows 95 Juggernaut Team | Microsoft MVP
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