Re:Why does FM sound better than AM?
by xd1936 on Monday October 14, 2024 @08:51AM
(#41837049)
Going back to first principles, modulating the frequency instead of the amplitude inherently makes the system less lossy. Imagine you were communicating with someone miles away on a hilltop, and they had a lot of data to convey. Would you find it easier to distinguish signal vs. noise if the light was increasing and decreasing rapidly in brightness (AM) or color (FM)?
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If you AM modulate the carrier f0 by a single tone f1, you get a spectrum with only three tones: f0 - f1, f0, f0 + f1. If you FM modulate it, well the thing gets much more complex - depending on the depth of modulation you can get a much wider spectrum than from f0-f1 to f0+f1. So it is hard to compare. Your FM modulated signal may indeed be more resilient to noise but will require wider channel to be properly transmitted.
I haven’t seen a convincing explanation if FM would be really that better than AM if both were given exactly the same channel width.