Comment on Yes, you can store data on a bird — enthusiast converts PNG to bird-shaped waveform, teaches young starling to recall file at up to 2MB/s

• gozz@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Yes, the near-identical sentences (only drawing a distinction between the processes where one exists) would indicate that. The “heard by the bird” and “reproduced by the bird” steps were also the same. But this is necessary context to make clear the digital data (“bit-stream”) that is being modulated into the signal.

  It is far from “exactly the same”. The similarity is only in that both go through the same analogue channel. The entire point is that the modulated signal can be reconstructed exactly, while the spectrogram cannot.

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  • CookieOfFortune@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    The entire point is that the modulated signal can be reconstructed exactly,

    But this isn’t true. Just because a signal is modulated doesn’t mean it can’t be distorted.

    A spectrogram is just showing that arbitrary data can be sent though this channel. It’s literally a form of modulation.

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    • gozz@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      I suppose you have caught me out slightly lacking in precision or pedantry. A digital to analogue modulation scheme is able to exactly reconstruct the original digital signal within the design tolerances for noise and distortion. Yes, eventually a signal may degrade or be corrupted, but prior to that point the reproduction is literally and exactly perfect. That exactitude is just about the definition of a digital system. This bird system is incapable of reproducing the input image of the bird exactly. It is not a digital communication system, unless you consider the “PNG” of the bird to have not been the message being carried.

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      • CookieOfFortune@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        I thought we were being pedantic here?

        Yes, eventually a signal may degrade or be corrupted, but prior to that point the reproduction is literally and exactly perfect.

        Modulation schemes are characterized via a probabilistic tolerance, so even when you are within the tolerances, you can get an incorrect value at some expected rate. Note that you can even define a modulation scheme with a high error rate and be ok with that.

        That’s why I take issue with the concept of an exactly perfect reproduction. Usually there are layers above the digital modulation to handle these possibility to decrease the error rates even lower.

        And no, I don’t consider the PNG to be the data carried. I think the way the author does the bandwidth calculations is incorrect.

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