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Old friend (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 week ago by to c/memes@lemmy.world
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[–] 0 points 1 week ago (8 children)

I think they're joking about earbud wires catching AM radio signals and giving spooky whispers

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  • [–] 12 points 1 week ago (6 children)

    I don’t think they’re joking at all… what they said is true. If the phone has an FM receiver then the wired headphones do serve as the antenna for it. It will not work without wired headphones.

    Back in the day that was a good way to have free music over the air if you didn’t have an unlimited data plan, which most people didn’t.

    It’s just obsolete tech now. Having a headphone jack doesn’t mean anything if the phone doesn’t have an FM receiver. Most phones don’t have an FM chip in them anymore.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 week ago (3 children)

    They just said it can't be recreated with USB which you can definitely do

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  • [–] 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    No you can’t… at least not easily or cost effectively.

    It’s not just the wire on the headphones, it’s how an analog jack works. A 3.5mm audio jack routes raw analog signal through a direct electrical connection. USB doesn’t not. Without the raw analog signal, the FM receiver can’t do anything with it.

    You need extra hardware like an analog pass through to get USB to handle analog radio signals. And that’s expensive and bulky for no benefit over an audio jack which is compact and dirt cheap.

    Respectfully, you don’t know what you’re talking about here.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago

    I'm not disagreeing that the FM radio circuit being directly connected to the trs connector is how phones worked for decades, I'm just saying that they said you couldn't get FM radio over usb, so I assumed they must not be talking about literally receiving FM radio to the computer because obviously you can use SDR over usb. Maybe I'm just too autistic to appreciate what they were trying to say, but the interpretation I had from their comment was that killing TRS removed the ability for your phone to receive radio even including over usb, which is demonstrably wrong. But yes, your phone receiving the raw analogue signal through the TRS connector and using its dedicated radio circuit is in fact a thing, and almost certainly the better way to do it.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 week ago

    My Motorola has an FM receiver app. You can scan and save your favorite stations and save them separately for different cities. You can even record audio. I've used it in places where reception sucks for streaming from my home server. And if you don't want to use the headphones, you can switch to speaker or BT and still use the wire as an antenna.

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