RTSstøj

RTSstøj is a Danish term that describes unwanted noise phenomena associated with real-time systems in broadcasting, streaming, and digital audio workflows. The concept encompasses a range of disturbances that can degrade audio quality, reduce intelligibility, or create perceptible artifacts in video or sound transmissions.

Causes of RTSstøj can include timing jitter and clock drift in real-time processing pipelines, buffer underflows or overruns in streaming and encoding software, and quantization noise from fixed-point digital signal processing. Electromagnetic interference, inadequate shielding, poor grounding, and power-supply instability can also contribute. In broadcast environments, RTSstøj may arise from interactions between multiple devices sharing a common clock or control lines, leading to intermittent glitches.

Characteristics of RTSstøj vary but often appear as intermittent crackles, hiss, flutter, or low-level rumble that does not follow a simple repeating pattern. The noise can be broadband or concentrated in certain frequency bands, and its presence may correlate with system load, network latency, or disk I/O activity.

Measurement and mitigation are central to managing RTSstøj. Quantitative approaches include spectrum analysis, signal-to-noise assessments, and jitter measurements, while qualitative methods rely on listening tests. Mitigation strategies emphasize improving clock synchronization, increasing buffering with careful sequencing, applying dithering and proper quantization levels, enhancing shielding and grounding, and ensuring clean power supplies. In production environments, software updates and hardware revisions that reduce processing latency and stabilize real-time operations are commonly employed.

In summary, RTSstøj is a practical concern in real-time audio and video systems, reflecting the broader challenge of maintaining signal integrity in live processing and transmission workflows.