File talk:Possible PDM signal labeled as Sputnik by NASA.ogg

PDM

What does "PDM" mean in this context? - dcljr (talk) 00:16, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Sputnik or not

The description of this file says, "This is not the Sputnik-1 signal. There are a number of authentic recordings of the signal that can be found on Sputnik 1 in the external links. Please don't link this into the article on Sputnik-1. It is not Sputnik-2 or 3 either, so nobody really knows what it is. It does appear to be some kind of PDM signal, maybe from a Soviet spacecraft." However, this text was added by an IP editor years ago with no cited source. Is there really a good reason to doubt that this is the signal of the/a Sputnik spacecraft? Apparently, User:Closeapple [1] and User:Alpha Quadrant [2] thought so, but do we actually have any evidence? Note that many WP articles (in different languages) link to the file, claiming that it is the real Sputnik signal. - dcljr (talk) 01:13, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

I don't actually know whether it's one or the other (or what PDM is for sure). Unfortunately, I don't remember what caused me to stumble onto this file originally, but it must have been something that made me think the warning (from an anonymous IP) in the page text wasn't enough at the time: so, after hearing the file and thinking it was possible that it was something more complex than Sputnik (which had a very simple signal), I tagged it to be renamed to something that gave both sides of the claim, so it didn't get used as the "source" of what a Sputnik signal sounded like unless there was agreement on whether it was correct. Maybe a message on the talk page for en:Wikipedia:WikiProject Spaceflight can find someone who can identify whether this file is one or the other (and what "PDM" might be). (This file is a conversion of the file linked as "Sputnik" on "Sounds of the Space Age".) --Closeapple (talk) 09:29, 3 February 2014 (UTC)