Brian Cryer's Glossary of IT Terms with Links

NICAM

NICAM

Near Instantaneous Companded Audio Multiplex.

A technique for including digital audio when broadcasting analogue TV. NICAM is intended to provide CD quality stereo for TV broadcasts. Basically it is a digital sound TV carrier signal said to be very robust, even when analogue reception was poor. In reality this was not the case and in areas where signal strength was poor, switching to mono gave favourable results like on FM radio broadcasts

NICAM is also known as "NICAM 728" and "NICAM Stereo".