Well...

The worst answer ever: It depends.

To a certain extent, that *is* true. I wish I still had the graphics from my presentation, but they're gone. Essentially, it's a double-edged sword. Yes, unlike analog, which essentially tapers off until the signal becomes overcome with the noise level, and intelligibility is lost, digital has a "digital cliff" where, once a distance-threshold is crossed, there's a small area where the audio becomes garbled/robotic and then the signal abruptly drops.

It's been my experience that, typically, the "digital cliff" is at, or slightly beyond, the intelligibility threshold of its analog counterpart.

Generally speaking:

1) Digital maintains the same quality throughout the maximum transmission distance
2) Analog loses quality as distance increases until the signal cannot be differentiated from the noise.

Because both are limited to LOS only, the maximum range of both are relatively comparable.

Hope that helps.

Quote Originally Posted by TXBK View Post
It is my limited understanding that, even with digital simplex, that it may not carry a weak signal at all once it passes a certain threshold (longer range) while a weak analog signal can still be received, through the noise. The audio clarity of digital will be better across the board than analog, but once the digital signal is too weak it won't come through at all. Is this correct?