Opportunistic muting of all-digital stations during noisy acquisition

An apparatus comprising:

• a digital radio receiver to receive and process radio broadcast signals;
• and
• a controller to control the digital radio receiver and configured to:
• acquire a list identifying which of the radio broadcast signals are all-digital signals and which of the radio broadcast signals are hybrid signals;
• receive input to tune to a particular radio broadcast signal among the radio broadcast signals;
• and
• determining that the particular radio broadcast signal is an all-digital signal based on the list, controlling the digital radio receiver to:
• play muted audio;
• while playing muted audio, tune to the particular radio broadcast signal and performing digital signal acquisition of the particular radio broadcast signal;
• while performing digital signal acquisition of the particular DRB signal, mute digital audio to produce muted digital audio, and causing a blend multiplexer to select the muted digital audio for playback;
• and
• unmute the digital audio recovered from the particular DRB signal after digital signal acquisition is complete, and switching from playing muted audio to playing digital audio while the blend multiplexer continues to select the digital audio for playback.

A non-transitory computer readable medium encoded with instructions that, when executed by a processor of a digital radio receiver configured to receive and process digital radio broadcast (DRB) signals, cause the processor to perform:

• acquiring a list identifying which of the DRB signals are all-digital signals;
• receiving input to tune to a particular DRB signal among the DRB signals;
• performing digital signal acquisition of the particular DRB signal, muting digital audio to produce muted digital audio based upon acquisition of the digital signal of the particular DRB signal, and causing a blend multiplexer to select the muted digital audio for playback;
• and
• determining that the particular DRB signal is an all-digital signal based on the list, controlling the digital radio receiver to perform:
• playing muted audio;
• tuning to the particular DRB signal and performing digital signal acquisition of the particular DRB signal;
• and
• unmuting the digital audio recovered from the particular DRB signal after digital signal acquisition is complete, and switching from playing muted audio to playing digital audio selected by the blend multiplexer for playback.