I really don't like it..I know it won't happen ASAP, Maybe for another 5 years
But, it will come
All these AM Radios going to be useless
But, it will come
All these AM Radios going to be useless
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Digital AM
- Thread starter MarioMania
- Start date
It will take a massive push by the broadcast industry to get manufacturers interested in making, stores interested in promoting and selling, and -- most importantly -- an American public that hasn't bought radios to any great extent for at least 20 years, to get this idea to work. The stations that go all digital will go all dark in a year or two otherwise.
I've never understood HD AM radio.
I could easily understand if there were a lot of AM stations still playing top 40 music but why would you need HD sound just for talk radio?
AM stereo was a much better idea back in the early 80's as an attempt to keep music popular on the AM band at a time when so many stations were making the switch to talk.
I loved AM stereo and spent a lot of time listening to my Sony AM Stereo Walkman and it was so cool to hear distant stations such as WLS in stereo sound.
To me, it sounded better than FM because it was a more solid less high pitch sound.
I could easily understand if there were a lot of AM stations still playing top 40 music but why would you need HD sound just for talk radio?
AM stereo was a much better idea back in the early 80's as an attempt to keep music popular on the AM band at a time when so many stations were making the switch to talk.
I loved AM stereo and spent a lot of time listening to my Sony AM Stereo Walkman and it was so cool to hear distant stations such as WLS in stereo sound.
To me, it sounded better than FM because it was a more solid less high pitch sound.
There's still a listener base on AM, Not much
People still listen to the News, Sports Games on AM
I don't think they can fix Interference or even Skywave
People still listen to the News, Sports Games on AM
I don't think they can fix Interference or even Skywave
Digital on AM sounds great. I doubt most stations will go all-digital. In fact, a minority of them will go all-HD, due to various factors.
By the time the entire AM band is truly all-digital (IF that actually happens, and I don't think it will), there won't be any analog stations to listen to, anyway.
If you want to hear the all-digital station, just get a Sangean HD AM radio for $100 or less, and then keep the analog radios for the rest of them.
By the time the entire AM band is truly all-digital (IF that actually happens, and I don't think it will), there won't be any analog stations to listen to, anyway.
If you want to hear the all-digital station, just get a Sangean HD AM radio for $100 or less, and then keep the analog radios for the rest of them.
That doesn’t work so well for people driving around in cars. I don’t really see a need for AM radio stations to convert to all-digital when 99.99% of people listening to AM stations listen to the analog broadcast anyway.
But it is shrinking. In markets like Houston, the use by persons under 55 is less than 5%.
But they switch if the same content is available on FM. Sports teams are now looking for FM stations to deal with as they know fewer and fewer listeners in the ages that attend games listen to AM.
The interference comes from hundreds of millions of electronic devices ranging from wall warts to CPU-controlled refrigerators.
And skywave can be suppressed using towers of a specific wavelength height, but AM is generally not worth the investment required for retrofitting and skywave will only be reduced a bit. In other words, you can't change the laws of physics.
Will digital AM be in stereo and will it work with skywave? I might be interested in the future but it depends a lot on if it makes formats I like available in my area. If it stays all news/talk or if stations in my area don't carry it then I don't see why I would want it.
K
kenglish
Guest
Always seems funny to me that stations and clients prefer a 99 watt FM translator, over a 10, 25 or even 50 KW medium-wave (Aka, "AM") station.
As for interference, if the FCC (and others) began a concentrated effort to fix the RFI problem, we might make some real headway. It might take a few years, but getting the noise-makers out of the pipeline now, and keeping them out while the old, non-compliant fails or burns up, would be a worthwhile goal.
As for interference, if the FCC (and others) began a concentrated effort to fix the RFI problem, we might make some real headway. It might take a few years, but getting the noise-makers out of the pipeline now, and keeping them out while the old, non-compliant fails or burns up, would be a worthwhile goal.
My understanding of the NPRM is that all-digital AMs could continue to feed their analog FM translators.
It's not stations and clients driving this bus. It is listeners, who have all but abandoned AM radio in many markets. There is only one commercially operated AM in my market which is not paired with an FM translator, and it had a 2.4 share in the last ratings book. Now surely some of the listening to the with-translator AM stations is still via Ancient Modulation, but probably not a lot.
So I think it would be fair to suggest that fewer than 5 shares of the 100 shares in this market were on AM in the last book. Almost definitely less than 10 shares.
That would take some convincing that there even is an RFI problem.
That's the whole point as to why this is a viable option now. There are AM stations that have virtually their entire audience listening to their translator. Why not shut down the analog AM and switch it to all digital to expand coverage and improve the overall sound, while retaining the translator? Also, any HD radio that can receive AM can also receive it in full digital.
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Owned by a small percentage of the population. One optimistic estimate was around a million.
By the time They will all go All Digital on AM
The Band going to be dead anyways, No one going to come back to AM
People are going to still listen to FM
The Band going to be dead anyways, No one going to come back to AM
People are going to still listen to FM
Are you saying that the vast majority of HD radios don't include AM, because the total I just read was over 50 million on the road?
Even if that exaggerated figure were true, that is only about one in every 6 vehicles.
And less than half of radio listening is in the care. There are somewhere less than zero home and workplace HD radios.
AM is on the decline in every market, and very few people under 50 ever listen. I don't believe that improved quality will help much, particularly given the fact that in the top 100 markets there is an average of less than two stations that come close to full market coverage and in many markets there are none.
Creating interest in AM when most people are listening on new media devices like tablets, smartphones and smart speakers is just not going to happen.
A lot of newer cars already have them. HD AM and FM along with analog FM and AM. As for the portables, people seek out new devices all the time. As to whether a present AM listener will buy an HD AM portable to hear their station, I can see it happening for those who aren't in range of a translator and really want to listen. Not all translators are equal. Two of the local AM talkers here who have translators have marginal coverage with their translators. On paper it looks great, but there are terrain shadows. The other talk and sports AMs in the same situation are on HD2 on FM. So in those cases, it's AM analog, HD on FM, or listen to the stream if you have access.
So listeners to those stations will either have to go HD for OTA, stay analog, or go smart speaker / phone reception -- I think the latter two options are the ones that most people are going for nowadays.
This is why I think analog will be around for a while, until the listeners are gone. It works. Yeah, it has RFI, but it works.
MA3 digital as well as MA1 hybrid is stereo..to 20k. But the cost of doing it won't be cheap...and will run off all the analog listeners..
Is there a current/accurate list of existing AM HD stations? The only list I can find is on hdradio.com:
https://hdradio.com/stations/
It's definitely out of date.
https://hdradio.com/stations/
It's definitely out of date.
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