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DIGITAL AM?
- Thread starter Mrtejano
- Start date
They're talking about it. However it's not very practical, since it would require people to buy new radios in order to receive it. There's also the matter of music royalties. The music industry believes if a radio station uses digital transmission, it is liable for digital royalties. They don't apply to broadcast radio.
https://radioink.com/2020/10/07/the-fcc-prepares-to-vote-on-all-digital-am/
This is being "tested" outside of Washington, DC, in Fredrick, MD. A station in Ft Wayne, IN, tried it for a while but reverted back to analog.
The real question is whether the market needs a new digital medium that requires, as BigA said already, new equipment. Nearly all of us have a digital device already so why would we need another one? And, more importantly, why would we spend money on one?
No. That was HD radio.
Yes. Only a few stations survive, mostly with older listeners.
But the problem is much bigger than the audio quality. In the top 100 markets, only about 175 stations in total actually cover 80% or better of the market day and night.
Look at Houston: how many stations on AM cover the 11 counties in the metro well, day and night?
The all digital "solution" for AM being tested currently in Frederick, MD, is HD but without the analog signal.
It is HD.
This actually makes perfect sense from the standpoint of any AM station whose primary audience is from the translator: You switch the origination point to digital and promote to the existing translator audience that they can hear the station farther out, with the same or better quality, on the digital frequency. Any HD AM radio can receive the all digital signal. The only problem is getting additional people to buy radios. At least it's possible whereas reviving analog AM is not!
The other option is streaming your AM signal and direct them to Alexa. The sound will be the same.
ThatVoice22
Banned
What was the station in Fort Wayne, and why did it revert to analog?
I forget the calls... it just did not see a future in pure digital at the moment.
In a huge percentage of cases, the day and night coverage of a translator with decent height is better than that of the AM.
For all daytime AMs, and all the former Class IV stations, a translator is vastly better than the AM facility... and that makes up about half of all AMs in the US. Even many of the fulltime 5 kw regional channel stations about 1240 will cover better day and night with a translator.
A
AnyHuman
Guest
I have both ALexa and Google Assistant speakers, I wouldn't buy an AM radio especially since digital AM isn't near CD quality like Internet streams can be. Digital AM sounded like a low bitrate MP3 file when I listened briefly.
The all-digital AM system is quite comparable to most internet streams (which are NOT CD quality).
A
AnyHuman
Guest
I understand.
Hybrid HD AM has to accommodate the analog portion and the sound quality suffers. All Digital has none of those problems and sounds like FM HD. I heard KRKO Everett WA testing at night, from Portland OR and it sounded just like very clear FM! I've never heard their analog signal anything close to clear and that was 40 years ago. I doubt if you can hear it at all anymore!
Digital AM is what I believe is also called HD MA3, which is different than the hybrid HD AM that issues. A write up on some of the tests done can be found here.
https://www.radioworld.com/columns-and-views/all-digital-ma3
https://www.radioworld.com/columns-and-views/all-digital-ma3
Anyone with an HD Radio can receive digital MA3 mode. It's just eliminating the analog-modulated component.
That is correct. MA3 mode (all digital, no hybrid mode) is more robust that MA1 mode (hybrid analog / digital), and can be decoded by existing HD AM receivers.
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