What would be wrong with reducing power on the "HD" signal at night on more powerful AMs? If the equiv. of a 5k station or so was used on all stations more powerful than 5k, let's say, at night, wouldn't that help prevent a lot of the issues people are legitimately conserned with? In most cases I'd think the main service area would be quite properly served which is what everyone seems to be concerned about anyway without causing a wall of skywave mush.
-
Get involved.
We want your input!
Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.
After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.
After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/
Thanks in advance and have fun!
RadioDiscussions Administrators
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.
You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.
AM "HD" idea
- Thread starter OKCRadioGuy
- Start date
OKCRadioGuy suggested:
The only way to eliminate the "wall of skywave mush" (an aptly descriptive phrase which you have invented) that is about to be unleashed on the AM broadcast band is to eliminate IBOC broadcasting on AM radio stations. Entirely.
What would be wrong with reducing power on the "HD" signal at night on more powerful AMs? If the equiv. of a 5k station or so was used on all stations more powerful than 5k, let's say, at night, wouldn't that help prevent a lot of the issues people are legitimately conserned with? In most cases I'd think the main service area would be quite properly served which is what everyone seems to be concerned about anyway without causing a wall of skywave mush.
The only way to eliminate the "wall of skywave mush" (an aptly descriptive phrase which you have invented) that is about to be unleashed on the AM broadcast band is to eliminate IBOC broadcasting on AM radio stations. Entirely.
Let's not leave Fm out of the mix here.
With all the brilliant lawyers at the FCC including the weasel at the top, I mean lawyer....
does anyone see what thye are doing to radio in general? HD is only the icing on the Titanic.
Moving stations hundreds of miles in Rulemaking. Satellite radio ground boosters. Rules that only apply to small stations who can't fight fines. Payola. (Payola as you go). On and on.
With all the brilliant lawyers at the FCC including the weasel at the top, I mean lawyer....
does anyone see what thye are doing to radio in general? HD is only the icing on the Titanic.
Moving stations hundreds of miles in Rulemaking. Satellite radio ground boosters. Rules that only apply to small stations who can't fight fines. Payola. (Payola as you go). On and on.
R
rbrucecarter5
Guest
OKCRadioGuy said:What would be wrong with reducing power on the "HD" signal at night on more powerful AMs? If the
I have often thought that the only way this system could be made workable would be to limit IBOC to a portion of the AM band - say 1200 to 1500. Change the allocations to 30 kHz channels instead of 10 kHz. Allow unlimited power - at least unlimited to whatever it takes to cover the metro area. No protection outside of primary service area. That means channels could be re-used. Essentially make that whole section of the band local service only. Any station wanting to employ IBOC would have to move to that section of the band. The remainder of the band would be for C-Quam / extended coverage only. It would mean a massive frequency swap, but that has been done before on the AM band. After initial confusion, people got used to the new allocations.
What WOULD have been a much better idea than the current arrangement would have been to use the X-band for IBOC-only singnals for local coverage. Channel 6 TV band would be actually the best idea. If anyone at the NAB and Ibiquity had any nads and brains to go with them they'd go back to the FCC and ask for channel 6 to fix this mess before it goes further down the wrong road. How many stations' plans for HDTV would be disrupt by taking channel 6 nationwide anyway? Last time I looked it was a REALLY short list of stations that wanted 6 AFTER the '09 analog turn-off. Think of how much easier it would be to just hang a couple bays on a tower (maybe even a hot AM tower with an isocoupler or other methods!) and spit out some nice pure IBOC on virgin spectrum for AM stations? It would be the RIGHT thing to do, so don't look for the goverment to do it.
Thanks for the comments guys. I don't think turning the power down at night for IBOC would be the BEST idea, just a way of helping keep the total obliteration of the AM band from happening if no one does the RIGHT thing.
Thanks for the comments guys. I don't think turning the power down at night for IBOC would be the BEST idea, just a way of helping keep the total obliteration of the AM band from happening if no one does the RIGHT thing.
K6JHU said:Why IBOC on a reclaimed Channel 6. Why not go with Eureka-147 or DRM or a pure robust digtal system.
I think DRM is a EXCELLENT standard. Forcing all new "HD" radios to also accept DRM signals would be a wonderful idea for future uses all the way around when we want to dump analog for good. Aside from that, there's already radios out in the market that will tune IBOC from 88-108. Since the radios are software-based anyway, I would assume allowing the radio to tune the same type of decoder a bit lower would be very easy for a manufacture to program into all future radios.
In a perfect world where the goverment wasn't selling off frequencies and would be willing to give us somewhere to do that, I think it would be the ideal situation to do DRM on microwave, except for rual markets. Reality is we're stuck without doing digital correctly. All we can do is make lemonade outta lemons with what we're allowed.
The best plan would be to do this on anywhere but in a different band.
Each AM keeps its existing place, and the new receivers would decode a low-bit rate FM shift to learn what frequency to find the diversity
signal. This could be in the 5-6 Mhz or so region where we are in violation of international treaties by letting the milatary use bandwidth
allocated for broadcast.
These audio would overlay each other and diversity reception of a digital signal would still introduce some delay, but need not
be the 8 seconds. This delay should happen in the radio, not the station, except for the minimum required to encode.
Old radios get the old signal, new radios can blend or select the better of the two.
I am really less concerned with effects to skywave listening than I am with the horrific reduction in audio quality
to local listeners.
I remember listening in production studios to commercials going to cart, and how awful the ones that came over phone lines sounded.
It is deplorable that reductions in audio quality have been permitted, and finally comes the crown, a crust made of purest splatter.
What we don't understand, we often easily break. Then we can claim we need a new one.
This really all goes back to the elimination of the 1st Class license.
If every station still had a real engineer, this would have never made it to the AM.
I suggest we think of a way for ibiquity to gracefully concede that AM MW is not worth it.
Even if there were no pollution to 5 channels, the smeared-echoed on human voices sounds like good-ole shortwave at best.
As others have hinted, the only thing that REALLY matters is for this to end on the AM.
The FM I can live with.
Each AM keeps its existing place, and the new receivers would decode a low-bit rate FM shift to learn what frequency to find the diversity
signal. This could be in the 5-6 Mhz or so region where we are in violation of international treaties by letting the milatary use bandwidth
allocated for broadcast.
These audio would overlay each other and diversity reception of a digital signal would still introduce some delay, but need not
be the 8 seconds. This delay should happen in the radio, not the station, except for the minimum required to encode.
Old radios get the old signal, new radios can blend or select the better of the two.
I am really less concerned with effects to skywave listening than I am with the horrific reduction in audio quality
to local listeners.
I remember listening in production studios to commercials going to cart, and how awful the ones that came over phone lines sounded.
It is deplorable that reductions in audio quality have been permitted, and finally comes the crown, a crust made of purest splatter.
What we don't understand, we often easily break. Then we can claim we need a new one.
This really all goes back to the elimination of the 1st Class license.
If every station still had a real engineer, this would have never made it to the AM.
I suggest we think of a way for ibiquity to gracefully concede that AM MW is not worth it.
Even if there were no pollution to 5 channels, the smeared-echoed on human voices sounds like good-ole shortwave at best.
As others have hinted, the only thing that REALLY matters is for this to end on the AM.
The FM I can live with.
Tom Wells said:signal. This could be in the 5-6 Mhz or so region where we are in violation of international treaties by letting the
Groundwave coverage on these frequencies would be VERY, VERY poor. (I live about 25 miles from 100kw WWCR shortwave - and have difficulty hearing the station)
The channel 6 idea makes a fair bit of sense. Actually, I would suggest alloting TV channels 4, 5, and 6 for digital radio. Only one market (Butte, Montana) uses both channels 5 and 6, and there channel 4 will be clear after Transition Day. In markets (like Philadelphia) where a TV station will remain on channel 6 after transition, DAB would be limited to channel 5; in markets (like Nashville) where there will be a TV station on channel 5, DAB would be limited to channel 6. You could limit DAB to one or two channels in any given market, and share the other channel(s) with non-broadcast services, if you can find any that want low-band spectrum!
IBOC would work on these frequencies, and could be operated in full-digital mode, allowing for higher power and a more robust datastream that would solve IBOC's coverage issues. Still, if we have completely new spectrum then Eureka probably makes more sense.
(said plan would also save a PILE of old TV transmitting antennas from the scrapheap(grin)!)
A
audiophile.
Guest
K6JHU said:Why IBOC on a reclaimed Channel 6. Why not go with Eureka-147 or DRM or a pure robust digtal system.
You could fit 400+ DRM signals in a SINGLE TV channel.
D
dbdigital
Guest
These are all excellent ideas. Wasn't anything like this ever discussed among the engineers at the FCC when they were deciding on a standard for digital radio?
As was mentioned, TV stations are already being channel-shifted within the television band as they migrate to DTV, certainly this could have been done with the AM band as well.
db
As was mentioned, TV stations are already being channel-shifted within the television band as they migrate to DTV, certainly this could have been done with the AM band as well.
db
- Status
- This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.