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AM HD Radio

P

Phippy

Guest
First let me say that I know nothing about radio, I just know I like to listen to it.

I like to listen to AM 600 WREC on my way home from work. I work in Memphis and I live north of there, close to Covington. This time of year, I lose the signal around 5:00 PM as I'm going home. The radio station responded to an email of mine and explained to me why that happens. They said, that according to their license, they have to redirect their signal after a certain time each day and I'm essentially out of luck. They were more specific, but that was the jist of it.

My question, their website: www.600wrec.com seems to imply that they have an AM HD presence. Will that in any way help me on my drive home if I buy a HD capable radio for the car?

Thanks for your time.
 
Phippy said:
First let me say that I know nothing about radio, I just know I like to listen to it.

I like to listen to AM 600 WREC on my way home from work. I work in Memphis and I live north of there, close to Covington. This time of year, I lose the signal around 5:00 PM as I'm going home. The radio station responded to an email of mine and explained to me why that happens. They said, that according to their license, they have to redirect their signal after a certain time each day and I'm essentially out of luck. They were more specific, but that was the jist of it.

My question, their website: www.600wrec.com seems to imply that they have an AM HD presence. Will that in any way help me on my drive home if I buy a HD capable radio for the car?

Thanks for your time.
Click to expand...


Unfortunately, the short answer is no. The HD signal rides on the analog signal (the one you hear now), so when the station switches to the nighttime directional antenna system you would lose the HD signal as well.

Moreover, HD radio, especially on AM, isn’t all it’s cracked up to be (especially at night) for a variety of reasons, most of them technical. The bare truth is the AM HD signal has less range than the analog signal even in the daytime. It does sound better, but only in very strong signal areas.

Sorry. I live in North Shelby county and it happens to me as well.
 
Phippy said:
My question, their website: www.600wrec.com seems to imply that they have an AM HD presence. Will that in any way help me on my drive home if I buy a HD capable radio for the car?
Click to expand...

Radiosaur is right that an HD radio isn't going to help you. What I might recommend, though, is to subscribe to an unlimited data plan with your cell carrier and get either an iPhone or a BlackBerry. WREC is available through the iHeartRadio application (as are the rest of Clear Channel's Memphis stations), and iHeartRadio has apps for both the iPhone and the BlackBerry. However, the one pitfall there is that you'll still be out of luck if you can't get a good cellular network signal the entire way along your path home from work. The data signal works differently from the voice signal, and you may be able to get data where you can't get voice or vice versa. So, there's really no way to test the data signal unless you already have a data plan.
 
I have listened on my iPhone a time or two. One drawback is that such apps suck the battery life quicker than Kirstie Alley can suck down a dozen Krispy Kremes.

Oh, and as an aside... I don't think WREC is using the IBOC at night. Are they?

DE
 
WREC isn't on some FM station's HD2 or HD3, is it?

(WLAC over here in Nashville is running HD on their AM signal, but as with WREC both their analog and HD signals disappear at night up here in Cheatham Co.. But WLAC is on WNRQ-FM's HD3, and that comes in just fine. Not that I have any desire to listen to the WLAC programming ;) )
 
No, they're not.

It would make sense (assuming HD adds value at all). One would think they have some capacity to do it.

DE
 
DeadElvis said:
I have listened on my iPhone a time or two. One drawback is that such apps suck the battery life quicker than Kirstie Alley can suck down a dozen Krispy Kremes.
Click to expand...

I don't know if my results are typical, but I can generally listen on my iPhone for about 2 hours before draining down the battery, which is longer than your typical Memphis rush hour. Of course, if you have an iTrip, you can charge the iPhone while you're listening in your car because it has an extra outlet for charging. I don't know if BlackBerry has a similar listening device, but I would guess it does. A friend of mine has a radio with an auxiliary outlet and just plugs his BlackBerry into it.

The biggest issues with listening over a mobile device have to do with the network itself. The radio apps don't seem to recover well from drop outs. Most of them seem to buffer until you close and restart the app, which you shouldn't do while driving. Also, if you don't have 3G on the entire trip, you need to set your phone to "EDGE" only or you'll likely have trouble when you move from 3G to EDGE. I've noticed iHeartRadio has gotten better with both of those issues, but the buffering is still ungodly long when you've either recovered the network or moved from 3G to EDGE. iHeartRadio seems to stream reasonably well along the pokier EDGE network while several other radio apps seem to need the 3G network.
 
DE, you can buy a Belkin (hardwired or wireless) device that will stream your iPhone through your radio and charge it at the same time. Problem solved. ::)
 
I own one, of course. But, I have never been happy with the audio out of those FM modulators, particularly the Belkin ones (the modulators in Satellite Radio units seem a bit better).

My wife's car has an audio input, and with external DC, that works fairly well.

DE
 
I stream audio from my iPhone all of the time. I do have a radio with 2 inputs on it. Overkill I know.

Its hard to choose what to listen to sometimes. I have XM, HD, MP3's on data DVD's, and 4 8gb flash drives full of music in addition to internet streams via my phone.

64k streams or lower work pretty well on EDGE.

Internet use in cars is definitely on the rise. Stations need to consider ease of use for their web streams. Streams that use those flash players don't work on cell phones.

Every large company I know blocks streaming media. I listen to music at work via my phone as do many people I know.
 
karsonwithak said:
DE, you can buy a Belkin (hardwired or wireless) device that will stream your iPhone through your radio and charge it at the same time. Problem solved. ::)
Click to expand...

I have one of these for my iPod and it sounds like ass. Not to mention it's really hard to find an open channel. It also doesn't help that my particular stock radio is junk. The system sounds great with a CD but the radio stinks.
 
DeadElvis said:
I have listened on my iPhone a time or two. One drawback is that such apps suck the battery life quicker than Kirstie Alley can suck down a dozen Krispy Kremes.


DE
Click to expand...

Just an FWI ... I'm stealing that line.
 
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