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AM HD TURNOFF PACE ACCELERATES
- Thread starter Savage
- Start date
satech said:If that's Crawford, tell them to turn their C-Quam exciters back on, too, while they're at it.Osama said:
I highly doubt it's Crawford. Judging from their latest newsletter they can't wait to pour mo' money into their transmitter plants to bring them up to spec for the HD-FM power increase. They truly are the poster child for HD Radio.
http://www.crawfordbroadcasting.com/~cbc/Local_Oscillator/March 2010 Local Oscillator.pdf
c5
Cris Alexander staked his professional reputation and career on HD. He hard-sold the whole concept to Don Crawford, who is technically clueless. As long as the group remains financially viable Don is likely to leave Cris alone.
Crawford is doing a slo-mo divestiture of its stations - in some markets they're being "sold" in inter-family transfers to other Crawfords at prices well below fair-market value. And staffs are being slashed when it happens.
Regard whatever happens with Crawford as anomalous.
Crawford is doing a slo-mo divestiture of its stations - in some markets they're being "sold" in inter-family transfers to other Crawfords at prices well below fair-market value. And staffs are being slashed when it happens.
Regard whatever happens with Crawford as anomalous.
That "sometimes" is the problem. Buy a car, the brakes work - sometimes.Zach said:badjef said:
Seems to work in cell phones. Sometimes.
A technology has to be at least as easy and dependable as the one it is supposed to be replacing or it will not be accepted by the marketed audience.
Press a button on a car radio, and you have what you wanted. People complained about static, we have FM.
Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!
UPDATE: IBOC AM STATION POP COUNT
In Reply 49, back on February 23, I noted that the IBOC-AM station current roster had dropped to 260 stations (only about a third with HD 24-7) from a high in 2008 of almost 290.
As of this date: it's down to 255. 5 more HD-AM's have tossed in the "digital" towel:
http://topazdesigns.com/iboc/station-list.html
If this pace were to continue - admittedly, that's probably too much to hope - we'd be down to 200 stations or fewer by year's end.
Yep. HD - definitely "on the grow...."
In Reply 49, back on February 23, I noted that the IBOC-AM station current roster had dropped to 260 stations (only about a third with HD 24-7) from a high in 2008 of almost 290.
As of this date: it's down to 255. 5 more HD-AM's have tossed in the "digital" towel:
http://topazdesigns.com/iboc/station-list.html
If this pace were to continue - admittedly, that's probably too much to hope - we'd be down to 200 stations or fewer by year's end.
Yep. HD - definitely "on the grow...."
badjef said:
KNX 1070 in LA has been hash-free for a couple of days, at least at night. I can hear KRLD 1080 Dallas and local KDUS 1060 perfectly from Phoenix now. Both used to be totally wiped out by KNX's splatter from 350 miles away (isn't the IBOC hash supposed to be much weaker than the analog?).
Don't look now, on 2nd thought, look now, a SRF-A100 just sold on eBay for $202.50.satech said:If that's Crawford, tell them to turn their C-Quam exciters back on, too, while they're at it.Osama said:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=360250541661&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT
Yep, AM stereo is dead and HD is alive and well.
I'd like to know what some of you AM HD'ers are smoking or sleeping with.
Are Payne and Draper still around???
Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!
Savage, If it was mentioned before, I'm sorry for repeating it. You can knock down that number to 254, becauseSavage said:UPDATE: IBOC AM STATION POP COUNT
In Reply 49, back on February 23, I noted that the IBOC-AM station current roster had dropped to 260 stations (only about a third with HD 24-7) from a high in 2008 of almost 290.
As of this date: it's down to 255. 5 more HD-AM's have tossed in the "digital" towel:
http://topazdesigns.com/iboc/station-list.html
If this pace were to continue - admittedly, that's probably too much to hope - we'd be down to 200 stations or fewer by year's end.
Yep. HD - definitely "on the grow...."
the site still shows WLS running it, they've had it off night and day now for about 2 months or so, if not more.
That's the second 50Kw in Chicago to dump it the first being WGN.
Now I can keep hoping that the rest follow suit soon. The difference between 780 and 890 is now like night and day.
Yes, HD-AM Version 17.2 in the continuing parade of IBOC software tweaks (all presumably requiring new exciter purchases or upgrades) providing 10.2 kHz analog bandpass without IBOC noise has generated about as much consumer-listener excitement as the FM digital power increase.
Which is to say: zero.
How many freakin' improvements, upgrades, and patches are the HD nuts going to trot out to try to convince people HD Radio actually works? Attention, all you HD-types who labour mightily to draw a historical parallel between FM radio's slow adoption and HD: please point out for the class, ONE example of how the whole FM mode had to be revised to correct poor and/or unacceptable performance as experienced in the field after its deployment.
Back to HD-AM. So....the "improved" codec provides us with bandpass.....equivalent to non-HD stations!
Wow! That's dramatic! : We've gone through three years of 78 rpm sound, and now....research, development and "improvement" have restored the 2005 status quo for analog listeners! Talk about progress......
NOT.
Which is to say: zero.
How many freakin' improvements, upgrades, and patches are the HD nuts going to trot out to try to convince people HD Radio actually works? Attention, all you HD-types who labour mightily to draw a historical parallel between FM radio's slow adoption and HD: please point out for the class, ONE example of how the whole FM mode had to be revised to correct poor and/or unacceptable performance as experienced in the field after its deployment.
Back to HD-AM. So....the "improved" codec provides us with bandpass.....equivalent to non-HD stations!
Wow! That's dramatic! :
We've gone through three years of 78 rpm sound, and now....research, development and "improvement" have restored the 2005 status quo for analog listeners! Talk about progress......NOT.
Savage said:
Hey! That's unfair to 78 RPM records! I have many many records from the whole span that shellac records were made,
and I'd have a hard time finding some that sound as bad as iboc-ed AM analog.
Maybe one or two of my Uncle Josh comedy records, or Sam and Henry ( Amos and Andy) because they were very popular and people
wore those records out.
Now about the bandwidth....what I saw in the spectral distribution picture, I think, was 10khz of "clear" spectrum for the host,
with digital sidebands beginning just above that. If that is so then only 5 khz of decoded audio is possible before there's hiss.
In order to allow 10 khz audio without hiss, the "clear" spectrum space would need to be 20 Khz, minimum.
On high-fidelity AM radios, there is no advantage to the listener. Hiss is perhaps a bit higher in frequency, but just as present.
Dumbed down analog restrictions still make for lifeless audio.
If they happen to use a PLL tuned radio with an effective 5khz max af response, They might then hear
some higher frequency analog information, and slightly less hiss.
>HOW< the radios achieves its IF/AF response also determines a lot.
Those with sharp cutoff will miss the hiss....digital DSP receivers, triple conversion IFs, etc.
Cheapies with simple rolloff circuits will still hear the hiss.
Strangely the only help I see this new mode gives is to 2nd adjacents.
I find I can now listen to some that were recently hopeless.
670 WSCR went to the new mode, and now I can listen to WSM 650 on the lower sideband.
Daytimes, I can now listen (with no iboc hiss) to a spanish-language 640 AM in Wisconsin, formerly blocked by the aforementioned WSCR,
and 620 WTMJ Milwaukee, who seems to have also "upgraded", and below it, on 600 I can once again hear WMT (Iowa City?) clearly and
without hiss, if I tune to the "farther away" side from the offender.
Bottom line, It's still real bad for the folks "who live next door", In the worst possible way, with intereference that would have,
anytime before the 80's, been subject FCC actions, and if continued, that would have put the station off the air until effective repairs to the transmission facilities were effected.
In the old days this was overmod splatter, usually transitory.
Today it is pure 100% duty-cycle roaring on the 1st adjacent.
As someone who spent 3 years in years in radio engineering school and was taught the whole time how much of our responsibilty was to maintain a station's signal and respect the spectrum of others, AND HELP other stations' engineers do the same, I am still baffled that this mess could even happen.
The wisdom of WGN and WLS is clear. When your foot hurts, it helps to stop shooting yourself in the foot.
Let the CBS stations sound awful, if they love it so much.. WBBM seems to have taken some advantage and moved the audio brickwall up to whatever the new scheme allows, and it is crisper but still hisses the same.
WSCR has NOT yet changed anything in the audio response and continues to have almost repellent audio. (Officer Ugh emoticon)
Today I just noticed that 640 WWJZ (Radio Dizzy for the Philadelphia market) has turned their IBOC off as well, with the analog audio back up to full NRSC bandwidth and the digital delay turned off (they are now several seconds ahead of WQEW). But it could just be off for maintenance, so I'll check again in a few days.
So is WLS now back to C-Quam fulltime? I know as of last year they were doing IBOC during the daytime and C-Quam at night. I tuned in their skywave signal last night and was pleased to hear their hourly ID jingle jump out at me in full stereo on my Sony SRF-42, but being about 500 miles away, I have no way to monitor their daytime signal.TR1992 said:
And in our politics-uber-alles in all-things-HD department:
50kw KDWN, sources say, had the Decepticon on and hissing for the NAB - but promptly shut it down, FOR GOOD, as soon as the industry dog and pony show was over last week and alert HD skeptics had safely left 720's "interference-free contour."
Besides having first-adjacent interference issues with the 710 in Los Angeles, the IBOC exciter was causing module failures on KDWN's 3DX-50.
Hmmm....what was it, TWO years ago I believe, when the IBOC-pumpers on this site were loudly assuring everyone that the Harris TX damage from HD exciters "had been fixed?" :
50kw KDWN, sources say, had the Decepticon on and hissing for the NAB - but promptly shut it down, FOR GOOD, as soon as the industry dog and pony show was over last week and alert HD skeptics had safely left 720's "interference-free contour."
Besides having first-adjacent interference issues with the 710 in Los Angeles, the IBOC exciter was causing module failures on KDWN's 3DX-50.
Hmmm....what was it, TWO years ago I believe, when the IBOC-pumpers on this site were loudly assuring everyone that the Harris TX damage from HD exciters "had been fixed?"
:Maybe it worked for you on a test basis, but how many radios have iBOC and C-Quam both?
I'd like to know the reason for WLS doing that.
[/quote]
It seems that a few folks here have claimed some of the HD radios with AM fall back to C-Quam when no HD is present, but I have never seen a list of which radios exactly do this.
I'd like to know the reason for WLS doing that.
[/quote]
It seems that a few folks here have claimed some of the HD radios with AM fall back to C-Quam when no HD is present, but I have never seen a list of which radios exactly do this.
Zach said:
It seems that a few folks here have claimed some of the HD radios with AM fall back to C-Quam when no HD is present, but I have never seen a list of which radios exactly do this.
[/quote]
I have 2 different radios, but I never saw any info on this feature or it dicussed on the AM Stereo posts as an option.
Is there an MC-13020p chip in any of these radios? Or an equivalent?
Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!
I read elsewhere that the Sony HD tuner will receive C-QUAM if HD is not present. I can't vouch for that since I don't own it, but you might like to investigate further.
I use a Radio Shack Archer AM stereo only tuner, and there is also a Delco factory AM stereo radio in our Chevy conversion van.
I have not been able to monitor WLS during the daytime since I'm at work then, but I don't know of any reason why they would NOT be running AM stereo during the day. I can confirm that they do at night, and it comes in perfectly at my home.
I use a Radio Shack Archer AM stereo only tuner, and there is also a Delco factory AM stereo radio in our Chevy conversion van.
I have not been able to monitor WLS during the daytime since I'm at work then, but I don't know of any reason why they would NOT be running AM stereo during the day. I can confirm that they do at night, and it comes in perfectly at my home.
One more observation: the AM band is still a mess due to IBOC hiss here in SW Michigan at night. Most of the dial is awash in noise. Less than 150 miles from Chicago, all of the major 50 kW stations are unlistenable due to IBOC hash from the adjacent channel stations out east. The NY signals on 660, 710, 770, and 880 pound in at night here, and their IBOC sidebands just kill the Chicago stations. Think you're gonna listen to the Cubs on 'GN? Not unless it's a day game. The only consistently usable signals here at night are 650 and 740.
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