AM HD TURNOFF PACE ACCELERATES

[mofocat]

"You're kidding yourself if you think the President of CBS cares about technical things like whether the quality of the HD decoding is great 30 miles away. Someone in that position care about two things..Ratings and Revenue. Topics like HD radio on their stations is unimportant techno-babble."

And THERE is the only reason that the ones that still run it are doing so.

 

[KB1OKL]

Because there is no additional expense to keeping it. Any initial capital costs are already long-amortized.

I thought there was some sort of annual license fees these stations had to pay ibiquity? How about updates, are those free?

 

[KB1OKL]

"You're kidding yourself if you think the President of CBS cares about technical things like whether the quality of the HD decoding is great 30 miles away. Someone in that position care about two things..Ratings and Revenue. Topics like HD radio on their stations is unimportant techno-babble."

And THERE is the only reason that the ones that still run it are doing so.

It's probably similar to the old days when a new company acquired an old factory with a sewer pipe that ran into the adjacent pond, they ignored it unless they had trouble with it and wouldn't fix it unless ordered to do so by some agency.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

It's probably similar to the old days when a new company acquired an old factory with a sewer pipe that ran into the adjacent pond, they ignored it unless they had trouble with it and wouldn't fix it unless ordered to do so by some agency.

I have been trying to re-construct the sales pitch that went on inside of conference rooms to convince station owners to adopt HD on their station. It HAD to be a high pressure, fear mongering pitch "adopt now or the price will go up". "Adopt now or your competition will gain an advantage and your station will whither and die in the ratings". "All the stations in the area are converting - is something wrong with YOU?". The permutations are endless. Now those same owners who were intimidated are not seeing ANY ROI - and are emotionally invested in the system. Worse yet, they invested and continue to pay an obscene amount of money - and somebody somewhere is probably scrutinizing that budget - "where is the revenue from this?" They can't admit they made a mistake because it would make them fallible in someone's eyes. So they will cling to it like velcro until that equipment breaks, at which point they can dump HD with no further effort.

 

[Kelly A]

I have been trying to re-construct the sales pitch that went on inside of conference rooms to convince station owners to adopt HD on their station. It HAD to be a high pressure, fear mongering pitch "adopt now or the price will go up".

Actually I was in some of those meetings and it wasn't high pressure at all. Several broadcast groups were already investors and business partners in an IBOC solution. The industry was interested in it, Ibquity delivered it. When you think about it, what isn't there to be interested in? Potential digital-whatever was rapidly becoming a concern, and the lure of broadcasting in digital and analog at the same time was appealing. AM could sound better than analog for relatively little cost and FM stations could add additional stations using existing real estate. The problem was, it was marketed very poorly and the roll out in cars was spotty at best.

they will cling to it like velcro until that equipment breaks, at which point they can dump HD with no further effort.

For AM stations, that is a true statement. The original batch of AM-HD exciters weren't built very well, essentially nothing more than PC's including spinning hard drives that don't hold up well spinning 24/7 in the sometimes harsh environment of a transmitter site. Most of the larger market AM stations had backup IBOC exciters. Manufacturer support for these boxes has been slim, because of the exciters being low-production, almost prototypes, so once all the original exciters bite the dust, some stations aren't replacing them, instead choosing to just shut it off. FM-HD is a completely different situation. Their exciters are built much more robustly with service and parts readily available.

 

[davideduardo]

I have been trying to re-construct the sales pitch that went on inside of conference rooms to convince station owners to adopt HD on their station. It HAD to be a high pressure, fear mongering pitch "adopt now or the price will go up". "Adopt now or your competition will gain an advantage and your station will whither and die in the ratings". "All the stations in the area are converting - is something wrong with YOU?". The permutations are endless. Now those same owners who were intimidated are not seeing ANY ROI - and are emotionally invested in the system. Worse yet, they invested and continue to pay an obscene amount of money - and somebody somewhere is probably scrutinizing that budget - "where is the revenue from this?" They can't admit they made a mistake because it would make them fallible in someone's eyes. So they will cling to it like velcro until that equipment breaks, at which point they can dump HD with no further effort.

As Kelly says, that's not the way it happened.

iBiquity was formed when Lucent (read "Bell Labs") moved out of IBOC development due to downsizing. The concept went through USA Digital and morphed into iBiquity. A dozen or so groups put up amounts of seed capital in order to not orphan digital IBOC development. With broadcasters accounting for over 2000 stations investing, iBiquity got venture capital and continued to develop IBOC systems.

Radio, threatened by the idea of digital satellite radio and aware of TV going to digital, too, wanted to be able to say "digital" on the air. There was no hard sell... radio actually pushed the initiative by allowing iBiquity to exist.

The annual licensing fee per station is hardly obscene... it is minimal for larger market stations. Equally, the cost to ad HD to an FM is not great, and it's a capital expense, with small annual amortization. Yes, it's big money if you have an FM in Roswell, NM, but in the Top 200 markets where most of the 2000 or so HD stations are, it is not onerous.

With many of those larger markets making money from HD-2 and beyond leases and from data channels, and even more using HD to get them a translator, many of the HD operators are indeed seeing a return on the investment.

 

[davideduardo]

I thought there was some sort of annual license fees these stations had to pay ibiquity? How about updates, are those free?

1. The license fee is small.

2. Updates come from the hardware manufacturer. iBiquity does not make the broadcast gear. They license the technology.

 

[TheBigA]

1. The license fee is small

Especially when you compare it to the license fee they pay to stream music. In terms of ROI, for most stations, that's a real loser.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

Actually I was in some of those meetings and it wasn't high pressure at all. Several broadcast groups were already investors and business partners in an IBOC solution. The industry was interested in it, Ibquity delivered it. When you think about it, what isn't there to be interested in? Potential digital-whatever was rapidly becoming a concern, and the lure of broadcasting in digital and analog at the same time was appealing. AM could sound better than analog for relatively little cost and FM stations could add additional stations using existing real estate. The problem was, it was marketed very poorly and the roll out in cars was spotty at best.


For AM stations, that is a true statement. The original batch of AM-HD exciters weren't built very well, essentially nothing more than PC's including spinning hard drives that don't hold up well spinning 24/7 in the sometimes harsh environment of a transmitter site. Most of the larger market AM stations had backup IBOC exciters. Manufacturer support for these boxes has been slim, because of the exciters being low-production, almost prototypes, so once all the original exciters bite the dust, some stations aren't replacing them, instead choosing to just shut it off. FM-HD is a completely different situation. Their exciters are built much more robustly with service and parts readily available.

Which doesn't explain HD-2 outages that last a month or more. It seems that HD-2 is the ONLY potential revenue driver for FM, it is touted as the "stations between the stations" - yet those stations receive no respect from their owners. An outage on the main channel is treated with the utmost urgency, nobody but listeners seem to care about HD-2.

HD-2 and up has a fatal flaw. There is no backup to analog. The station goes silent for several seconds, which seems like an eternity when you are listening to music. Satellite going out under overhangs and bridges is bad enough. But - controversial jamming issues aside, there are HD-2 dropouts all over town, as little as 20 miles from a full class C station. Yes on multiple receivers its not one defective radio. I don't think they thought that issue through - frequent dropouts like that are highly annoying and likely unacceptable to listeners. So the one and only "killer app| that HD FM offers is kludgy and unreliable. Its no wonder there are so few listeners that station owners don't take HD-2 seriously. And with so few listeners, monetizing it with advertising is not going to happen.

Oh and that iTunes tagging? Not on any of my radios. And Apple doesn't own the world any more. Android is nipping at its heels. Another advantage of HD - lost. And the promised surround sound? Never happened.

Back to AM so I don't confuse the skimmers. They should be sued for false advertising on that claim that AM would sound as good as FM. They did not deliver on that claim at all. Music sounds AWFUL on HD AM.

 

[Kelly A]

Which doesn't explain HD-2 outages that last a month or more. It seems that HD-2 is the ONLY potential revenue driver for FM, it is touted as the "stations between the stations" - yet those stations receive no respect from their owners. An outage on the main channel is treated with the utmost urgency, nobody but listeners seem to care about HD-2.

Once again it appears you're making statements like all HD-2 streams are unreliable, based on the disappointment you experience from your local station. The actions or inaction of one broadcaster is not indicative of the many broadcasters doing ancillary HD streams nationwide. Here in the DC area where there are many HD 2 and 3 channels, all appear to be just as reliable as their analog main channel.

Back to AM so I don't confuse the skimmers. They should be sued for false advertising on that claim that AM would sound as good as FM. They did not deliver on that claim at all. Music sounds AWFUL on HD AM.

Yes why don't you pool some money, hire a lawyer and sue someone. Good idea.
But seriously.. When done correctly, AM-HD matches or exceeds the audio bandwidth of FM with lower signal to noise. The problem that people like you experience, is what we used to call dueling codecs. If a spot or music isn't recorded and played out as an uncompressed .wav file, the compression codecs clash, creating some strange artifacts. That's a problem from the source material, not HD radio.

 

[boombox4]

The problem that people like you experience, is what we used to call dueling codecs. If a spot or music isn't recorded and played out as an uncompressed .wav file, the compression codecs clash, creating some strange artifacts. That's a problem from the source material, not HD radio.

I have to agree, some compressed music artifacts are audible on FM (although I haven't heard many) and I've heard some commercials over the air (AM as well as FM) that sound awful.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

Once again it appears you're making statements like all HD-2 streams are unreliable, based on the disappointment you experience from your local station. The actions or inaction of one broadcaster is not indicative of the many broadcasters doing ancillary HD streams nationwide. Here in the DC area where there are many HD 2 and 3 channels, all appear to be just as reliable as their analog main channel.



Yes why don't you pool some money, hire a lawyer and sue someone. Good idea.
But seriously.. When done correctly, AM-HD matches or exceeds the audio bandwidth of FM with lower signal to noise. The problem that people like you experience, is what we used to call dueling codecs. If a spot or music isn't recorded and played out as an uncompressed .wav file, the compression codecs clash, creating some strange artifacts. That's a problem from the source material, not HD radio.

Stations - plural. Different owners, too. At any given time, of the stations using HD-2 in this market, one or more HD-2's are likely to be off the air, and the outages tend to be long. I am glad they are taken seriously in your market. I have even had posters on here DEFEND the lengthy outages. They just don't get it!

As for the reiablity of HD-2, I have been assuming that full class C over flat terrain is a best case scenario. I documented range at more than 70 miles, far enough that there are no HD listeners. Just plenty of cattle in endless pastures. But that is until the HD-2 is gone more than 50% of the time. Cows don't care about HD-2, but people who listen to them DO.

As for AM - sorry to bust your argument, but the music being broadcast was from an uncompressed source. And most stations broadcast .WAV, because server storage is so cheap there is no longer a need for compression of the song library. Back to FM - it is absolutely critical to broadcast from an uncompressed source, because the handles opimods use depend on no compression. Compression throws away ALL of the handles that optimods use to do their processing. My best guess for AM is that the sampling frequency for AM HD is too low, causing aliasing problems with the source audio. You won't notice it on speech and sports, but you will on music - and it is not pleasant to listen to! Definitely NOT FM quality.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

I have to agree, some compressed music artifacts are audible on FM (although I haven't heard many) and I've heard some commercials over the air (AM as well as FM) that sound awful.

We actually tried to broadcast an good quality MP3 (192k). I was shocked at how flat it sounded over the air. It was like there was no optimod present in the signal chain at all! Any marketing firm that doesn't provide uncompressed audio clearly doesn't understand the needs of their customer - and is economizing in a way that just doesn't make sense. I've begun distributing things on SD cards. They are much cheaper than flash drives, available everywhere, new computers all have slots for them, they are flat so they can be easily mailed. A LOT Of storage for very little money. Even in my personal cameras - I just buy a new one when full and save the old one for archives. So why would any marketing firm - being paid thousands of dollars for their work - need to compress their audio? It just does not make any sense at all for there to be compression in any source material being aired! But you are right - any compression at all and re-sampling will cause problems.

At the station end - I can get a 1 Tb name brand hard drive for $60, 2T and 4T are proportionally more. At 10 to 12 Meg each .WAV, that will store thousands of uncompressed .WAV files. A heck of a music library on just one drive. Put a bank of them out there and you can program a dozen stations. Anybody broadcasting compressed audio is just plain lazy and cheap to the point of being ridiculous.

 

[Kelly A]

As for the reiablity of HD-2, I have been assuming that full class C over flat terrain is a best case scenario. I documented range at more than 70 miles, far enough that there are no HD listeners. Just plenty of cattle in endless pastures. But that is until the HD-2 is gone more than 50% of the time. Cows don't care about HD-2, but people who listen to them DO.

I have no clue what you're talking about Bruce. Documented range of 70 miles? Cow pastures? What does that have to do with whether the HD-2 channel is operating or not? Aren't you the one who is always saying the HD channel doesn't cover very far? In your example, I imagine the analog signal is also over these cow pastures you're talking about aren't they? Total rambling post.

As for AM - sorry to bust your argument, but the music being broadcast was from an uncompressed source. And most stations broadcast .WAV, because server storage is so cheap there is no longer a need for compression of the song library.

Wait, so you're claiming that all AM HD stations run uncompressed-sources of audio? And you know this how? Unlike several others like myself, you aren't in the broadcast business, but a hobbyist. I can say without hesitation, you are completely wrong on this point. And I'm not making an "argument", because I've been in this business for 35 years and speak from facts. For many AM stations, many spots are arriving to the station as .mp3 files because they can literally be E-mailed due to their file size. It has nothing to do with archival or storage.

Back to FM - it is absolutely critical to broadcast from an uncompressed source, because the handles opimods use depend on no compression. Compression throws away ALL of the handles that optimods use to do their processing. My best guess for AM is that the sampling frequency for AM HD is too low, causing aliasing problems with the source audio. You won't notice it on speech and sports, but you will on music - and it is not pleasant to listen to! Definitely NOT FM quality.

Apparently you don't know that there are several popular brands of audio processors in use today. Orban's Optimod is merely one of those many brands. And no, modern FM digital audio processors don't have problems with processing played-out .mp3 audio files. That was left over from the early digital processing days in the 90's. Of course the audio quality of a .mp3 or AAC file isn't as good an uncompressed, but most listeners probably wouldn't tell the difference. I've already gone into detail in a prior that audio aliasing has nothing to do with what you think you're hearing.

 

[davideduardo]

We actually tried to broadcast an good quality MP3 (192k). I was shocked at how flat it sounded over the air. It was like there was no optimod present in the signal chain at all! Any marketing firm that doesn't provide uncompressed audio clearly doesn't understand the needs of their customer - and is economizing in a way that just doesn't make sense.

At the station end - I can get a 1 Tb name brand hard drive for $60, 2T and 4T are proportionally more. At 10 to 12 Meg each .WAV, that will store thousands of uncompressed .WAV files. A heck of a music library on just one drive. Put a bank of them out there and you can program a dozen stations. Anybody broadcasting compressed audio is just plain lazy and cheap to the point of being ridiculous.

An average song in .wav format is around 50 megabytes.

192 kbs is not "good quality". It is "barely acceptable" quality in professional situations.

Keep in mind that audios at most stations are kept on RAID systems, so you need 2 x the storage for the "live" system, and then you need a backup as well, preferably one on site and one off site.

1 tb drives won't cut it in most situations. 4 tb or greater are better, since a typical cluster can easily fill quite a few of these what with a year or two of logger files, a year or so of commercials, the whole music library as well as special occasion cuts, and other things like saved interviews, mixes, workparts of personality shows, and other archives.

 

[davideduardo]

Cows don't care about HD-2, but people who listen to them DO.

Cows? Cows? I think your observations are more like what is left when the bull finishes his digestive process.

And most stations broadcast .WAV, because server storage is so cheap there is no longer a need for compression of the song library.

Agency commercials are often / usually high bitrate (256 or 312 kbs) mp3's. Record companies tend to distribute new releases in MP3, and only more recently offered .wav as well, but many, many stations prefer the compressed MP3s as they not only take up less space but they travel faster from location to location, in and out of the building.

On the international level, most music and programming is distributed in higher bitrate MP3 formats, not .wav due to issues involving bandwidth and the associated time and cost. I actually produce a weekly new releases service that goes to about 25 countries; most new releases are sent by the labels in MP3 format and most stations prefer to download rather than get a weekly CD by DHL. And for downloading, MP3s are the preferred format... even though many nations internationally have faster Internet service than, on average, does the US.

Back to FM - it is absolutely critical to broadcast from an uncompressed source, because the handles opimods use depend on no compression.

In most stations, you have compression in the original recording caused by extreme squashing of most contemporary music by the record company in the mix-down process. That includes mike compression, compression on instruments to achieve a particular sound and overall compression of the final song. At the station level, audio is not fed from the studio to the Optimod or the Omnia or any of the many other processors. It usually goes through mike processing for studio mikes as well as overall processing at the start of the audio chain. THis goes back to the Audimax starting around 1960 (I can provide a manual if you like) and then going through the LA-3A phase in the 70's and then devices like the Compellor in the 80's and so on. Add in the codec used for the digital STL and other added uses of codecs, and there is compression all over the place.

Compression throws away ALL of the handles that optimods use to do their processing.

And dealing with audio that has gone through compression and multiple codecs is what all processors have to deal with. And they deal with it quite well.

You really ought to find a well engineered radio station that would let you visit and see the facility, as you are way off base on how things are done out there.

 

[diymedia]

With many of those larger markets making money from HD-2 and beyond leases and from data channels, and even more using HD to get them a translator, many of the HD operators are indeed seeing a return on the investment.

I would totally love to see some substantive numbers on this...especially how this pie is being sliced (hd-as-translator vs. datacasting vs. HD-x leasing). All I've seen are anecdotes here and in the trades.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

An average song in .wav format is around 50 megabytes.

192 kbs is not "good quality". It is "barely acceptable" quality in professional situations.

Keep in mind that audios at most stations are kept on RAID systems, so you need 2 x the storage for the "live" system, and then you need a backup as well, preferably one on site and one off site.

1 tb drives won't cut it in most situations. 4 tb or greater are better, since a typical cluster can easily fill quite a few of these what with a year or two of logger files, a year or so of commercials, the whole music library as well as special occasion cuts, and other things like saved interviews, mixes, workparts of personality shows, and other archives.

Nope - the first song I saw distributed in .Wav format was "Jesus Freak" by DC Talk. It is rather long by radio standards, nearly 4 minutes. As I recall it was slightly more than 10 Meg.

Is is easy to buy hardware that has multiple hard drive bays, cheap and available. I just see no more need for compression - it is laziness on the part of somebody. I also see no need for emailing, there are numerous cloud services that are free or very inexpensive, we transfer large files that way all the time. In fact, it is preferable to use cloud storage because Outlook has this incredibly kludgy mailbox structure that gives you no warning that your mailbox is full. I get mad at people who attach large files to emails instead of using cloud or ftp - because they are filling up that mailbox quota.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

Cows? Cows? I think your observations are more like what is left when the bull finishes his digestive process.



Agency commercials are often / usually high bitrate (256 or 312 kbs) mp3's. Record companies tend to distribute new releases in MP3, and only more recently offered .wav as well, but many, many stations prefer the compressed MP3s as they not only take up less space but they travel faster from location to location, in and out of the building.

On the international level, most music and programming is distributed in higher bitrate MP3 formats, not .wav due to issues involving bandwidth and the associated time and cost. I actually produce a weekly new releases service that goes to about 25 countries; most new releases are sent by the labels in MP3 format and most stations prefer to download rather than get a weekly CD by DHL. And for downloading, MP3s are the preferred format... even though many nations internationally have faster Internet service than, on average, does the US.



In most stations, you have compression in the original recording caused by extreme squashing of most contemporary music by the record company in the mix-down process. That includes mike compression, compression on instruments to achieve a particular sound and overall compression of the final song. At the station level, audio is not fed from the studio to the Optimod or the Omnia or any of the many other processors. It usually goes through mike processing for studio mikes as well as overall processing at the start of the audio chain. THis goes back to the Audimax starting around 1960 (I can provide a manual if you like) and then going through the LA-3A phase in the 70's and then devices like the Compellor in the 80's and so on. Add in the codec used for the digital STL and other added uses of codecs, and there is compression all over the place.



And dealing with audio that has gone through compression and multiple codecs is what all processors have to deal with. And they deal with it quite well.

You really ought to find a well engineered radio station that would let you visit and see the facility, as you are way off base on how things are done out there.

The cows com from my observations of the range of HD until it drops 50% of the time. That is about 70 miles over flat terrain for full class C stations. My point is that there is no need for a paltry 10 dB power increase on HD sidebands to try to extend range. Even mega metro areas like Houston and Dallas are over long before HD starts dropping at that rate - so the power increase might help a few ranchers with cows in the pasture. But that is hard to justify - even for a marginally increased electric bill. Combined with signal strengths fluctuating by DECADES of power in the fringes, and long lock times - I seriously doubt a power increase would substantially change things in fringe or difficult reception scenarios. I was really surprised how robust the HD system was 70 miles out.

The flip side of this is that when listening to HD-2 - dropouts even 1% of the time are intolerable. Extremely annoying distraction to a driver. That is one they did NOT think through!

Sorry to hear about all the laziness and lack of quality in broadcast material, although it would explain much. Especially why stations used to sound so much better when they broadcast CDs instead of compressed music. Not that most people would notice the quality, but I sure do. Just the latest way the radio industry is screwing people over - maximizing profits at the expense of programming quality. Adding another level of compression (HD) is NOT an improvement. If it were the only compression in the signal chain, maybe there wouldn't be dueling sample rates.

 

[Kelly A]

Nope - the first song I saw distributed in .Wav format was "Jesus Freak" by DC Talk. It is rather long by radio standards, nearly 4 minutes. As I recall it was slightly more than 10 Meg.

So, because you've experienced a song distributed once as a .wav file, then you assume all content is distributed and aired that way? Hmm..okay. If so, then that assumption is incorrect. The length of an audio or video file isn't the only determination for the file size. Length, sample rate, metadata, or special file wrappers containing sound placement, etc., determine the actual file size.

Is is easy to buy hardware that has multiple hard drive bays, cheap and available. I just see no more need for compression - it is laziness on the part of somebody. I also see no need for emailing, there are numerous cloud services that are free or very inexpensive, we transfer large files that way all the time. In fact, it is preferable to use cloud storage because Outlook has this incredibly kludgy mailbox structure that gives you no warning that your mailbox is full. I get mad at people who attach large files to emails instead of using cloud or ftp - because they are filling up that mailbox quota.

A .wav file is not necessarily an uncompressed file. .wav is merely a Windows compatible audio formatted file extension, originally called RIFF (Resource Interchange File Format). Uncompressed .wav files, as with CD's are LPCM (Linear Pulse Code Modulation), 16 bit.

As with the video world, audio file compression is becoming much more prevalent than not, mainly to keep delivery costs and time down. An agency for example, can deliver a MP3 radio spot via E-mail with all the traffic instructions included. Some use drop boxes, but there is a cost of time for the station Production Dept. to go the drop box, download the spot, convert the file as needed, add any tags or changes for the market, and attach the file into the station system. Time is money.

In my business I hear your same comment from people who don't know, all the time. Digital storage is cheap! Well when you're talking about 150TB of RAID 5 storage that needs to be replaced every three to five years, no it isn't.