I agree with Big. At that time I was listening to KOOL-FM in Phoenix and heard never ending commercials for "the station between the station". I had no idea what it meant and can't ever remember anyone explaining it. It seemed like a few years passed before KOOL started referring to "HD radio" and I finally figured it out. As an old military radio guy I was assuming HD was something along the lines of LSB/USB but had to way of tuning it so just ignored it. As I've said before, I can't tell much difference between a normal FM signal and HD. It could be my old ears or the type of music I listen to.
-
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
Boo..hiss..to Audacy
- Thread starter wattsup
- Start date
My good ears could tell the difference between analog and HD1 - if engineered correctly, the latter will sound brighter with less background noise.
But, most people aren't audiophiles and the stations know this. That's why I've noticed stations sound bad over the air but fine on their streaming counterpart (I'm looking at you, Mega 104.3), as well as stations that don't care if their station sounds muddy and/or metallic, and have gone years without their engineers noticing (Arizona Sports 98.7).
However if you have an HD format that a slice of the listener base finds highly desirable, you can make a bit of a splash.
Here in Houston, we lost our Classical station (KUHA) in 2016, but the format continued on KUHF HD-2. That HD offering regularly shows up in the monthly Nielsens, and the latest January survey has it at a 0.6. Admittedly not a big number, but very respectable for an HD signal with NO translator attached. It even ranks ahead of the market’s only FM sportstalker.
Not a conflict of interest, just covering their bases. No problem with an investor owning shares of competing companies. You are looking for overall diversified income, not a home run with just one stock.
You can buy shares of every stock in existence. No conflicts, unless you have controlling interest.
Not only did the HD Alliance come up with that dumb campaign, they also did conference calls to coordinate the formats each HD station would run so that there would be a wide variety of them.
I was the HD coordinator for both our HD channels with the Alliance (and with XM for our 5 Spanish channels). When the Alliance started telling me what formats we should do, I started talking with counsel and we saw what they were doing was dangerously close to collusion. We dropped out of the Alliance after a frustrating discussion of how "the stations between the stations" did not translate effectively and a different Spanish creative was needed.
And the receivers were not anything special, either. And no way to use portables, as the earlier chips had too much power drain.
iBiquity totally messed up on rolling the HD thing. More tests and working out the kinks should've been done before advertising. All they say was $$$. There was some home receivers made with HD Radio built in by Denon, Yamaha and a few others, but probably due to the licencing thing they discontinued offering that option.
My sound system in my house is mainly a rack mount system and it has a Day Sequerra M4 rack tuner that has HD on it. And currently 3 stations in my area offer a HD feed.
My sound system in my house is mainly a rack mount system and it has a Day Sequerra M4 rack tuner that has HD on it. And currently 3 stations in my area offer a HD feed.
There was no licensing.... the fee was paid by the chip manufacturer. The radios went off the market because they did not sell.
In retrospect, maybe calling it just "HD Radio" wasn't the best idea, or could/should have been improved upon. Back then you had HDTV coming to market at I believe about the same time, and that basically meant that, if you owned or were willing to buy a high-definition TV, you'd see a much sharper and clearer image and the difference between that and standard def was quite apparent. HD radio was supposed to bring improved audio quality to those who were "locked in" on the HD signal..But it could also deliver the HD2, 3 and 4 offerings with expanded variety and more listening options, for free, as opposed to the paid subscription to satellite which was also coming to market at about that same time.
With all those technologies in both TV and audio/radio coming into being at about the same time, there was really nothing about the name "HD Radio" to set it apart or make it simple and understandable to consumers so they'd "get" what it was and perhaps get excited about it.
Do we really need more 80's on the radio? Good *bleep* riddance.
THANK YOU, Audacy. Well done-!
Well, it was new wave (which I like), not hair bands and metal, so…Do we really need more 80's on the radio? Good *bleep* riddance.
THANK YOU, Audacy. Well done-!
I read somewhere it was the makers that paid to include the capability in the receivers, but that was long ago. The home version did fall off. I know someone who bought a Denon receiver in 2010 who was shocked it had the HD Radio function.
It seems the Bose Wave Radios were based on the original, older technology and they did add various functions over the years, but HD radio was never one of them. Maybe they just felt the interest wasn't there, or it'd have required such a redesign of the hardware, interface and remote that the proverbial juice just wasn't worth the squeeze.
The latest version of the Wave listed on the Bose website appears to be the Wave System IV. It still has a CD player (the last 4 laptops I've owned haven't had CD drives and I've not listened to an audio CD in much more than a decade) and reviews for it are more than 7 years old at this point.
This is still a major issue with stations operating in HD. It has to do more with the lack of qualified broadcast engineers in the field or they just don't care.
D
Deleted member 76036
Guest
So…I’ve read all your comments and here are my thoughts. It’s kind of long, so please bear with me!
I do remember the HD Radio campaign and yes, that was totally confusing, especially when a lot of markets didn’t have many HD stations. A lot of smaller markets still have 1 or 2 HD channels, with 1 or 2 subchannels. In smaller markets, most HD subchannels have an FM translator and that makes sense. Those 250 watt FM stations can cover the entire market. In large and major markets, that won’t work. However in the smaller markets, most of them don’t refer to the HD subchannel at all, so listeners just think the station is on the FM translator. There’s no need for the listener to buy an HD radio. And most of the time, the FM translators have better audio quality than the HD subchannel they’re being fed from. Again, no reason to buy an HD Radio.
I live in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, but I travel back to Illinois to visit family a couple times a year. Last May, I decided to send a message to iHeart in a market between 150 and 160. Their HD had never been synced with the FM. I explained that my mom now listens to a different station (which was true). She has HD Radio in her Acura, but the only way to disable this is through settings. On my 2020 Hyundai Elantra, there is an HD button on the main screen. Although she lives in a good coverage area for FM, HD would go in and out. I think this was partly due to spurs from the local station in her town. Anyways, the OM of the iHeart station responded to my message saying that it was just how HD radio worked. I emailed him back and explained that I lived in the DFW market and every station was synced. He then emailed me back and said another station he worked for (large market) wasn’t synced when he worked there and was kind of rude about me calling him out. I responded with an article on syncing from the HD Radio website and he said he would bring it up to his higher ups and see if this was something that they wanted to do. When I traveled back for Christmas, the audio was perfectly synced! Not a microsecond off.
Although most stations seem to be synced for the most part, there is still a bit of drifting here and there. I’ve noticed some stations seem to be spot on all the time, while others aren’t, even in DFW.
Another thing that I see a lot, is that some stations aren’t utilizing all the features. There are a LOT of stations that are just in HD, with no HD PTYs, no logos and no text. I feel that this is a waste, especially for the stations that show artist and title with RDS on FM, but have no text at all on HD. Here in DFW, one of the HD stations has a message that will show on my Sangean that says, “This is a big long message from the station.” Again, no attention to detail!
I know I’m a big radio nerd, but I programmed the hell out of the RDS at the small market station I worked for in Illinois. We had Artist/Title with Whitney Allen, I took out unnecessary words like “Now Playing”, “by” and “on” from the Dynamic Program Service. I would schedule messages for events, jocks on air, holidays, etc. We had a lot of Cubs fans and I even shot a couple messages to the RDS, the moment they won the World Series in 2016. I also would tie certain messages to trigger when certain audio files were played. Lots of stuff we could do with RDS and I definitely was using it to the full potential. I think we should treat HD Radio the same, but unfortunately, many broadcasters are doing the absolute least.
Regarding the home equipment out there, my first HD Radio, the Sony XDR-S10HDiP, I was able to purchase at Target for $30. It was a discontinued display and the original price was $189. I still have it, along with the Sangean portable HDR-16 and the Sangean HDT-1X. I’d absolutely love to be able to purchase an HD Radio that shows station logos and album art, but I can’t seem to find one, if they do indeed exist.
And finally, with the Audacy subchannels disappearing, as far as I know, the Audacy HD subchannels in DFW have never had any local ads. It’s all PSAs, all the time! I understand that they might make money from ads on the streams, but I’m not sure why they don’t sell ads on the actual HD subchannels, while other companies such as iHeart do. In a major market, a 0.1 share seems to be similar to the amount of listeners of a top performing station in a small market. Please correct me if I’m wrong!
Anyways, these are just my thoughts on all of this. Thanks to everyone who made it to the end!
I do remember the HD Radio campaign and yes, that was totally confusing, especially when a lot of markets didn’t have many HD stations. A lot of smaller markets still have 1 or 2 HD channels, with 1 or 2 subchannels. In smaller markets, most HD subchannels have an FM translator and that makes sense. Those 250 watt FM stations can cover the entire market. In large and major markets, that won’t work. However in the smaller markets, most of them don’t refer to the HD subchannel at all, so listeners just think the station is on the FM translator. There’s no need for the listener to buy an HD radio. And most of the time, the FM translators have better audio quality than the HD subchannel they’re being fed from. Again, no reason to buy an HD Radio.
I live in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, but I travel back to Illinois to visit family a couple times a year. Last May, I decided to send a message to iHeart in a market between 150 and 160. Their HD had never been synced with the FM. I explained that my mom now listens to a different station (which was true). She has HD Radio in her Acura, but the only way to disable this is through settings. On my 2020 Hyundai Elantra, there is an HD button on the main screen. Although she lives in a good coverage area for FM, HD would go in and out. I think this was partly due to spurs from the local station in her town. Anyways, the OM of the iHeart station responded to my message saying that it was just how HD radio worked. I emailed him back and explained that I lived in the DFW market and every station was synced. He then emailed me back and said another station he worked for (large market) wasn’t synced when he worked there and was kind of rude about me calling him out. I responded with an article on syncing from the HD Radio website and he said he would bring it up to his higher ups and see if this was something that they wanted to do. When I traveled back for Christmas, the audio was perfectly synced! Not a microsecond off.
Although most stations seem to be synced for the most part, there is still a bit of drifting here and there. I’ve noticed some stations seem to be spot on all the time, while others aren’t, even in DFW.
Another thing that I see a lot, is that some stations aren’t utilizing all the features. There are a LOT of stations that are just in HD, with no HD PTYs, no logos and no text. I feel that this is a waste, especially for the stations that show artist and title with RDS on FM, but have no text at all on HD. Here in DFW, one of the HD stations has a message that will show on my Sangean that says, “This is a big long message from the station.” Again, no attention to detail!
I know I’m a big radio nerd, but I programmed the hell out of the RDS at the small market station I worked for in Illinois. We had Artist/Title with Whitney Allen, I took out unnecessary words like “Now Playing”, “by” and “on” from the Dynamic Program Service. I would schedule messages for events, jocks on air, holidays, etc. We had a lot of Cubs fans and I even shot a couple messages to the RDS, the moment they won the World Series in 2016. I also would tie certain messages to trigger when certain audio files were played. Lots of stuff we could do with RDS and I definitely was using it to the full potential. I think we should treat HD Radio the same, but unfortunately, many broadcasters are doing the absolute least.
Regarding the home equipment out there, my first HD Radio, the Sony XDR-S10HDiP, I was able to purchase at Target for $30. It was a discontinued display and the original price was $189. I still have it, along with the Sangean portable HDR-16 and the Sangean HDT-1X. I’d absolutely love to be able to purchase an HD Radio that shows station logos and album art, but I can’t seem to find one, if they do indeed exist.
And finally, with the Audacy subchannels disappearing, as far as I know, the Audacy HD subchannels in DFW have never had any local ads. It’s all PSAs, all the time! I understand that they might make money from ads on the streams, but I’m not sure why they don’t sell ads on the actual HD subchannels, while other companies such as iHeart do. In a major market, a 0.1 share seems to be similar to the amount of listeners of a top performing station in a small market. Please correct me if I’m wrong!
Anyways, these are just my thoughts on all of this. Thanks to everyone who made it to the end!
Last edited by a moderator:
HD radio should have been implemented in the late 90s. It would have done well as a free alternative to SiriusXM. I did like the HD alliance ensuring that every station have different formats on their HD2, to offer more music choices.
The confusing ads in 2007 and 2008 didn’t help. The “stations between the stations” was a flop. People who did tune between the stations expecting to find the HD2’s on a non HD radio were disappointed to find static and weak signals from other areas. Car manufacturers should have been incentivized to offer HD radios in the early 2000s, even if most stations didn’t broadcast in HD. That way, when they marketed HD radio in the late 2000s, people would have already had HD radios.
They should have known with the advent of the iPhone that streaming would eventually eat up market share. If people liked an HD2, they would be willing to stream that HD2.
Some of the best HD2’s I have heard are when the PD or engineer or a DJ is given free reign to program the HD2 to their heart’s content. Those should be cheap to run, as someone working for the station would program it for no additional cost because it’s a labor of love.
The confusing ads in 2007 and 2008 didn’t help. The “stations between the stations” was a flop. People who did tune between the stations expecting to find the HD2’s on a non HD radio were disappointed to find static and weak signals from other areas. Car manufacturers should have been incentivized to offer HD radios in the early 2000s, even if most stations didn’t broadcast in HD. That way, when they marketed HD radio in the late 2000s, people would have already had HD radios.
They should have known with the advent of the iPhone that streaming would eventually eat up market share. If people liked an HD2, they would be willing to stream that HD2.
Some of the best HD2’s I have heard are when the PD or engineer or a DJ is given free reign to program the HD2 to their heart’s content. Those should be cheap to run, as someone working for the station would program it for no additional cost because it’s a labor of love.
I would counter that while the HD Radio Alliance ran a lot of spots promoting this new thing, the individual stations (or their owners) spent no time or money on the product...the stuff coming out of the speakers.
When we got our HD2 channel, a couple of us put some effort into making it into it's own separate station. It had unique imaging (put together in my spare time), a very different playlist than the main channel (scheduled with care by the MD in his spare time), and it was sort of the rebellious version of the main station as opposed to just a simulcast. It was a fun project....that eventually got replaced by a simulcast. No money was spent, and aside from our little passion project, no effort was ever put into the HD2 signal again.
Hagerty said the extra channels are like a restaurant where you go to the kitchen and get your food. I disagree. If the main channel is a restaurant, then the HD2 and 3 signals are like the leftover food the restaurant throws away if it doesn't sell. No wonder it wasn't a success.
Could people buy HD radios at the time? Were they in stores? If not, how could people listen to the "product?"
Why put time and effort into something that no one could hear?
Have they put time and effort into those signals since HD radios became widely available?
No. Now people can hear all these extra channels, and there's no effort being put into what's on there. A simulcast of some station in a larger market that a listener could just stream instead? A simulcast of their sister sports or news station? What HD2 or HD3 channel here in the Valley is offering something worthwhile? I can't think of one that's not just serving up leftovers.
The HD Radio Alliance could launch a whole new campaign to remind people that their HD radio pics up all these other channels, but if there's nothing there when the listeners tune in, what's the point?
- Status