Chicago stations that have increased the power of their HD signal

briankay · Jun 28, 2011

Did a little research trying to find what Chicago stations have increased their HD Radio signal power since the FCC allowed stations to increase digital power above 1% of analog power in early 2010. Many stations are increasing power to -14dBc which is 4% of analog power up from the standard -20dBc which is 1% of analog power. But the FCC allows up to 10% digital power.

WBBM-FM 96.3 4% started May 19th 2010
WLUP-FM 97.9 4% started Oct 2010
WUSN-FM 99.5 ~4% (??? needs confirmation as no FCC notification was filed but HD signal strength suggest power was increased late 2010 since relaunching their HD-2 channel
WKQX-FM 101.1 4% started Dec 2010
WSRB-FM 106.3 4% started Feb 2011

I do notice much more robust HD reception on these stations where I drive in the distant western suburbs 25 to 40 miles out. Definitely an improvement over analog where the signal is mostly faded to mono and any treble or sparkle in the sound is severely eroded.

Any word if any of the other stations will follow suit. For me my wish list is 104.3, 94.7, 100.3, 102.7, 93.9 as it is nice to hear a music station in stereo.

BRNout · Jun 28, 2011

briankay said:
Did a little research trying to find what Chicago stations have increased their HD Radio signal power since the FCC allowed stations to increase digital power above 1% of analog power in early 2010. Many stations are increasing power to -14dBc which is 4% of analog power up from the standard -20dBc which is 1% of analog power. But the FCC allows up to 10% digital power.

WBBM-FM 96.3 4% started May 19th 2010
WLUP-FM 97.9 4% started Oct 2010
WUSN-FM 99.5 ~4% (??? needs confirmation as no FCC notification was filed but HD signal strength suggest power was increased late 2010 since relaunching their HD-2 channel
WKQX-FM 101.1 4% started Dec 2010
WSRB-FM 106.3 4% started Feb 2011

I do notice much more robust HD reception on these stations where I drive in the distant western suburbs 25 to 40 miles out. Definitely an improvement over analog where the signal is mostly faded to mono and any treble or sparkle in the sound is severely eroded.

Any word if any of the other stations will follow suit. For me my wish list is 104.3, 94.7, 100.3, 102.7, 93.9 as it is nice to hear a music station in stereo.

I truly hope NOT. From my location near Gurnee, I used to get very good reception of 96.5 WKLH Milwaukee and decent reception of 96.1 WLKG from Lake Geneva. Now, WLKG is very hard to get on even the best of radios (stuck in the hiss) and WKLH has been degraded significantly due to interference. And that ticks me off because I live in an area where the Chicago signals are only 1/3 stronger than those from Milwaukee. WLUP is weaker here, and there are no first adjacents nearby for it or for 99.5/101.1 so the side effects of their respective power increases are not apparent. 106.3 is distant fringe from here.

If, as you wish, some of those other signals crank up the HD sidebands, I'll lose even more of Lake 94.5, WHQG 102.9 and others. As I can already get an HD signal from pretty much all of the Chicago signals, more power wouldn't help that much in that regard either.

An interesting side note to this:

About a week or so ago, WLS-FM was having transmitter issues. In fact, driving up from Chicago, I lost their signal somewhere between Des Plaines and Morton Grove. Meanwhile, WLWK was booming in with a clear signal as far south as Glenview and local grade in much of Lake County (along I-94). That's what happens when the channel is clear (not that I want WLS-FM to go ANYWHERE!).

When 95.5 has their HD off, Oldies 95.7 comes in a lot farther south (even into Cook County) than it can when the buzzbox is going.

Anyhow, that's a long-winded disagreement with your wish list.

briankay · Jun 29, 2011

For a DXer I guess the preference would be to have have the maximum # of stations receivable even though the signal is weak. On the other hand for the non-DXer listener (which keeps the radio business in business), their preference perhaps is to limit their FM choice to the medium to to strong stations but with more consistent reception quality that IBOC can deliver when at a higher power. Or to put it another way if the analog status quo is so good, why does it sound so bad when the digital falls back to analog when mobile.

As a fan of DXing myself, the battle may not be not fully lost by going to IBOC, but only if/when all FM stations go to all digital mode, then there will no longer be the analog and digital co-channel conflict on first adjacents, as first adjacents digital carriers interleave and a digital station 0.2 MHz away may have a higher likelihood of being receivable compared to now, but that becomes a debate over making HD Radio mandatory vs supporting legacy for as long as possible.

When mobile, deciding between hearing all stations in mediocre quality with no HD or hearing a majority of the stations with more consistent quality with high power HD, my choice is with the latter. Some stations do a good job of feeding their HD codec with high quality source audio some do not, but that's a different discussion.

BRNout · Jun 30, 2011

briankay said:
For a DXer I guess the preference would be to have have the maximum # of stations receivable even though the signal is weak. On the other hand for the non-DXer listener (which keeps the radio business in business), their preference perhaps is to limit their FM choice to the medium to to strong stations but with more consistent reception quality that IBOC can deliver when at a higher power. Or to put it another way if the analog status quo is so good, why does it sound so bad when the digital falls back to analog when mobile.

As a fan of DXing myself, the battle may not be not fully lost by going to IBOC, but only if/when all FM stations go to all digital mode, then there will no longer be the analog and digital co-channel conflict on first adjacents, as first adjacents digital carriers interleave and a digital station 0.2 MHz away may have a higher likelihood of being receivable compared to now, but that becomes a debate over making HD Radio mandatory vs supporting legacy for as long as possible.

When mobile, deciding between hearing all stations in mediocre quality with no HD or hearing a majority of the stations with more consistent quality with high power HD, my choice is with the latter. Some stations do a good job of feeding their HD codec with high quality source audio some do not, but that's a different discussion.

That's the thing though. From Gurnee and northern Lake County, Milwaukee signals aren't really "dx". They come in reasonably well. But the HD issue is as simple as this: he who has the stronger signal wins. Last night, the atmospheric conditions were such that Milwaukee was booming in. And, as a result, I actually had a couple issues with drop outs on WLS-FM (needed to move the radio) because of HD hash from WLWK. So, when you're in-between markets, you're offered a variety of choices that HD radio threatens to literally take away.

We're not talking about losing a collection of fringe signals that only dxers can detect, we're talking about losing signals that are 4 or 5 of 10 in strength because of HD hash from signals that are 6 or 7 of 10. It's that invasive. I vote NO.

BobOnTheJob · Jul 12, 2011

briankay said:
As a fan of DXing myself, the battle may not be not fully lost by going to IBOC, but only if/when all FM stations go to all digital mode, then there will no longer be the analog and digital co-channel conflict on first adjacents, as first adjacents digital carriers interleave and a digital station 0.2 MHz away may have a higher likelihood of being receivable compared to now, but that becomes a debate over making HD Radio mandatory vs supporting legacy for as long as possible.

That's something I've wondered about...the existing IBOC system spills exactly halfway into the adjacent channels. I have a very selective analog tuner & with my local on 95.5 doing IBOC, I can hear 95.3's by tuning to 95.25...not perfect, but it can be done. Of course, if I had an IBOC on 95.1 and 95.5, 95.3 would be lost no matter what. But my question is this : If/when pure HD mode happens, will the entire signal be contained within +/-75khz as analog service is now? Or will they continue to gobble the same +/- 100khz that IBOC does? If so, this could actually be a net plus in reception--DX and otherwise. If 1% IBOC does this and they allow stations to use 100% of their current analog power for digital, the coverage may actually exceed what we now have on analog. Somehow I doubt that better coverage would be the result of FCC policy. HDTV sure doesn't carry as far as analog did...somehow I'd guess radio will fare equally badly so they can shove even more stations into fewer frequencies.

djdanska · Jul 12, 2011

Can anybody get 91.5's HD channels? I have that insignia portable and thats the only station i can't get. (It was $40 and works very well where i live, near north near the hancock.) On a side note, i wonder if the new owners of q101 will keep the alternative music on it's hd2 signal. Or what they will put on it at all. XRT has 3 channels. 2 of which are in stereo and one in mono. I would live with a mono q101 or alternative/modern rock station. If 105.9 goes all news wbbm, what will they put on its hd2 signal. I did notice 100.3 no longer has its mormon station.

briankay · Jul 13, 2011

djdanska said:
Can anybody get 91.5's HD channels? I have that insignia portable and thats the only station i can't get. (It was $40 and works very well where i live, near north near the hancock.) On a side note, i wonder if the new owners of q101 will keep the alternative music on it's hd2 signal. Or what they will put on it at all. XRT has 3 channels. 2 of which are in stereo and one in mono. I would live with a mono q101 or alternative/modern rock station. If 105.9 goes all news wbbm, what will they put on its hd2 signal. I did notice 100.3 no longer has its mormon station.

I've had trouble receiving 91.5's HD channels as well, I think wbez screwed up an IBOC setting. I didn't know 100.3 lost their mormon HD2 service. BTW Q101 was just granted FCC permission on June 30th to increase digital power to 10%.

briankay · Jul 13, 2011

BobOnTheJob said:
That's something I've wondered about...the existing IBOC system spills exactly halfway into the adjacent channels. I have a very selective analog tuner & with my local on 95.5 doing IBOC, I can hear 95.3's by tuning to 95.25...not perfect, but it can be done. Of course, if I had an IBOC on 95.1 and 95.5, 95.3 would be lost no matter what. But my question is this : If/when pure HD mode happens, will the entire signal be contained within +/-75khz as analog service is now? Or will they continue to gobble the same +/- 100khz that IBOC does? If so, this could actually be a net plus in reception--DX and otherwise.

In pure digital mode the power is concentrated from about 100kHz to 200 kHz on either side of the carrier (the primary sidebands). From 0 to 100kHz on each side of the carrier the spectrum would be used for a low power less robust secondary digital carriers. I'm not sure if the power of these secondary carriers has been finalized. I need to confirm this....it's late.....