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Cincinnati IBOC

J

js

I was never a fan of the idea of Iboc until I heard it. I was on another R.I. forum & found this link:

http://wor710.com/Engineering/iboc/audio_samples.htm

If Iboc can make AM sound like that, it's worth a couple of hundred dollars to me. I paid more than that for my wideband AM Stereo tuner, & it never sounded that good! Sirius has pretty much replaced FM for me, but I still spend a lot of time with WLW, WKRC, & WHIO. Any word on when any of these stations might go Iboc?

The Ibiquity page lists WAQZ, WKRQ, & WMUB as local multicast stations. What's on their HD2 channels?

http://www.ibiquity.com/hdradio/hdradio_hdstations.htm

I've enjoyed DXing since I was a kid & feel like a bit of a traitor for abandoning it, but it's not as exciting as it once was. I'd love to see KFI or KROQ as an HD2 channel, or WLW on WEBN's HD2! I'd probably drop a satellite subscription or 2 if that happened.

I just ordered a Panasonic CQ-CB9900U tonight.
 
Cincinnati HD review

I installed my HD radio yesterday, and it didn't quite live up to my expectations. The HD audio on FM was better than expected. Very close to CD, and much better than sat radio. It was very impressive, where it worked. It frequently blended to analog up in Hamilton & in downtown Cincinnati. It worked good most of the way in between. The transistions to analog were smooth, but that doesn't help on HD2 stations that don't have an analog backup. Star, Mojo, WAQZ, Mix 94.1 & 107.7, WTUE, Warm, Kiss, and WGUC sounded extremely good. EBN still sounded a little harsh and lacked bass. The radio recognized HD on Q102, but would never lock on it.

WAQZ's HD is about a second behind analog, so the transitions on WAQZ were annoying. I still love the processing on 97.3. The HD sounds awesome!

I was hoping HD would have enough error correction to help marginal signals, but I didn't find that to be the case. HD works best where you least need it...where analog is loud & clear.

The CC stations, and Warm & Mojo were sending song title & artist info.

AM was not as good. I couldn't get a single AM station's HD to lock in Fairfield. It recognized HD on WTVN, WHAS, WIBC, & WCKY. WCNW splatters all over the top of the dial up here, so that was probably the problem with WCKY. As I drove south on RT. 4, WCKY went digital just north of I-275. The sound quality was comparable to Sirius or XM music channels. WTVN's analog was coming in very good, but HD never kicked in. WHAS's HD started to kick in on I-71 around Kenwood. It worked about 50% of the time until I hit downtown Cincinnati.

If WLW goes HD, I'll be happy with my purchase. My biggest dissapointment was HD2. I don't think that my radio supports it. (Panasonic CQ-CB9900U) It's not mentioned in the manual, and I can't find a way to select it on the tuner. I'm still curious, do Q102 & Shuffle 97.3 have an HD2 channel as mentioned on the Ibiquity page?
 
Re: Cincinnati HD review

As far as I know, the only station using its HD-2 for anything is MIX doing Smooth Jazz. I think WGUC has talked about using their second channel too.
 
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