Classical HD

[tomservo]

Yes, but I'll bet the analog signal is useful for 80-90 miles with that power and HAAT. Since most FM coverage is circular (Yes I know Pensacola is on the coast so a lot of coverage is wasted) you are losing a lot of coverage with HD.

Circles are amazing things. Sixth grade math will tell you that area equals pi (3.414) times the radius squared. So a 45 mile radius is about 6913 square miles. 80 miles radius equals a bit more than 21,849 square miles. That is a HUGE difference in coverage. Do you really want to pay money to throw that away? Just wondering....

They're not throwing anything away since the HD drops out back to analog. I look at the subchannels as being little class A's riding on the coattails of the class C's. Until the digital power is increased (which won't happen due to short sighted installations limited to 1%) there won't be parity with the analog.

The question I have for you, as an FM broadcaster, is who 80-100 miles out would you be advertising to? Sure it's nice to carry "my favorite station" across eight counties but people in Biloxi have their own market & stations and people in Fort Walton Beach have their own market & stations.

Hell, Mobile and Pensacola pretty much get all the same stations but they're two different markets and each station "plays" to one or the other and usually doesn't carry ads outside their claimed market. WKSJ is Mobile, WXBM and WYCT are Pensacola but we get all of them anywhere. If you ask me, that's more wasted power than HD is putting out, by far.

I certainly don't want my choice reduced but the reality is most listening is done within that 60/54 dBu contour so why worry about who can or can't get HD outside it right now?

 

[iyiyi]

There is a 23 dB noise level increase mono to stereo with analog FM. That's a 200 fold increase in noise level.

 

[Ai4i]

Back to an earlier matter of quality vs quantity and adding additional subchannels, just want to add that while driving around NYC, DC, or Seattle, I would rather lose some main channel smoothness in order to gain Q2, VivaLaVoce (spelled as such), and the Evergreen Channel.

 

[Chuck]

The question I have for you, as an FM broadcaster, is who 80-100 miles out would you be advertising to? Sure it's nice to carry "my favorite station" across eight counties but people in Biloxi have their own market & stations and people in Fort Walton Beach have their own market & stations.

I'm in Texas. It is a big state and people drive a lot. A 50-60 mile commute isn't all that unusual. I'd like my local listeners to be able to hear my station wherever they go in their day's journey. The last thing you want your listeners to do is switch to a different station.

I certainly don't want my choice reduced but the reality is most listening is done within that 60/54 dBu contour so why worry about who can or can't get HD outside it right now?

Why worry about anyone getting it in HD at all? From a busines point of view, it doesn't make much sense, at least not at this stage of the game.

 

[ajc_trw]

Music on an HD-2 makes my teeth hurt. A pure HD-1 approaches tolerable, but once you start taking away the bits it goes to painful in a hurry. Sorry, but I'm one of those golden eared bastards that can hear.

Add another pair of golden ears with me.

Unless the FM is running extended hybrid they only have 96kbits to work with which is the bare minimum to compete with FM analog. Add an HD-2, even with the minimum bit rate, and analog is the clear winner.

BTW every AM-HD I've ever heard caused my ears to bleed.

 

[Ai4i]

Teeth hurting, ears bleeding, here is why I feel that HD-2's often have the best audio.
Corporate broadcasters seem to be into this thing about processing HD-1's to sound exACTly like their anal og audio.
They want the listener to hear zero change as their radios flip from D to A and back.
HD-2's do not have this issue.

 

[iyiyi]

Sounds logical to me. One question though... Is it possible the HD/analog switch point is being compromised? The switch back to analog would sound pretty cheesy if it occurred where the analog signal degrades to the point blending mono for noise masking is necessary.

 

[tomservo]

The blend point is a no-win situation for HD radio.

Either you process the HD feed to sound like analog and defeat the purpose of better sound quality on digital, or you let the digital be processed to optimize its sound and the blend back and forth becomes even more annoyingly noticeable than normal.

My local Clear Channel stations try to make the digital and analog sound the same, so blends aren't as noticeable. But going from HD-1 to HD-2 is like a train wreck because the HD-2s have no apparent processing beyond simple limiting. They're noticeably quieter and require a big kick to the volume to be at parity with the HD-1.

One CC station is the exception: rocker TK 101 uses completely different processing on the HD-1 versus analog. Blending back and forth is an exercise in futility for the listener because it goes from being loud and punchy but midrange-heavy in analog to kinda quieter but fuller and wider sounding digitally.

 

[Ai4i]

I would not concern myself so much with getting the switching to sound seemless as getting the HD to generate a WOW response from the listeners within the 70/80 dbu contour. I would only concentrate on getting the time delay perfect, a dedeclininging but still but still existinging issuesue.

 

[DarkStarPDX]

All that needs to happen now is for KBOO to start multiplexing, then Vancouver/Portland will no longer have any crystal-clear full-bitrate Ibiquity stations.

Well, that won't happen until KBOO evicts their SCA tenants. My guess is that they need the cash and won't add an HD-2 anytime soon.

Too bad KBOOs HD-1 station (and analog station for that matter) sound like garbage anyhow since they're using some cheap STL equipment, lots of static and noise artifacting...