A Regular Guy discovers IBOC in Indy
The following is a cut-and-paste from the Indiana forum posted by "jimbo700" on 10/29/06 in its entirety. He's a frequent, knowledgeable, and "non-alligned poster"... Also the proud owner of a brand-spankin-new HD car radio...
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I have an HD radio in my car and there are a few things I can say about IBOC, based on my personal experience.
The coverage seems to be only slightly more than HALF the coverage of the analog signal. Here in Columbus, the only Indy HD signal I can receive with any reliability is HANK-FM. If I'm stationary, I can receive the HD signals from the other Indy stations, but as soon as I start moving, most stations' HD2 and HD3 signals drop off, and the HD1 signal reverts back to analog. This can actually be annoying since the analog/digital signals never seem to be in sync. Hank-FM does not delay their analog signal, so when my radio blends from analog to digital, it's pretty annoying. With all due respect, I understand their lack of desire to delay the analog broadcast, because it puts and end to monitoring the air signal in the control room. Even the stations that are now delaying their analog signals are not in perfect sync with the analog, and when they blend back to analog they, too are somewhat annoying.
The biggest thing is, if anything is going to sell HD radio, it's going to be the HD2 and HD3 channels, because the difference between the digital and analog-stereo signal isn't that great. It's not like when multiplex stereo came along and suddenly you have 2 channel stereo. HD Radio's impact isn't even as pronounced as HD-TV. HD-TV has a noticeable increase in fidelity (720p is at least double the screen resolution of standard broadcast's 480i). In the case of Hank FM, their analog signal sounds so good that the HD signal isn't noticeably better. The S/N radio is improved, but I don't think it is enough to compel people to run out and spend $300 for an HD receiver. If HD Radio really is the future of terrestrial broadcasting, then CC, Emmis, Cumulus and the rest should be ready to sacrifice the audience in surrounding counties as a result of the decreased coverage area, and I honestly don't think the Class A's can put a stable HD signal in the fringe metro.
As for AM-IBOC, their coverage seems to be even worse than FM. There are 4 station that I know of broadcasting AM-HD streams in this area (there are probably more but I can only find these four). WIBC, WNDE, WLW and WHAS.
In order to broadcast in HD, they had to scale back their analog signal to 5 or 6 KHz, and now there is no high end on any of the AM's running HD. Even the formerly great sounding WIBC now sounds muddy on the analog signal. In addition, the very things that cause interference on analog AM radios now disrupt the IBOC signal, causing the radio to belnd back to analog, so where's the advantage?
In Columbus, the only way I can get enough signal to decode AM-IBOC is to park my car, away from buildings and power lines. If I'm lucky the IBOC signal will kick-in, but I won't exactly call it 'lucky', because the audio quality of all 4 AM-HD's is horrible. The increase in fidelity is evident, but the codec they are using is worse than the codec in Real Audio. In other words, listening to WIBC, WLW and WHAS in HD doesn't sound as good as streaming audio with a decent Internet connection. The artifacting is horrible and as far as I can tell, none of them are broadcasting IBOC content in stereo. I know they're all talk stations but if you shell out the big bucks for an HD transmitter, you'd think they would take advantage of the bandwidth to broadcast commercials, liners etc in stereo. Plus IBOC remains un-approved for nighttime use, and due to night-time interference issues, many AM IBOC stations would be in serious violation of our treaties with Canada and Mexico (example: WLUP in Chicago would clobber CFRB in Toronto in their fringe primary and most of their secondary coverage area at night).
WNDE's IBOC signal barely covers Marion County. I was on the SW side (on 465 near KY Ave) and WNDE blended back to analog a couple of times. And the 8-10 second delay in the IBOC encoding/decoding process would eliminate audiences listening to broadcasts at sporting events. If you listen to WNDE-HD while you were in the Dome watching the Colts, the broadcast is about 10 seconds behind the action. But that isn't really a problem yet because there are no portable HD radios (Walkman size) available and won't be for a few years.
On top of everything else, when WLW has the IBOC bandsaw turned on, it kills WGN and I can't listen to the Cubbies (please, no flames).
I guess if we come up with compelling content on HD2 and HD3 channels, it might result in people buying HD radios, but I must admit that right now I am really disappointed with HD Radio.
Just my ever-so-humble opinion....Sorry for the lengthy post.
-Jim-
GREAT POST JIM!... Can't find ANYTHING in his post to argue with.
The Mac "tuner" I mentioned was actually a "hybrid" TUNER/PREAMP - the Model MR-75. It DID feature an excellent AM section IN ADDITION to what was generally understood to be an identical FM section to that offered in the TUNER-ONLY MR-78 (which followed the MR-75 into the marketplace about 60-days later). I never understood why Mac left the AM out of the MR-78 - but specifically remember choosing the alternative BECAUSE it had a good AM as part of the package! The dealer at that time surmised that the "AM feature" didn't "mesh" with the typical expectations of a Mac buyer willing to lay out nearly $6000 on a rack of Mac "separates". so Mac left it off the component MR-78 to minimize cost.