Does HD Radio Really Work?? It's completely flakey for me!!

[RadioFixerCLE]

Last night after work, one of my friends and I were at a Best Buy in Long Island City, (Queens County) checking out radios* and he was playing with the Sony HD.

This one was only using a whip for FM and a plastic loop for medium-wave. The FM did catch HD stations (including WPLJ's HD-3). On MW, we managed to get 77 WABC to flip over into HD for a few seconds. The signal kept fluttering in and out. This was in a reinforced concrete warehouse type building with a tin roof. You know. Typical suburban store.


*yeah. that's what my gang does for fun. We go play with radios. ;D ;D

 

[KB1OKL]

Putting words in my mouth will not get the Sony and Radiosophy radio to work in the Best Buy I went to, and I never said the other radios were 'crystal clear' ... too bad but no cigar for you!

I mentioned and please look it up again, that the other table radios and boom boxes as well as the Crosley imitation along with the car radios DID pick up broadcast signals but that the other 2 HD radios on display DID NOT PICK UP ANY SIGNALS - ANALOG OR HD (especially since there are no HD broadcasts in Savannah!).

Now back to your rant on HD radio and it's GREATNESS which alot of us have missed somehow!

Radiopilot

Whatever dude... DXers are buying these radios for their excellent analog performance. Gotta call your claim that they don't work as well as cheapie boomboxes inside a Best Buy store male bovine excrement.

Backpedal much? Your original post said these radios didn't perform as well "compared to the other table radios." Now you're claiming they didn't work as well as the car radios, which you DID NOT MENTION in your previous post.

I wouldn't expect them to work as well as the car radios since the car stereos at every Best Buy are CONNECTED TO AN ANTENNA OUTSIDE THE BUILDING.

Doh!

I've never heard of any DXer using a Radiosophy receiver for DXing although I suppose it's possible, most serious DXers usually spend thousands for their radios.
I've only heard of one person who DXed AM IBOC and he was bragging about his HD light going on at 200 miles, don't know what he used but his short lived posts were not popular on the reflectors. this person is a nationally known DXer so if all he could get was a light lit at 200 miles I can guarantee that is the max you'll get out of them, This of course was done with state of the art DX antennas.

 

[KB1OKL]

Putting words in my mouth will not get the Sony and Radiosophy radio to work in the Best Buy I went to, and I never said the other radios were 'crystal clear' ... too bad but no cigar for you!

I mentioned and please look it up again, that the other table radios and boom boxes as well as the Crosley imitation along with the car radios DID pick up broadcast signals but that the other 2 HD radios on display DID NOT PICK UP ANY SIGNALS - ANALOG OR HD (especially since there are no HD broadcasts in Savannah!).

Now back to your rant on HD radio and it's GREATNESS which alot of us have missed somehow!

Radiopilot

Whatever dude... DXers are buying these radios for their excellent analog performance. Gotta call your claim that they don't work as well as cheapie boomboxes inside a Best Buy store male bovine excrement.

Backpedal much? Your original post said these radios didn't perform as well "compared to the other table radios." Now you're claiming they didn't work as well as the car radios, which you DID NOT MENTION in your previous post.

I wouldn't expect them to work as well as the car radios since the car stereos at every Best Buy are CONNECTED TO AN ANTENNA OUTSIDE THE BUILDING.

Doh!

That particular store may have more noise/steel shielding than some others, that's all.

Almost all radios seem hobbled in a typical retail building, and it has been this way, especially for AM for at least the last 36 years,
as I started auditioning radios in stores at age 10.

On the other hand, I feel sorry for anyone trying to buy a radio for AM dx since none of them tune any more....they select.
These radios offer no way to side tune to avoid a bad splatter on one or the other sideband.

If I had to dx with a BA Receptor, I'd go back to my one-tube regen blooper and headphones, thanks.
At least I can set it to critical regeneration and not wonder why it's deaf.

My main DX receiver is a Collins designed R390-A which weighs 85 lbs. without the case and has 26 tubes, it's an analog radio with mechanical digital readout. I got Radio sweden 1179 last week on it despite WHAM's IBOC which no ordinary radio could ever do.

 

[fybush]

I've never heard of any DXer using a Radiosophy receiver for DXing although I suppose it's possible, most serious DXers usually spend thousands for their radios.

Amazing the things you can learn when you've already decided to only hear what you want to hear. Phil Rafuse up in PEI is most certainly DXing with his Radiosophy, as he's reported on several of the DX lists.

And least over on the IRCA list, a whole bunch of VERY serious West Coast and Midwest DXers are having a grand old time with a $19 Sony Walkman radio, the SRF-59. Turns out the little bugger is amazingly selective, especially if you mount it on a tripod in front of a good loop. There have been a number of reports of trans-Pacific mediumwave DX on, yes, this $19 radio. (Or even cheaper if you can find it on sale.) No, it won't do everything that an R390 or a Drake R8B will do, but a lot of DXers are having a great deal of fun with what they're calling "Ultralight DX." Imagine that..."fun" and "DXing" in the same sentence...

I've only heard of one person who DXed AM IBOC and he was bragging about his HD light going on at 200 miles, don't know what he used but his short lived posts were not popular on the reflectors. this person is a nationally known DXer so if all he could get was a light lit at 200 miles I can guarantee that is the max you'll get out of them, This of course was done with state of the art DX antennas.

Doug Smith down in Tennessee has reported decoding data and even, if memory serves, audio from WBZ. That's got to be well over 700 miles. I believe Powell Way has done the same in South Carolina, which is even further. I'm 350 miles from Boston and I routinely get data from WBZ. I'm also about 350 miles from WABC and can occasionally decode audio. "State of the art DX antenna"? That would be the little plastic loop that came with the Sangean HDT-1.

Where do I collect on this "guarantee"?

(And no, I'm not saying that there's anything thrilling about considering a 700-mile catch of WBZ to be "DX" - but let's at least call the facts what they are.)

 

[KB1OKL]

Doug Smith down in Tennessee has reported decoding data and even, if memory serves, audio from WBZ. That's got to be well over 700 miles. I believe Powell Way has done the same in South Carolina, which is even further. I'm 350 miles from Boston and I routinely get data from WBZ. I'm also about 350 miles from WABC and can occasionally decode audio. "State of the art DX antenna"? That would be the little plastic loop that came with the Sangean HDT-1.

Where do I collect on this "guarantee"?

(And no, I'm not saying that there's anything thrilling about considering a 700-mile catch of WBZ to be "DX" - but let's at least call the facts what they are.)

Scott, you are saying that Doug Smith got audio and data with a stock loop antenna with a Sangean HD radio from 700 miles? He must have a great location. WBZ sends all their signal inland I know that making it a real buzzsaw with it's IBOC, in fact It Bothers Other channels all over the place especially in your area I guess.

 

[fybush]

Scott, you are saying that Doug Smith got audio and data with a stock loop antenna with a Sangean HD radio from 700 miles? He must have a great location. WBZ sends all their signal inland I know that making it a real buzzsaw with it's IBOC, in fact It Bothers Other channels all over the place especially in your area I guess.

I don't remember the specifics of Doug's reception, and am hoping he'll chime in. I expect he would have been using his longwire. My reference to the stock loop antenna was to MY reception here in Rochester, which included audio from WABC during the brief time they were running IBOC at night. I could probably still do it just after sunrise, if I cared to. Having done it once, I'm just as happy to sleep in...

 

[kevtronics]

I received WBZ via nighttime skywave IBOC here in central NJ on an Insignia car radio, but the digital audio only lasted for at most maybe 30 seconds at a time before it would drop back to analog. And even during the daytime, reception of local AM IBOC stations from NYC was flakey.

Even on WOR, which is strong enough here to be received using just a diode, earphone, and long piece of wire, the local programming elements that are in stereo would often drop to mono, since AM IBOC stereo has a much higher threshold for decoding than AM IBOC mono.

 

[RichWood]

I was an early adopter of HD radio and bought a Boston Acoustics HD-Receptor shortly after it came out. I've had all sorts of problems with it. I had to add an external amplified antenna and it still doesn't work right. I live about 20 miles from most of the FM stations in Washington, DC and on most of them the HD signals are very intermittent. Some I can't get at all, others I can get depending on where people are standing in the room, and the others just continuously flip in and out of HD mode. There's actually a couple of HD-2 stations in Washington that I'd be interested in listening to, but it is entirely frustrating.

I bought a BA Receptor before they were discontinued. I returned it because it was deaf. I thought the radio was bad. The replacement had the same problem. I returned it, as well. I have an external attic antenna that gets some Boston FMs (100 miles) on a mono Receptor that has great sensitivity on AM.

I now have an Accurian. It's much more sensitive than the BA but still not very good. On AM it's useless. I have a 50Kw AM station about 25 miles away. No digital. I also have a JVC in the car. That same 50Kw signal will lock when the car is stopped. It won't hold as I drive. I'm in mountainous New England and the FMs constantly switch modes, making secondaries useless. The analog/digital sync is bad on most of them, making listening very annoying. Neither radio receives digital AM at night. Retailers here tell me most of the radios they've sold have been returned as defective. They aren't. They're just deaf. In addition, the secondaries here are just minor variations of the analog. There's no reason to buy an expensive radio for that.

Rich

 

[rbrucecarter5]

I'm in mountainous New England and the FMs constantly switch modes, making secondaries useless. The analog/digital sync is bad on most of them, making listening very annoying. Neither radio receives digital AM at night. Retailers here tell me most of the radios they've sold have been returned as defective. They aren't. They're just deaf. In addition, the secondaries here are just minor variations of the analog. There's no reason to buy an expensive radio for that.

This appears to be the crucial difference between those who claim up to 100 mile reception and those who have problems - terrain. This will make HD unusable in many markets. My experience with FM is fairly good, given the "local" stations are 35 miles away, but on tall sticks with 100,000 watts. The situation seems to be similar to the difference between mono and stereo FM. I've driven in mountainous areas, and there is a "two tiered" type of reception if you can get the station at all. Stereo is a premium condition when you have line of sight. When line of sight disappears, the receiver quickly blends to mono and then loss of signal. You could consider HD FM a three tiered type of system, with the best reception being digital with the strongest signal. Then it defaults back to analog stereo, then analog mono.

With this said - I don't see a power increase mitigating things that much. A 10 dB increase in power only doubles the power at the receiver input - the type of reception scenarios that are realistic are sharp, abrupt exponential increases and decreases. A tenfold power increase on HD sidebands would only be one decade of power - when average multipath / picket fencing / reception variation in mountainous areas can be 4 or 5 decades in a matter of seconds. Given the lock time of HD - I doubt the average user would even notice an increase in HD lock time. Over flat terrain, doubling power on the sidebands might give a few more miles, but hardly double the present coverage of HD.

One thing I will agree with - the HD AM system is defective. With one of the most sensitive AM tuners I've seen in years "out of the box", the Sangean HDT-1X requires some SERIOUS antenna muscle to get lock on LOCAL stations just a few miles away. In one case, a lower band blowtorch that went 300 miles in C-Quam stereo. Now, I am contemplating making a ten foot box loop just so I can get a local HD station that doesn't show a trace of lock with a two foot loop - much less the little four inch loop that shipped with the unit. AM HD is as deaf as a deaf ear. Cranking up power might help - but adjacent channels are already jammed enough without adding to the digital disaster. I don't know what would fix AM - but I do know that the digital sidebands go hundreds of miles - far more than the analog signal. With that type of robustness, you would think that someone could come up with an algorithm that would decode. But the real robustness in decode may have to wait for all digital mode.

 

[RichWood]

With this said - I don't see a power increase mitigating things that much. A 10 dB increase in power only doubles the power at the receiver input -

A minor correction. The power increase proposed is 10% rather than the current 1% of the analog power. If I remember my electronics courses correctly, 3dB is double the power. 10dB would more than triple it. This same incorrect figure appeared in an NAB press release.

Rich

 

[Play Freebird]

With this said - I don't see a power increase mitigating things that much. A 10 dB increase in power only doubles the power at the receiver input -

A minor correction. The power increase proposed is 10% rather than the current 1% of the analog power. If I remember my electronics courses correctly, 3dB is double the power. 10dB would more than triple it. This same incorrect figure appeared in an NAB press release.

Rich

10 dB = 10 times the power or ~3.16 times the voltage, and is a very significant increase.

In layman's terms,

1 dB is barely noticeable
3 dB is fairly noticeable
6 dB is definitely noticeable
10 dB is very noticable

12 dB is the difference between a Class A and Class B FM facility, taking HAAT into account

Problem is, this sword cuts both ways. It may improve IBOC decoding performance but also increases first-adjacent interference.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

10 dB = 10 times the power or ~3.16 times the voltage, and is a very significant increase.

In layman's terms,

1 dB is barely noticeable
3 dB is fairly noticeable
6 dB is definitely noticeable
10 dB is very noticable

12 dB is the difference between a Class A and Class B FM facility, taking HAAT into account

Problem is, this sword cuts both ways. It may improve IBOC decoding performance but also increases first-adjacent interference.

My bad - I don't know where my head was that day.

 

[JohnnyElectron]

I read an article in the latest edition of "Radio", and there is a story on the NPR Testing that they did, and when an HD-FM signal gets hammered on BOTH sides, then the HD takes a 10dB nosedive; hench, the 10dB increased suggested for HD power uppage! They didn't mention if that interference is from another HD station or not.