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

[luckenbg]

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.

Should I buy a different radio or is this just par for the course with HD? I can't even turn the HD tuner off so some stations are completely unlistenable while the radio continuously flips from HD to Analog and back again. The ringing and boinging and volume changing is just ridiculous.

Should I give up on HD, or is it just the radio I have, or is it just that I live too far away from the stations?

Thanks, Gary

 

[rbrucecarter5]

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

Don't panic! First of all, you need to realize that those indoor amplified antennas do not work. The best minds on fmtunerinfo.com have analyzed the things and come to the conclusion that they only make the problem worse, because the transistor in them that does the amplification adds more noise and then amplifies the noise. Noise sums according to the root sum squared law, so amplified antenna noise dominates and limits your reception. I think we have all made the mistake of sinking $50 or so into one of these contraptions, so don't feel singled out.

Here is what you should try: Put the supplied FM dipole antenna at the ceiling line, broadside to the stations broadcasting HD. Make sure it is stretched out fully! You should get more stations in HD than you do now with the amplified antenna. Next - if that doesn't work, you need an outdoor antenna aimed at the stations, and good transmission line. Cable TV type coax is good, and you will need a converter transformer on the antenna to convert it from 300 Ohms to 75 Ohms. You need a yagi or log periodic type of antenna made specifically for FM, a TV antenna will not do! The bigger the FM antenna, the more stations you will receive in HD! If you cannot put in an outdoor antenna - the only indoor type that I have ever found that works is a Godar antenna - it is a flat box that has an undersized log periodic antenna in it - but the good news is that log periodics have such wide bandwidth that one that is too small actually has a chance of working at FM frequencies. Godar has had some quality issues with connectors becoming broken inside the unit, hopefully those have been solved. The Godar will be most sensitive on the higher end of the band, towards the lower end it may not have as much gain as a dipole.

 

[Mike Walker]

Amen, RBruce. It may be counter-intuitive, but amplification makes things worse, unless it's a REALLY high-quality amplifier. The digital sidebands are delicate, and easily smothered by the noise in the vast majority of amplifiers. Again, counter-intuitive as it may seem, if you don't get solid HD reception on FM, weak signal strength is seldom the problem. Get your antenna high, keep it from getting tangled, orient it toward what you're trying to receive!

If you can't use an outdoor antenna, I've found the 30 dollar Magnum Dynalab SR-100 from Audio Advisor (and others) to do things that logic dictates that it shouldn't be able to. Functionally, it looks like a glorified dipole. But it PERFORMS way beyond that. Before I got my roof antenna and rotor, my SR100 "Silver Ribbon) pulled in HD from 80 miles away, from it's position on the top shelf of my closet, with elements touching the ceiling.

Good luck!

 

[calstymes]

luckenbg asked for some advice:

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.

Should I buy a different radio or is this just par for the course with HD? I can't even turn the HD tuner off so some stations are completely unlistenable while the radio continuously flips from HD to Analog and back again. The ringing and boinging and volume changing is just ridiculous.

Yes it is all quite ridiculous. Notwithstanding rbrucecarter5's excellent reply to you, I'm sure nobody here wants to hear another of my rants about the Boston Acoustics HD Receptor or AM HD in general or how iBiquity did a number on all of us (and the best is yet to come when they have their public offering), but I'll chime in here anyway.

I went what you went through in the spring of 2006. I was extremely disappointed.

And remember, you are having problems with FM so if that be the case, I wouldn't even THINK about trying AM HD. The AM HD design is fraught with all sorts of poor engineering and your disappointment with it is bound to be higher than what you are already experiencing with FM.

Should I give up on HD,

For the most part, I did. Obviously, I don't like the system and I don't like iBiquity. No doubt your mileage will vary.

or is it just the radio I have,

The BA HD Receptor is apparently known for its poor design. autopaint-1 and R.F. Burns will tell you that. You could try another radio, but, are you sure you want to spend more money on this technology without knowing ahead of time what kind of results you are going to get?

or is it just that I live too far away from the stations?

If you live too far away from the stations' transmitters, or for some reason are in a particularly bad area for reception in general, then this will be a factor. My two cents. I'll go back to sleep now.

 

[KB1OKL]

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.

Should I buy a different radio or is this just par for the course with HD? I can't even turn the HD tuner off so some stations are completely unlistenable while the radio continuously flips from HD to Analog and back again. The ringing and boinging and volume changing is just ridiculous.

Should I give up on HD, or is it just the radio I have, or is it just that I live too far away from the stations?

Thanks, Gary

Yes Gary, unfortunately that is how it is unless you live in the stations' transmitter's backyard but there is one cure: Buy a yagi antenna like ham operators use but cut for the FM band, 88-108 Mhz, get a 100' tower (200' would be better, but legal? don't know check local ordinances, you may need a red blinking light on top), mount the antenna on top with a rotor so you can aim it exactly at the transmitter of the station you want to hear, and.....you may be lucky enough to light up your little HD light intermittently.
There is one more cure: If it's still under warranty, you can take it back and get an old Marantz receiver from the 70's, have it reconditioned and experience some actual really good sound and it would probably be cheaper to boot.

 

[Mike Walker]

Bullsh@t! I get consistent, hour-after-hour reception of WMIT Black Mountain NC, and several stations in the Asheville/Greenville/Spartanburg area day in and day out in solid-HD at 100+ miles. Yes that's with a roof antenna. With an indoor antenna on the top shelf of my closet, I get most HD from Charlotte at 80 miles, and Greensboro at 60 miles. Anybody who tells you that you need a 200 foot tower and high-gain yagi to get the "hd light to light occasionally" is full of sh#t, demonstrably so, and does the legitimate hd opposition no favors!

Having said that, there are MANY reports of the Boston being at the bottom of the heap in terms of weak-signal sensitivity. I wouldn't buy one! Something from Sangean, Sony, PolkAudio, Cambridge Soundworks, or many others should simply work better.

 

[SUPERCASTER]

Bullsh@t! I get consistent, hour-after-hour reception of WMIT Black Mountain NC, and several stations in the Asheville/Greenville/Spartanburg area day in and day out in solid-HD at 100+ miles. Yes that's with a roof antenna. With an indoor antenna on the top shelf of my closet, I get most HD from Charlotte at 80 miles, and Greensboro at 60 miles. Anybody who tells you that you need a 200 foot tower and high-gain yagi to get the "hd light to light occasionally" is full of sh#t, demonstrably so, and does the legitimate hd opposition no favors!

Having said that, there are MANY reports of the Boston being at the bottom of the heap in terms of weak-signal sensitivity. I wouldn't buy one! Something from Sangean, Sony, PolkAudio, Cambridge Soundworks, or many others should simply work better.

Apparently much of the HD Radio "Bullsh@t!" comes from very rural parts of the country such as NC (no surprise) and not from the RF congested and bovine deficient metro population areas. In metro areas it is not unusual for two full power second adjacent channel stations to be located 40 miles (or even less!) apart. They share a first adjacent HD channel. Which first adjacent HD signal wins?

Well, along a straight line radial between the two stations there is the area of 10 or 15 miles from it's transmitter where the first station is HD predominant. Then there is an interference zone where the two stations "battle it out". Then 10 or 15 miles where the second station's HD signal is dominant. But wait! What about all the other stations signals contributing interference from all the other directions?

A real HD RF mess results.

Additionally, in the AM HD case where there we also must consider medium wave analog noise, propagation and added skywave, well you can see why HD Radio is inconsistent with current AM or FM channel allocations.

Since you reside in a sparsely populated rural area with very few strong broadcasting signals, you can not expect your HD Radio experiences to be representative of the vast majority of the population.

 

[Mike Walker]

Actually Dude, the opposite is true. Digital and analog signals are plentiful in urban areas, and much easier to receive. At the risk of being sexist, some of you guys "argue like a girl". Maybe I should say "argue like my wife". When you're losing on one front (coverage area SUCKS), you CHANGE THE SUBJECT! "Well, it works only in rural areas, not bovine-deficient urban areas". HEY! Charlotte is hardly rural. It's a top 30 market, teaming with stations. And HD works just fine in that market. Ditto the other large markets in NC (Greensboro/Winston-Salem/High Point, Raleigh/Durham, Wilmington, Asheville). Got any REAL arguments, 'cause these smell kind of like some of the pastures in rural NC!

 

[rbrucecarter5]

Bullsh@t! I get consistent, hour-after-hour reception of WMIT Black Mountain NC, and several stations in the Asheville/Greenville/Spartanburg area day in and day out in solid-HD at 100+ miles. Yes that's with a roof antenna. With an indoor antenna on the top shelf of my closet, I get most HD from Charlotte at 80 miles, and Greensboro at 60 miles. Anybody who tells you that you need a 200 foot tower and high-gain yagi to get the "hd light to light occasionally" is full of sh#t, demonstrably so, and does the legitimate hd opposition no favors!

Having said that, there are MANY reports of the Boston being at the bottom of the heap in terms of weak-signal sensitivity. I wouldn't buy one! Something from Sangean, Sony, PolkAudio, Cambridge Soundworks, or many others should simply work better.

I think that one post was a bit tongue in cheek. I didn't even need a setup like that for 330 mile DX of regular analog FM. A 30 foot tower and ten element yagi with good transmission line did the trick nicely. Yours is one of the furthest reception reports I've heard for HD, which is hopeful that decent receiver design is overcoming a lot of the problems. You've definitely got some strikes against HD with the broader IF bandwidth required, unless somebody has repealed the gain bandwidth product and root sum square noise laws.

I posted what I did because somebody was having problems 20 miles out, as opposed to your 60 to 80 mile out experience. If there is anything we outmoded DX'ers have learned through the years, it is that you put the money into the antenna, tower, and lead-in wire, then almost any tuner is going to do a decent job. I assumed he had a decent radio, and all that would be needed is a decent antenna. In defense of the BA radio - it probably is just as capable a radio as any, when it is connected to a decent antenna. I got 180 dependable reception from a really modest radio by just connecting it to an outdoor antenna.

I genuinely want to try to help people with reception problems, because I've been where they are. Not able to quite get the station I want, and finding that I needed antennas and better equipment to do it. I don't think it is doing HD radio a disservice to help people find a way to listen, and "discover HD radio". At this stage in the roll-out, you want as many people listening to it and spreading the word by word of mouth as possible. You don't need people saying "I can't receive it" and spreading that message.

Congratulations on your dependable 100 mile + reception. That is hard enough with regular analog FM. You must have a great setup.

 

[Play Freebird]

We all should keep in mind that the FM allocations plan varies greatly around the US, as does terrain. A listener in Florida or Texas might enjoy good digital reception 60+ miles from a Class C station over flat terrain, while someone in New England will lose lock at less than 20 miles from a Class B if they drive behind a hill. There's a Class A in central Philadelphia that loses digital coverage at less than 10 miles from the tower in certain directions. I won't even get into the short-spacing mess that exists across the northeast corridor and in southern California.

It's rather unfortunate that the US decided to adopt a terrestrial digital broadcast system that currently provides no way to fill in "dead spots" where they do exist. General consensus is that HD digital coverage doesn't live up to promises, and usually falls short of analog. What's the answer?

The Eureka 147 system, on the other hand, was designed specifically to allow "gap fillers", with the objective of providing seamless coverage, and of course, XM and Sirius can do the same.

 

[Mike Walker]

While I agree in principle Play Freebird (one of the alltime greatest "handles"...up there with "RF Burns") that Eureka 147 would have been a (much) better option, and would have provided more solid coverage, trust me...as a 6 year XM subscriber, their signal ain't "gapless" in rural, mountainous terrain!

 

[luckenbg]

I should add that in the Baltimore Washington corridor where I live there are many many Washington and Baltimore signals that are on first adjacent channels. In fact I am within 40 miles of stations operating on 106.5, 106.7, and 106.9 all of which put in very strong signals at my house. I also have strong adjacent channel signals on 105.7 and 105.9, 102.3, 102.5, 102.7, and 103.9, 104.1, and many many more. I assume HD on any of these channels is a lost cause, but I'm even having trouble with those stations that have a second adjacent channel signal. There is not a single spot on my dial that doesn't have a first adjacent or second adjacent signal. Could this be part of my problem?

 

[radionekkid]

In short, the reliable reception of these signals are very subject to whole host of local and regional conditions and this is a matter of fact. Can't rely on this form for honest treatment of the subject. Too many bomb throwers, pundants and want-to-bees. In time it will come about, but not yet.

 

[Radioman100]

In short, the reliable reception of these signals are very subject to whole host of local and regional conditions and this is a matter of fact. Can't rely on this form for honest treatment of the subject. Too many bomb throwers, pundants and want-to-bees. In time it will come about, but not yet.

Ding ding ding! We have a winner!

You absolutely can't rely on this forum for honest information about what HD Radio can't do.

People come here to spread misinformation with the intent of harming HD Radio. I see it all the time. The last time was the guy that claimed the Sony desktop HD Radio couldn't receive the analog signals of local stations. Funny that everyone else that's used the radio, including many HD detractors here have praised this radio's analog performance.

 

[Len14043]

In short, the reliable reception of these signals are very subject to whole host of local and regional conditions and this is a matter of fact. Can't rely on this form for honest treatment of the subject. Too many bomb throwers, pundants and want-to-bees. In time it will come about, but not yet.

Ding ding ding! We have a winner!

You absolutely can't rely on this forum for honest information about what HD Radio can't do.

People come here to spread misinformation with the intent of harming HD Radio. I see it all the time. The last time was the guy that claimed the Sony desktop HD Radio couldn't receive the analog signals of local stations. Funny that everyone else that's used the radio, including many HD detractors here have praised this radio's analog performance.

I know the Radiosophy is a great receiver and heard great reviews about the Sony. If the poster would have said one of those radios was subpar, that would have been plausable in that it's possible to have a lemon. The chance of both radios being lemons is a stretch, along the same lines of believing Simpson didn't kill Nicole and Goldman.

 

[R.F. Burns]

I realize I am seenas an IBOC cheer leader I have to say that I've finally been able to sample XM in my new car. The audio is horrid and the coverage, veen in the NY metro area is not without dropouts. I loose the signal under most overpasses unless i can go thorugh before the buffer runs out. The audio sounds liike a 16 kbps real audio stream with tons of artifacts. As much as I think AM IBOC's audio isn't all that great, it's miles ahead of what I hear coming from XM. I haven't tried HD in a mobile environment yet but at home I have no problen staying locked on the HD stream from any local IBOC station, once I'm locked onto their signal and this is on any of my three different HD radios.

 

[Radioman100]

I know the Radiosophy is a great receiver and heard great reviews about the Sony. If the poster would have said one of those radios was subpar, that would have been plausable in that it's possible to have a lemon. The chance of both radios being lemons is a stretch, along the same lines of believing Simpson didn't kill Nicole and Goldman.

Exactly. Not only was he saying both of these radios that are widely reported to have above average analog performance were not picking anything up in this store, all the non-HD radios he tested were receiving everything with crystal clarity.

Likely? Not at all. Posted purely to misinform and deter potential buyers?

 

[Len14043]

Apparently much of the HD Radio "Bullsh@t!" comes from very rural parts of the country such as NC (no surprise) and not from the RF congested and bovine deficient metro population areas. In metro areas it is not unusual for two full power second adjacent channel stations to be located 40 miles (or even less!) apart. They share a first adjacent HD channel. Which first adjacent HD signal wins?

I live in an area where the FM dial is packed and most of the stations have adopted IBOC. Your argument stating that HD stations two channels apart sharing the same digital channel shows either your lack of understanding, bias, or both. The digital signal extends about 135 Mhz to slightly beyond 200 Mhz from the center of the channel. Hence, there is a slight overlap, but not enough of an overlap to interfere with a station 2 channels away. In my area, stations at 93.7, 94.1 and 94.5 run IBOC successfully. In fact, a station at 88.5 is receivable in HD while stations at 88.3 and 88.7 are audible! (Don't ask me how thats possible) Of course, when you make the factually incorrect statment that IBOC makes FM sound like AM, you lose all credibility-even among posters opposed to IBOC. Most reasonable posters here who are both for and against IBOC acknowledge the benefits of FM and the faults of AM. Comparing the AM and FM systems are like comparing apples and steaks, and lumping them together makes you appear foolish.

 

[SUPERCASTER]

The truth about HD Radio (AM or FM) is almost always the opposite of what HD promoters claim, and they always wind up looking foolish. Misguided HD radio promoters are about promoting HD Radio, sometimes by any means and at any cost. Objective posters who have nothing, to sell, loose, or gain are the ones on this site who are subject to all the bashing by HD supporters who try to peddle their problematic, defective, failed High School science project/experiment, HD Radio.

The Engineering White Paper describing the adjacent channel effects of FM HD Radio signals, and coverage loss (analog as well as digital), "What Are We Doing To Ourselves, Exactly" by respected Consulting Engineer, NPR consultant, V-Soft President -Doug Vernier is on the front page of the Dec. 12, 2007 edition of "Radio World Engineering Extra".

No direct link could be provided to this article as this magazine is available by subscription only, paper or internet editions.

Here is the link to subscribe if you wish to actually read the White Paper rather then just summarily bash anyone with the slightest legitimate criticism of HD Radio:

http://www.myrweemag.com/

 

[RadioFixerCLE]

I realize I am seenas an IBOC cheer leader I have to say that I've finally been able to sample XM in my new car. The audio is horrid and the coverage, veen in the NY metro area is not without dropouts. I loose the signal under most overpasses unless i can go thorugh before the buffer runs out. The audio sounds liike a 16 kbps real audio stream with tons of artifacts. As much as I think AM IBOC's audio isn't all that great, it's miles ahead of what I hear coming from XM. I haven't tried HD in a mobile environment yet but at home I have no problen staying locked on the HD stream from any local IBOC station, once I'm locked onto their signal and this is on any of my three different HD radios.

I've heard Sirius in a friend's car and it sounds "metallic" -- kind of like a bad webstream. It does make IBOC sound good by comparison. The Sony HD radio, while not blowing me out of the water did actually do a pretty good job of reproducing the HD-1 signal. If price were no object, I'd certainly add one to the herd.

I also think it has a lot to do with the quality of the speakers you've got hooked up to the radio. WFAN-HD actually sounds pretty good on their in-station HD monitor (an off the shelf car radio).

Oh, and I don't really care for HD - I hope it goes down the tubes, but I have to give props where appropriate.