• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

FM works. But listen to the interference on AM from HD!

willcail said:
If its on YouTube it must be true huh? I have no problems with interference with Hybrid Digital AM stations. Get your self an external AM Loop antenna. I have no problems with FM or AM Hybrid Digital. Get yourself better antennas.
Click to expand...

So you're saying that even with night skywave constantly changing you have no problem with IBOC sideband noise? I have 2 400' LW antennas running into a phaser with which I can completely phase out local AM's until they're under the noise or blended in with all the other signals on the channel. I can't phase out distant signals because of the constantly varying arrival angles for more than a few minutes, sometimes even less. I use WSM as an example because it plays music and it has WFAN right next to it, I'll phase out WFAN, tune to WSM and within a few minutes the hash creeps right back in and this happens over and over again, basically making WSM unlistenable because who wants to have to turn knobs every few minutes if they're listening for pleasure? I also have loop antennas which have to be constantly adjusted because of varying arrival angles. I have a hard time with anyone saying they have no problems with IBOC hash on adjacents because of an outside loop antenna.
But most of all, do you actually think the average non-radio person is going to put up an outside antenna for radio? Those days are LONG gone except for people like us.
 
You can't argue with these brain-dead HD boosters about AM - they just put their hands over their ears, start yelling "dx, dx, dx!" and run away.

From Chicago, the best place to listen to Coast to Coast AM when WLS isn't offering it is WHAS. It's one of the strongest and most consistent skywave signals in this area. However, lately, it's been getting chopped up by sidebands from.......WCCO. Now, if I am not entitled to listen to WHAS because it's out of market then I sure as Hell shouldn't have to be subjected to the buzz jammer from WCCO!

The AM dial is now full of stories like these. You tune in a previously clear skywave channel only to hear it buzzing with sideband from an interloper. Now, Chicago isn't a good market to complain about skywave interference to locals because most of our nighttime locals are running at 50 kw. But, go to a smaller market with one or more local, lower powered AM stations and you'll eventually hear some distant IBuzz interfering with their signals.

And there are stronger, yet somewhat directional, signals that must see some interference too. Like if you're in the market but in the null. Given that a strong sideband can blow out a reception hole 40 kHz wide on many radios, this cannot possibly be an unusual problem.
 
BRNout

You are not very bright are you. There are no problems with Hybrid Digital interference with AM. I can listen to any in market or out of market AM station. I can tuned into WGN or WLS from Columbus Ohio during the daytime. I can turn into WLW from Cincy in HD with no interference. I can pick up KMOX HD FM daytime as well. The main problem with these Luddites that they don't want to be bother purchasing an external AM Loop antenna amplified and or passive. These antennas doesn't cost that much. Trying to listen to AM radio in a steel and concrete building with the internal AM antenna is like trying to watch DTV with a 3 feet Coaxial Cable.

The same goes with the FM band. Plus Microsoft and Best Buy are now using the smaller HD Radio Chip. Then some people like to listen to static than the actual radio broadcast.

I do enjoy my HD 100 receiver just fine. Last night I was able to pick up WXIZ FM last night an Class A FM station broadcasting at 920 watts from Waverly Ohio using my HD 100 receiver.
 
willcail said:
BRNout

You are not very bright are you. There are no problems with Hybrid Digital interference with AM. I can listen to any in market or out of market AM station. I can tuned into WGN or WLS from Columbus Ohio during the daytime. I can turn into WLW from Cincy in HD with no interference. I can pick up KMOX HD FM daytime as well. The main problem with these Luddites that they don't want to be bother purchasing an external AM Loop antenna amplified and or passive. These antennas doesn't cost that much. Trying to listen to AM radio in a steel and concrete building with the internal AM antenna is like trying to watch DTV with a 3 feet Coaxial Cable.
Click to expand...

Will, I think you should contact the HD Radio Alliance immediately and see if they will make a deal with you to be a paid spokesman, or at least a promotional consultant for their ad campaign. The Alliance has lots of money, but seems to be running short on good ideas -- perhaps you can help them out and cash in at the same time.

For example, I found your comment "Trying to listen to AM radio in a steel and concrete building with the internal AM antenna is like trying to watch DTV with a 3 feet Coaxial Cable" very enlightening. Your insight is exactly what's needed to save HD Radio! You should be getting big bucks for this advice, instead of giving it away for free.
 
Well, there you have it, ladies and gentlemen - typical HD-booster behavior: an insult ("you're not very bright") just because BRNout posted an opinion willcail disagrees with, combined with a tired old cliche' (calling him "a Luddite.")

Please note that BRNout's post was about AM. You know: amplitude modulation. It's really different, will, from the FM (that's FREQUENCY modulation, an entirely different modulation method) case histories you claim to have experienced. You really need to read and understand the posts and, if you're gonna disagree, try to keep on-subject.

As far as your flat, unqualified statement "there are no problems with Hybrid Digital interference with AM" you must be the last human being on the planet clinging to THAT belief. Everyone knows there are interference issues with HD-AM. Even iBiquity and the Alliance admit it. Guess that makes Bob Struble, Diane Warren and Jeff Jury Luddites, right??

Keep up the denial and juvenile behavior on message boards. Nice work. This kind of post makes HD people look like total loons.
 
willcail said:
BRNout

You are not very bright are you. There are no problems with Hybrid Digital interference with AM. I can listen to any in market or out of market AM station. I can tuned into WGN or WLS from Columbus Ohio during the daytime. I can turn into WLW from Cincy in HD with no interference. I can pick up KMOX HD FM daytime as well. The main problem with these Luddites that they don't want to be bother purchasing an external AM Loop antenna amplified and or passive. These antennas doesn't cost that much. Trying to listen to AM radio in a steel and concrete building with the internal AM antenna is like trying to watch DTV with a 3 feet Coaxial Cable.

The same goes with the FM band. Plus Microsoft and Best Buy are now using the smaller HD Radio Chip. Then some people like to listen to static than the actual radio broadcast.

I do enjoy my HD 100 receiver just fine. Last night I was able to pick up WXIZ FM last night an Class A FM station broadcasting at 920 watts from Waverly Ohio using my HD 100 receiver.
Click to expand...

Uh, after reading your post, I'd suggest that YOU are the intellectually challenged one here. If your insulting manner doesn't give that away, the bad grammar sure does! LOL!

One thing I need to know is how in the Hell you get "KMOX HD FM" during the daytime in Columbus, Ohio?!? I didn't even know they had an FM! Wow, learn something new every day. But I don't see how you will decode up AM 1120's digital feed at that distance during the daytime. There's too much signal decay. You'd literally need a backyard laced with wires, then you'd get so much electrical interference that you'd lose lock all the time. Sorry, but I don't buy it.

And, from any car radio or portable system I've ever used, I never picked up WLS during the daytime as far as Columbus, Ohio. It generally is lost in the noise within 100 miles past Toledo. So, if you're picking them up that far out, you have an antenna setup that's far from typical. Basically, by your standards, all by about 500 people in the US are Luddites! And, by the way, who would interfere with WLW in your area anyhow? They have it pretty clear in Ohio - so you failed to make a point with that comment too. But I can tell you that WOR's polluting sidebands do a fine job of blotting WLW out in southern New England at night when they used to be in the clear. Oh yeah, that skywave - so it doesn't exist and we're not to discuss it, right?

By the way, what sort of a narrowband radio are you using? Or do you have hearing aids? Because you fail to notice how the analog AM audio signature is flattened and compressed by the IBOC. And that's not my 'opinion' it's a fact! It absolutely sounds different when a station is running IBOC than when it's not. There isn't even any argument there - it is what it is. The only debate is whether it's noticable. Fascinating how none of the HD boosters hear it, but the rest of us do. Perhaps their bad ears are a reason why the technology has turned out so poorly.

I never said that it decreased the range of the signal, but it does decrease the audio response. So you don't hear it as well. On several of my radios (even in the car) you can hear the high noise floor on stations running IBOC. WLS is particularly bad. When it's off, the station's audio is crisp and clean. When they're running it, you hear the high pitched hiss mixed in the background of the analog audio. It sounds like crap. How pointing that out makes me "not very bright" is beyond me.

And no, I don't happen to have a steel and concrete building handy to validate your theory. But I can tell you that your entire missive was a waste of time. Not only did you wander all over the place, but your "point" doesn't manage to address the point that the average (and above-average) consumer will NEVER install an external antenna system as you have to pick up AM HD signals at any distance. They want to plug it in and forget it. That's the American consumer, whether YOU like it or not. If you fail to accept that, then you're the one who needs to pull his head out of the sand. If you need to jump through so many hoops to make the technology shine, then the technology doesn't work. It's as simple as that, whether you like it or not.
 
Why are the Luddites are aginst any advancement in broadcast technology? If you have your way analog TV and radio will be still around. Analog is terrible. Why would any one in their right mind want to listen to static?

Hybrid Digital is great for AM and FM. The HD recevier I have is HD 100. The anti HD people just want to spread their lies. I suggest that you need to get your hearing check.
 
willcail said:
Why are the Luddites are aginst any advancement in broadcast technology? If you have your way analog TV and radio will be still around. Analog is terrible. Why would any one in their right mind want to listen to static?

Hybrid Digital is great for AM and FM. The HD recevier I have is HD 100. The anti HD people just want to spread their lies. I suggest that you need to get your hearing check.
Click to expand...

I tell ya -- you really need to get a job with the HD Alliance. You could be their greatest pitchman!
 
willcail said:
Why are the Luddites are aginst any advancement in broadcast technology? If you have your way analog TV and radio will be still around. Analog is terrible. Why would any one in their right mind want to listen to static?

Hybrid Digital is great for AM and FM. The HD recevier I have is HD 100. The anti HD people just want to spread their lies. I suggest that you need to get your hearing check.
Click to expand...

Prove that HD radio is an
advancement in broadcast technology?
Click to expand...
and I might be for it. All evidence about HD radio proves that it is just the opposite. HD radio is a digital disaster.
 
BRNout's comments about reception in Ohio are correct, there is NO KMOX in my part of Ohio during the day, only at night can I get an occasional HD lock on KMOX, and on WHAM -but that's it - and I've got decent antennae - I can't even get WLW to lock in Northern Wood County, Ohio.
I CAN receive WLS in C-Quam stereo at night, but no daytime HD, and I cannot get a daytime HD lock on 50KW WTVN or WLW. My daytime HD on AM is limited to intermittant reception of WWJ, WDFN, WFDF and WXYT, with a solid WCWA and WSPD, and not a single one, except WDFN, appears to have any stereo audio - not even Radio Disney WFDF.
I'm using Directed Electronics tuners - one in the car, and one tabletop, so unless my two receivers are junk, I assume my results are typical.

I will note that the D.E. tuners DO have some sort of an "HD filter" in them so you DON'T hear the "HD hiss" on AM 20KHz up and down like you do on your standard analog-only tuners, and you can usually tune in an analog station 20KHz adjacent to an HD station that I can't get on my Chrysler radio. For example, HD on 560 in Monroe Michigan splatters 580 CKWW (daytime) on my car radios, but the HD radio allows me to still hear 580 in analog, even though it won't lock into the 560 HD signal. Weird and wild.

Wish I had an answer what to do with HD - money invested, but it appears that it wasn't the best plan.
 
willcail said:
Why are the Luddites are aginst any advancement in broadcast technology? If you have your way analog TV and radio will be still around. Analog is terrible. Why would any one in their right mind want to listen to static?

Hybrid Digital is great for AM and FM. The HD recevier I have is HD 100. The anti HD people just want to spread their lies. I suggest that you need to get your hearing check.
Click to expand...

No one here is anti-HD. We are anti HD INTERFERENCE. Get the slop off adjacent channels, both AM and FM, and everybody here would be for it.

Analog can sound great, if the analog signal chain is done right and the receiver design is good. In fact, a good analog signal chain can be considerably better than the 96 dB noise floor caused by 16 bit CD resolution.

As far as lies are concerned - where is Shredderman when you need him?

Lies for HD alliance:

(1) Most AM radios are narrowband. Wrong. Shredderman posted an incredible proof that new AM radios have incredibly sloppy IF stages that are as broad as +/-40 kHz, if they even bother using IF ceramic filters at all. Cheap designs accidentally create broadband radios.

(2) I have documented 70 mile HD reception on FM with nothing more than a dipole. Power increase - Why?! Another listener has 84 miles with nothing more than a dipole. HD alliance has claimed poor coverage.

(3) I have documented 6 t0 8 feet additional building penetration on FM with a 10 dB power increase. Not a lot. HD alliance claims much better building penetration. Where are there tests to prove it?

(4) HD alliance has claimed a million HD radios have sold. Yet they fail to back it up with sales figures, and do not figure returns. Considering how hard it was for me to get an HD radio when I actually tried - I don't see how anybody could be selling a million of them. They just aren't in stores.

(5) HD Alliance didn't push for AM in the new portable. A sign they are giving up on AM?

(6) Incredibly, I've heard HD advocates claim NO interference at all on AM. Oh really? Why then can I hear the sidebands 1000 miles away in the daytime in remote areas. And why can I heard sidebands at night from all over the country, even when the analog signal is buried under closer signals?

(7) Back to the power increase - 10 dB will do nothing when signals fluctuate by up to six decades in power levels - normal conditions near airports and in suburbs. An ad campaign about how to properly use dipole antennas would have much better results than a power increase.

(8) HD alliance claims no interference problems with HD-FM. The late digitaldisaster.org documented many problems, and listeners here have documented them as well. Even present power levels produce unacceptable interference. Now they want to increase the problem?

(9) HD alliance claims aftermarket radios in cars as an important part of their business plan. No way. Present car models have highly integrated sound systems, it is virtually impossible to put in an aftermarket radio good results.

(10) HD alliance claims auto makers are flocking to HD radio. Yes, small, niche car makers. The big ones are getting away.

I can think of lots more but I am out of time.
 
willcail said:
Why are the Luddites are aginst any advancement in broadcast technology? If you have your way analog TV and radio will be still around. Analog is terrible. Why would any one in their right mind want to listen to static?

Hybrid Digital is great for AM and FM. The HD recevier I have is HD 100. The anti HD people just want to spread their lies. I suggest that you need to get your hearing check.
Click to expand...

Again with the Luddite reference? ::)

What you're saying isn't completely true, though yes I am definitely the one who wished analog radio back! As for TV, I've noted on these boards that the DTV thing is a trade-off in my view. The HDTV and subchannel capabilities are wonderful and the clear reception is too. However, the fragility of a digital TV signal is a big problem and one that was never considered and has yet to be properly addressed by the FCC and by broadcasters. Having a little static on TV was a minor annoyance. With digital, your screen pixelates and/or freezes up - which is far more distracting than a little static crash. You lose everything.

How can you say that analog is terrible? Listening to static? That's absurd. If you're listening to static on a given station in analog, then you're listening to nothing in digital. Frankly, I am in favor of a digital radio platform as an alternative (other option) to analog. Something akin to what they've done in the UK - except keeping the analog frequencies and allotments as they are. But digital is far from superior - even there it's not without serious issues. Even with enough power, you still get breakup. And, in their unending glee to parse signals into subchannels, the audio quality ends up sounding like a thin webstream. Analog sounds better than any HD-2 or HD-3 channel and better than many HD-1 signals (which sound artificial).

Not knowing me, perhaps I forgive you for thinking that I am somehow against technological advancement - even if you're dead wrong (again). Despite my feelings on the subject, I'll probably buy one of those HD portables at BB - just to see how it works. I already have an HD radio that I bought 2 years ago and which is a dust collector because it doesn't work well. Why buy these things? Because I like to explore the upside of the technology rather than just talk out of my a$$ about things that I've never tried. Again, no fear of that which is new. But new technology isn't always better technology and that could not be more true than with IBOC. If I maintain that something sucks, it's generally because I've experimented with it and decided that it sucks. Like IBOC.

As for hybrid digital being "great for AM and FM" - dude you need to take some aspirin right now to lower the fever and stop those hallucinations! That's just idiotic. No one believes that. If you really believe it then I am done trying to talk sense into you.
 
BRNout said:
Again with the Luddite reference? ::)
Click to expand...

I had to look it up - obviously a reprehensible bunch of morons. But the moment I realized it is an attempt to insult anybody who doesn't believe in the wanton destruction of the band, I relaxed because an ad hominem argument loses debates immediately. So we have won the debate.

The Luddite reference doesn't even fit very well. Those folks were destroying labor saving technology - HD radio is not labor saving technology. So the comparison is not only an ad hominem argument only used by losers, but it is inaccurate as well.

The only ones destroying anything around here are the HD advocates, whose actions are destroying the viability of both radio bands.
 
As I've mentioned in the past........ when NTSC Color was mainstreamed the effect on the existing monochrome population was minimal. They could still watch what they wanted to watch, and that new subcarrier inserted for the color crowd went un noticed. IT WAS COMPATIBLE.

The folks that shelled out for Color sets had to deal with the growing pains as the technology matured. but the existing service was uneffected.

Digital TV has removed viewers from the audience and failed to live up to the hype that sold HD TV on an audience that for the most part were not aware that this Next Big Thing was truly NOT Ready For Prime Time. :(

In Band Over Channels on AM has been a disaster. It takes a service that was working and made it unusable, then disappoints the folks that have shelled out the bucks for HD receivers for this "improved system' by failing to deliver on THAT promise.

Dwindling ad revenue should paint the rest of the picture.
 
If Ibiquity were honest, they would have called their system IBAC, which stands for In Band Adjacent Channels. And they would not have chosen the name "HD Radio", knowing full well that the public would tend to associate the expression "HD" with "High Definition" even though their system has no connection with that term.
 
Well FM HD DOES work well for me...with reliable 100+ mile reception on my home radio, with roof antenna and rotor I put the thing up to receiver over-the-air digital tv, so it was just sitting there. But I got fairly reliable reception to 50-60 miles with glorified rabbit ears (a Magnum-Dynalab Silver-Ribbon).

As for AM, I'm a big fan of tuned loops, but I harbor no illusions that they're practical, or acceptable to most people. First of all, they're ugly as sin. Second, they're BIG...often much larger than the radios they're used with. And the final nail-in-the-coffin? You've got to re-tune the antenna every time you change stations. Does anyone really believe that anyone other than radio geeks will put up with these limitations?

Digital is inevitable. Radio is the only remaining analog-only medium (assuming stations have yet to go HD). Now IBOC may not be the way we ultimately get digital. It may be through the internet, with a common-antenna system and a special digital band as mentioned earlier, or some combination. But the future of radio IS digital. I don't see how that can seriously be debated. However, leave my freaking books, newspapers, and periodicals the hell alone. I LIKE HOLDING PAPER IN MY HANDS, and turning the pages! Put your Kindle where the sun don't shine! ;)
 
I wouldn't be so sure "the future of radio is digital," Mike (this is a constant new talking point chanted by iBiquity, not that I'm tarring you with THAT brush.)

There have been a lot of concerns raised lately about HDTV, with many stations scrambling to implement gigantic, and costly, power increases. Instances abound of unacceptable freezing, pixellating and poorer-than-expected coverage with digital.

And those TV receivers are stationary - nobody pedals a bike, jogs or mows the lawn carrying a TV (at least, not very many, with the possible exception of Rodney Dangerfield's golf-bag TV in "Caddyshack.") IBOC or not, it's not hard to see the potential reception problems posed by digital radio with the typical car radio or portable.

Digital's "all-or-nothing" performance may not be appropriate for radio's field application. Radio may be "the last mass medium that's still analog." But radio is also the ONLY "companion medium" - meaning, most people use it while doing something else, from walking the dog to working out to barbecueing. Analog reception may be more acceptable across a wide spectrum of consumer behaviors.
 
Not fair Savage, "tarring me with that brush", as I've said for longer then Ibiquity that the future is DIGITAL. I could refer you to a newspaper article at my website that I wrote to that effect in 1999.

Radio WILL BE DIGITAL, as will all other media. I'm not saying that's good or bad. I've expressed my distaste for digital as a substitute for the printed word, for instance.

But if we can get satellite reception to work reliably in a moving car, we can sure as hell get our local radio stations reliably and DIGITALLY. The eventual form, we don't know. But look around your station(s). We no longer shuffling analog audio from point to point. We digitize EARLY, and remain in the digital domain up to the transmitter. Stations already are MOSTLY digital! This (not necessarily IBOC, but "this" meaning digital) is just the next step. I can't, for example, imagine anyone who enjoys radio spending any time with a stand-alone internet radio and not wanting one! There's ALWAYS something to listen to!
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom