For those of you that think FM IBOC has no hash on the adjacents

[KB1OKL]

Geez, what kind of filtering do you use? If you can hear IBOC sidebands 30 or more KHz away that tells me that your filtering is broad as a barn door. I mean, I am 25 miles from NYC and I can hear WLW with my Receptor. I can hear WWKB & WCKY and neither interferes with the other. I can hear WHO on 1040 with no interference from WBZ, although the local WEPN non Iboc sideband causes interference from time to time. You talk about long wires and box loops and you can't null out first adjacents from hundreds of miles away. Technique might help you. If I were interested in hearing those stations for anything more than an ID, I'd listen to them over the internet. Streaming audio would blow away anyhting I could capture at night on a skywave signal.

I don't think you read my post very carefully, the hash from 690-730 is when all three stations are at comparatively equal strength WLW 700, WOR, 710 and WGY, 720), this is not an every night case and I do not receive them all at once, this is tuning across the band. The usual nightly pattern is that WOR kills 700 and 720, WFAN kills 650 and 670, WBZ kills 1020 and 1040, WCBS kills 870 and 890,Wham kills 1170 and 1190. On any night there are usually at least several more IBOC stations buzzing away at adjacents.This is with any radio, the radio I was talking about is my car radio which is a stock Buick radio, I would guess the filter in it is perhaps a 4 or maybe 5 Khz filter. I can null just about anything I want, even local 50KW WCRN which is about 5 miles away from here, with my home receivers and antennas, I'm just trying to make a point of how destructive IBOC can be to adjacent channels especially in a car. WCKY usually only bothers WWKB here at sundown and sunup, but the fact that it can and does sometimes should give credence to anyone who is complaning about IBOC hurting their station.

 

[KB1OKL]

AM really can sound reasonably good. Unless you have money to burn, it doesn't make a lot of sense to make your analog AM sound bad in the hopes that in five to ten years there will be enough of the "new & improved" radios to make a difference. I understand the plan is that HD listeners will come on line at least as fast, and hopefully faster than analog listeners go away. Maybe so, but I think it is going to be a long wait, and I doubt that very many small stations can afford the gamble.

Wideband AM can sound wonderful, it can sound just like the music is in the room with you, a warm and clear sound.

That's true if you live next door to the transmitter, they don't over proccess the audio and they don't broadcast syndicated programing. You see, every syndicator is using some form of MP2 transmission and many of the programs go through more than one level of compression/decompression prior to its arrival over your radio. I remember listening to WABC in the 70's using a diode and a tuning capacitor. The station sounded great, but it didn't sound natural. The audio was over proccessed and there was never any silence. You'd hear hum or studio noise or tape his or what have you. Funny, I worked on the air at a station in the mid 1970's and we'd monitor the audio via a sampling loop connected to a modulation monitor. The station sounded great but natural isn't a word I'd use for it.

I agree with everything you say except for living next door to the transmitter. I occasionally pick up BBC radio on AM, it much less processed than domestic AM and the difference is amazing. AM and FM sounds terribly compressed to me, to the point of having absolutely no dynamics most of the time.

 

[Tom Wells]

It is not necessary to live next door to hear a beautiful signal. You must have a high performance and hi fidelity AM radio.

Avail yourself of one, if ye have not.

CJAD ? 860 Toronto, and WSM 650 Nashville sound incredible here at night (or did) on my 1936 Philcos with push-pull class A triode amps
and passive radiator speakers for bass and midrange where I've added piezoelectric tweeters. (Chicago)
Rolled off a bit, but good to 15 khz and sweet.

The current AM night mosh-pit is bloody and ugly. Car radios fare worst, unless old enough to tune normally, where individual
cases warrant tuning to a clearer sideband. Someone should invent GPS auto-tracking loop antennas for AM auto reception.
They would be a boon to HD reception, unlike the "Supercaster" HD antenna ( multi-wire high capacity horizontal "marconi"), which
probably would help on transmit, but not so much on receive.

Careful tuning and positioning of the inner/outer loops of the box loop allows me to "hear" WGTO 910 despite WLS iboc.
"Hear" I stress, but no longer "listen". I can't imagine the control system of a loop for a car to real-time guess best positioning.
Give me a "clarity" knob on the dash which is actually a cable to rotate the loop directly and I'll be happy.

Visualize Hummers with 2-foot tall squashed box loops on the front fenders as a status symbol.

"Wow! You got one of them high performance AM antennas, Dude! How much was it? Where'dja get it? GPS tracking?"

 

[mimo]

860 in Toronto is CJBC, CJAD is 800 in Montreal. I've compared 860's audio on this sony bo0m box I was using with the local FM relay of the same station. I'm 4 hours east of Toronto. Honestly there isn't to0 much of a difference except for the higher trebble on FM, which I always have to turn down, as I'm overly sensitive to any frequency above 7 khz.

The Problem with HD is always going to be noticable on a digital radio in a car..or even an analog one. For the obvious reason, you can't null out a station on a car radio. Would be nice if you could but very impractical on a windy road. Unless there was a way to magically program the antena to only pick up from a certain direction while driving and rotate accordingly. However with Sky wave, you often have to rotate the radio during a deep fade when you get the sky/ground signals coming at different times, just to keep the signal clean. The omni directional antena does do the trick for that purpose, but makes listening to a station with 2 or more same frequency signals difficult. Despite the hash on 650, I can null it out and WSM still sounds amazing. WBZ's hash up here is insane...affecting everything from CFRB 1010 to CHUM/ESPN 1050. I've already commented on the 690-730 spectrum of the dial in other threads. It's a mess. It can be nulled, but it's a disaster.

 

[Savage]

WGLI, StephanieNYC's HD-radio shopping cruising bud, demands to know how he called me/WYSL "a name."

Hmm....in Reply 70, this thread, you implied that WYSL was "in distress" like several LI stations (we are not) and likened WYSL to "an eight-track player in an iPod world." I don't exactly take that as a compliment. It was a disparaging, demeaning comment on a station you know virtually nothing about.

Once more: suggesting that a licensed AM broadcast station is merely a source of "noise and interference" which you liken to adjacent-channel IBOC hash is utter nonsense. The difference: WYSL and other stations are providing a licensed, legal SERVICE. You may not think much of our efforts but the FCC, advertisers and listeners think otherwise. Service is service. Noise and interference are not. They are destructive and are IMPEDIMENTS to providing radio service. The "shoehorned" later-generation station argument that operating stations are "interference generators" is just a tactic used by pro-IBOC people to try to deflect the argument about the obvious, unsolvable HD-AM adjacent-channel hash problem.

Under your logic WABC, WJR and WLS are the biggest "interference generators" of them all. After all, they contribute to noise and interference, don't they?

Pursuing your premise to its logical conclusion, the only really useful AM band would be one completely devoid of any operating stations. After all, it would be noise and (man-made) interference-free!

Go ahead, IBOCers, trot out those preposterous and unsustainable HD-AM talking points. The system is as good as dead already no matter how much you torture logic. Stations are turning it off and the radios are about as available as buffalo nickels. Nobody cares about HD-AM. The sooner this mess goes into the engineering dumpster where it belongs, the sooner the industry can look for an honest alternative which actually works.

 

[RadioFixerCLE]

WGLI, StephanieNYC's HD-radio shopping cruising bud, demands to know how he called me/WYSL "a name."

Hey now, what self respecting geek would be able to restrain himself from checking out one of these paperweights; if only for the chance of a good laugh at the store's expense when the unit is not even installed properly. ;D

Makes me wonder if back when FM was coming out of its cocoon, the stores were also this negligent at displaying their lines of receivers.

 

[RadioFixerCLE]

Hmm....in Reply 70, this thread, you implied that WYSL was "in distress" like several LI stations (we are not) and likened WYSL to "an eight-track player in an iPod world." I don't exactly take that as a compliment. It was a disparaging, demeaning comment on a station you know virtually nothing about.

Unfortunately the aging demographics don't help matters much. How would we get the next generation of radio listeners to tune into the AM band? We're almost back to 1920s pre FCC band-crowding.

Ideally a second FM band would have been wonders -- maybe that can be done by using the existing TV 2-6 band once all those channels go digital. After all, people already own TV sound radios so it wouldn't be that much of a stretch. All the AM stations (especially daytimers and fulltimers with drastic power cuts)that can prove they're experiencing interference difficulties would be reassigned to a new spot on FM, but they'll be able to simulcast over their existing AM channels for a period of ... say 6 months.

The AM band should be returned to long distance and regional services, with the "clear channels" in the midwest allowed to crank up to 100,000 watts.

Local service stations in congested urban areas -- like WYSL -- would be better off on FM (with the improved sound quality and penetration into downtown office towers and high-rise apartment blocks).

Whatever local "graveyard" stations remain on AM would be licenced to rural and suburban areas where they would benefit from the increased range of that band.

While we're at it, why doesn't the USA also start using the Tropical SW band for "disadvantaged" stations? That's an honest question, I'm not too familiar with licencing on the different SW bands. :-\

 

[Savage]

The whole approach to IBOC implementation assumes an outmoded, unrealistic model of consumer use of radio kind of like it were still 1970. Radio today is an adjunct to other communications and entertainment media. Check it: increasingly people listen to radio on non-radio-based devices like wireless devices and computers. That's why fewer and fewer consumers buy "radios" unless they're receiver geeks or people in our own industry.

So - here's what I suggest for radio's digital future:

S*itcan IBOC, AM and FM. That's right: pull the plug, and shelve it. Maybe at some future time conditions will present themselves which are more favorable for in-band digital radio. Be honest - we know it ain't now. AM IBOC is a bad, very unfunny joke. FM IBOC threatens a similar potential in all but the most sparsely radio'ed markets. Broadcasters outside of iBiquity investors are lukewarm at best. The marketing has been horrible and isn't working. Many of the radios just don't work very well. Listeners couldn't care less.

Hello? IT'S NOT WORKING, already.

So what about digital, inquiring minds demand to know? The path of least resistance - as opposed to trying to force an unwanted proprietary technology on a market were nobody really wants it (IBOC) - is to distribute terrestrial-based AM and FM stations digitally via satellite and internet. So the terrestrial signal would remain analog and the digital stream would be available on the bird or on the web. Think of the model of how you receive your local TV station these days over the air, via web-streaming video or on cable or dish....same deal. (Yeah, I know, broadcast TV is going digital - but they never tried an IBOC scheme. There's wholesale reallocation.)

Satellite radio doesn't have a financial model that works, pre- or post-merger of XM/Sirius. (Remember the lesson of 1950s mergers of "independent" car companies like Packard-Studebaker or Kaiser-Willys. Q: What do you get when you merge two smaller money-losing companies? A: A big company that loses money twice as fast.) Since satcasters are content hungry, develop a revenue stream from putting terrestrial stations on the bird, just like you can get your local TV on the dish. Presto! Over ten million digital receivers/at least as many listeners instanty available to terrestrial stations via XM/Sirius. Fills a programming need for satcasters and gives instant digital distribution to traditional radio - no new freestanding consumer hardware necessary.

And we've all talked about the web-radio listening trends. It's bumpy now but the long-term is very bright. WiMax will kick this trend in the pants.

Instead of fighting the reality of today's consumer trends - radio would be well-advised to swim with the prevailing currents.

That's the technical side.

Then: there's the programming. There are too many "programmers" these days whose concept of "a radio station" is a string of songs, followed by a giant gob of spots, jockless-contentless save for the ubiquitous angry-voiced "liner guy." As long as that serves as the model for many music stations (irrespective of format) terrestrial radio will continue tying itself to the railroad track of more-effective competition from satellite, iPods and other technologies.

 

[RadioFixerCLE]

And we've all talked about the web-radio listening trends. It's bumpy now but the long-term is very bright. WiMax will kick this trend in the pants.

Then we also have to break some kneecaps in the recording industry. Seems like the boys over at Amalgamated Incorporated Records have forgotten that WE arethe reason why they sell records.

If it weren't for the radio industry plugging their tripe, these record company "executives" would be out on the corner, playing a harmonica and selling pencils from a tin can.

 

[Savage]

The free market's gonna work that one out, Steph (the performance royalties issue.)

The music industry presents the following demeanor to today's marketplace:

"Buy our CDs and concert tickets, dammit, or we're going to blow our brains out!!"

Last I checked, there isn't an OPEC-style demand for the latest misogynistic rap CD.

 

[Chuck]

WGLI, StephanieNYC's HD-radio shopping cruising bud, demands to know how he called me/WYSL "a name."

Hey now, what self respecting geek would be able to restrain himself from checking out one of these paperweights; if only for the chance of a good laugh at the store's expense when the unit is not even installed properly. ;D

Makes me wonder if back when FM was coming out of its cocoon, the stores were also this negligent at displaying their lines of receivers.

As a radio geek from way back, I recall that FM was a pretty hot topic for retailers, at least if there were any FM stations in the area. Where I grew up, there were quite a few FM stations and retail stores had a good selection of radios, tuners and AM-FM receivers. There were even converters for AM car radios and existing "Hi-Fi's" that lacked FM capabilities. Kits were quite popular too. Magazines like Popular Electronics, Electronics Illustrated and Radio-Electronics were full of ads and articles about FM. If you didn't have an FM radio, you most likely wanted one.

Of course, that was a simpler age. There were far less electronic diversions to compete for shelf space Radios. TV's and Hi-Fi equipment were about it. Some stores also sold Ham Radio equipment as well as components and tools for the do-it-yourselfer. Car stereo and CB radio were huge additions in the retail market in the late 60's and early 70's. By that time, FM was fairly well established.

 

[4dude]

I think more and more stations are starting to get tired of the interfernce complaints,i have heard a couple just do away with this garbage over the last few months!

 

[R.F. Burns]

I think more and more stations are starting to get tired of the interfernce complaints,i have heard a couple just do away with this garbage over the last few months!

Other than Citidel can you name which stations have turned off their IBOC exciters? Here in NYC, none of the IBOC stations have shut it down. Matter of fact, WADO at 1280 is runnng it again. Because we're at the onset of a new technology, some stations shut down their IBOC temporarily for many reasons, only to get thm back on line as soon as possible. WABC for instance turns their IBOC exciter back on by 5:45 AM, even though it's still dark at that time.

 

[RadioFixerCLE]

Other than Citadel can you name which stations have turned off their IBOC exciters? Here in NYC, none of the IBOC stations have shut it down. Matter of fact, WADO at 1280 is runnng it again. Because we're at the onset of a new technology, some stations shut down their IBOC temporarily for many reasons, only to get thm back on line as soon as possible. WABC for instance turns their IBOC exciter back on by 5:45 AM, even though it's still dark at that time.

Well, Multicultural Radio Broadcasting Inc. was running IBOC sporadically on two NYC stations back during the testing phase in '03: WZRC-1480 and WPAT-93. This went on for a few months, on and off. It hasn't been turned on since. ???

 

[dbdigital]

WGLI, StephanieNYC's HD-radio shopping cruising bud, demands to know how he called me/WYSL "a name."

Hey now, what self respecting geek would be able to restrain himself from checking out one of these paperweights; if only for the chance of a good laugh at the store's expense when the unit is not even installed properly. ;D

Makes me wonder if back when FM was coming out of its cocoon, the stores were also this negligent at displaying their lines of receivers.

As a radio geek from way back, I recall that FM was a pretty hot topic for retailers, at least if there were any FM stations in the area. Where I grew up, there were quite a few FM stations and retail stores had a good selection of radios, tuners and AM-FM receivers. There were even converters for AM car radios and existing "Hi-Fi's" that lacked FM capabilities. Kits were quite popular too. Magazines like Popular Electronics, Electronics Illustrated and Radio-Electronics were full of ads and articles about FM. If you didn't have an FM radio, you most likely wanted one.

Of course, that was a simpler age. There were far less electronic diversions to compete for shelf space Radios. TV's and Hi-Fi equipment were about it. Some stores also sold Ham Radio equipment as well as components and tools for the do-it-yourselfer. Car stereo and CB radio were huge additions in the retail market in the late 60's and early 70's. By that time, FM was fairly well established.

This is exactly right, Chuck. One of the hottest pieces of gear in the 60's was the FM multiplex tuner. To hear your favorite station in stereo was awesome. And if you were fortunate enough to have FM stereo in your car...WOW! As a result, Hi-Fi shops had stereo tuners and receivers to the walls and CE manufacturers were not hesitant to build FM stereo into their products. Installing after market stereos in cars was one of the hottest businesses to be in.

But that was then and this is now.

The pro-HD Radio crowd want lightning to strike twice, but it can't. Terrestrial radio just doesn't occupy the same place of importance that it once had. It's not that there are more devices to listen to music on (after all, radio stood up well against the 8-track and cassette player). It's that radio, thanks to consolidation, has lost touch with the community. And, over time, the community, sensing this loss, simply switched off radio...maybe to the point of no return.

As has been said, it's the "stuff between songs" that makes terrestrial radio unique. Heck, there was a time when I knew all the names of the d.j.'s on my favorite station. These were live people taking calls and requests, reporting the weather and traffic as it was happening, being funny and knowledgeable about the music and connecting with the listener. Where is that now?

Radio needs to re-connect with the community and re-build that relationship first. Then we can talk about sound quality.

db

 

[Savage]

Amen dbdigital. I remember piling into cars with buds back in my teen years (the mesozoic 1960s) and it was not uncommon to find all 5 pushbuttons set to the same station. Any attempt to manually tune to a different frequency was swatted away: "Hey, man, that's MY station!" Today, rotsa ruck finding a radio listener who even knows the callsign of station(s) he listens to regularly.

And now we respond to RF's request for someone to specify stations which have ceased IBOC in whole or in part:

WTVN 610 Columbus*, KLAA 830 Orange CA, WBT 1110 Charlotte*, WRVA 1140 Richmond*, KATZ 1600 St. Louis*, in addition to all Cox AM stations. (*) - turned off at night.

The status of IBOC-AM is monitored and updated regularly by Barry McLarnon using a variety of sources. His HD station list includes ownership, antenna modes, power, callsign and frequency:

http://topazdesigns.com/iboc.station-list.html

Right now there are 234 HD-AM stations, 77 of which are on at night. That equates to a total of 5% of operating AM stations, slightly less than 2% being on at night. These numbers are down from The Great Nighttime IBOC Rollout September 14th and essentially unchanged since Citadel turned all theirs off at night two weeks later, around October 1st.

 

[Savage]

Apologize for the typo in entering the link in the previous post. It should be:

http://topazdesigns.com/iboc/station-list.html

 

[R.F. Burns]

Bob, I can't speak for the others but I do know from a first hand chat with one of WBT's engineers that they were having antenna issues and have never officially run their IBOC exciter post sunset. They are running 3 Blaw Knox towers. I have asked my contact in corporate for an update and should know definatively in a short time. I've heard that WINS is also facing antenna issues but they are working toward overcomming these issues. In NYC it was pretty easy for the bigger stations because 3 are 50 Kw non-directional and WOR is operating from a brand new transmitter site which I'm sure took IBOC's needs into account when it was designed.

 

[KB1OKL]

It is not necessary to live next door to hear a beautiful signal. You must have a high performance and hi fidelity AM radio.

Avail yourself of one, if ye have not.

CJAD ? 860 Toronto, and WSM 650 Nashville sound incredible here at night (or did) on my 1936 Philcos with push-pull class A triode amps
and passive radiator speakers for bass and midrange where I've added piezoelectric tweeters. (Chicago)
Rolled off a bit, but good to 15 khz and sweet.

WSM and certain others sounded good even on my R390A with it in the 8 or 16 khz position (has had audio mods done to it), better still on my Super Pro radios which opened up to 13 Khz and have push pull 6F6 outputs, I run this through an old Lafayette (Mitsubishi) 8" coaxial speaker. WSM stills sounds good with WFAN phased except that I can't get rid of WFAN completely for any length of time with the phaser so it always has a whoosh under it, very unpleasant to listen to and ruins it for me. They had some great country oldies on last night but unfortunately it was all IBOCed to death. One of the last great 50KW independent stations that actually plays uniquely American music, is not programmed by a robot and it's mauled by a sports station's IBOC. I'm not talking as a DXer here either.

 

[Dighton Rockhead]

While we're at it, why doesn't the USA also start using the Tropical SW band for "disadvantaged" stations? That's an honest question, I'm not too familiar with licencing on the different SW bands.

This could make for an interesting alternative to provide relief for injured parties like Bob Savage/1040 WYSL if the FCC is going to be so stubborn about not releasing VHF Channels 5 & 6.

Only thing is...I'm not so sure the US could start allocating the Tropical bands on its own for domestic service. Some sort of International cooperation would probably have to happen. The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) might have something to say about that......not exactly sure, but......