HD IN THE LATEST CRUTCHFIELD: UNINTENTIONALLY FUNNY - OR MAYBE NOT!

[Savage]

From the US Postal Service this morning - the latest Crutchfield catalog! Let's just open it up to check the ever-widening array of exciting HD Radio receivers! :

On page 63: "HD Radio In Your Car!" This prominent feature includes a narrative called "Jesse takes HD Radio for a spin" and includes his listening/user impressions. And wouldn't ya know it? Turns out Jesse happens to be Crutchfield's......wait for it!........PRODUCTS RETURN SPECIALIST!!!

(Well...he certainly can't be much of a "radio" specialist, when you go on to read his comments about using his Jensen VM9312HD receiver.) Quoth Jesse:

"I liked that on the HD Radio channels, the text at the bottom would tell me the artist and title of the song."
(Apparently Jesse hasn't encountered good old reliable RDS on analog FM stations for the past five years or so.)

"There was no static on the HD Radio channels," Jesse solemnly declared. (Right, Jesse. There's been this thing called "FM" for about 60 years now. There isn't "static" with analog FM either. Nor analog-digital mode-hopping. And not so many dropouts.)

Another "HD feature" Crutchfield's Products Return Specialist likes: "I liked the iPod feature. You can control the iPod on the screen." (Doubtless a plus for Jensen users who will rapidly weary of the typical HD reception problems. Just say "screw it" and fire up the iPod.)

Elsewhere in the feature, Crutchfield copywriters declared: "The digital signals of HD Radio are sweeping across the radio dial." Well, at last: SOMEone is telling the truth about HD. "Sweeping across the radio dial" is right. Three channels at a time.

With the HD mini-push in their latest catalog, Jesse is gonna be a pretty busy "products returns specialist."

 

[pocket-radio]

HD channels are sweeping across America? Jessie didn't hear about Washington DC, because all HD AM stations have gone dark. It's the HD two step, two steps forward, 3 steps back.

Facts sell better than marketing puff speak, though the facts haven't been that good, so it's back to plan #B lie, lie, and lie more, then baffle them with your bull xxxx. What else can they do.

 

[Mike Walker]

HD AM has always had problems. In fact, unless they specifically say so, most people are talking about FM when they mention positive HD experiences!

As for AM HD, I'm with ya' Pocket. A big mistake. But FM HD works well, is growing, and so is the availability of programming. Take WASU in Washington, where you seem to think HD is failing. They have programming available ONLY on the HD channels. LIVE programming with real human beings. And it's popular, and growing.

My oldies show (Saving the 70s) at present isn't on any HD stations. But I'd enjoy having it on a multicast HD channel just to see what response from listeners is like (or if it exists!) Anybody with some time on an HD multicast channel want to give it a spin? http://www.savingthe70s.com

Of course, I'd tolerate being on your main channel as well! (OK, I'd prefer that!) Still...

 

[KB1OKL]

But FM HD works well, is growing, and so is the availability of programming. Take WASU in Washington, where you seem to think HD is failing.

Doesn't work well where I live, mine is (gathering dust) under my Meducci tuner and on top of my Marantz receiver and both work well. When it does come in it doesn't sound any better than it's analog counterpart and my system is very good, if a station sounds good in HD, it also sounds good in analog, it's the processing baby, not the HD. HD is an unnecessary appendage which hopefully will finally go the way of the dodo this year. HD is one of the biggest scams to come down the pike since the famous egress incident.

 

[DarkStarPDX]

"There was no static on the HD Radio channels," Jesse solemnly declared. (Right, Jesse. There's been this thing called "FM" for about 60 years now. There isn't "static" with analog FM either. Nor analog-digital mode-hopping. And not so many dropouts.)

I've had HD radio in my vehicles for a while now and I've noticed much clearer reception of stations, and a lot less dropouts compared to FM. I think it really shines on the AM side though where I would previously have marginal to poor reception, now having clear reception.

I drive by a different AM station on my way home and my radios would experience front-end overload, making the other station barely listenable. With the HD radios, it keeps the HD lock through the mud...

 

[scanman1]

But FM HD works well, is growing, and so is the availability of programming. Take WASU in Washington, where you seem to think HD is failing.

Doesn't work well where I live, mine is (gathering dust) under my Meducci tuner and on top of my Marantz receiver and both work well. When it does come in it doesn't sound any better than it's analog counterpart and my system is very good, if a station sounds good in HD, it also sounds good in analog, it's the processing baby, not the HD. HD is an unnecessary appendage which hopefully will finally go the way of the dodo this year. HD is one of the biggest scams to come down the pike since the famous egress incident.

Yep, I agree about analog sounding as good as HD (I think it sounds better honestly). After a little more than a year of messing with HD radio, I finally dumped my dust-gathering HD radios off on to my local thrift shop (I really believe I could not have sold them since HD also seems to lack interest with folks). If it goes away, I would be thrilled and could enjoy the awesome analog sound at it's best once again!

 

[KB1OKL]

"There was no static on the HD Radio channels," Jesse solemnly declared. (Right, Jesse. There's been this thing called "FM" for about 60 years now. There isn't "static" with analog FM either. Nor analog-digital mode-hopping. And not so many dropouts.)

I've had HD radio in my vehicles for a while now and I've noticed much clearer reception of stations, and a lot less dropouts compared to FM. I think it really shines on the AM side though where I would previously have marginal to poor reception, now having clear reception.

I drive by a different AM station on my way home and my radios would experience front-end overload, making the other station barely listenable. With the HD radios, it keeps the HD lock through the mud...

Yes, IBOC is a wondrous thing, do you work for ibiquity by any chance?

 

[clouseau]

Yes, IBOC is a wondrous thing, do you work for ibiquity by any chance?
[/quote]

If you don't goose-step to the "HD Sucks" cadence, you work for Ibiquity.

Bob, that's just so lame and pathetic.

Clouseau

 

[DarkStarPDX]

Yes, IBOC is a wondrous thing, do you work for ibiquity by any chance?

Hey Bob,

No, I don't work for Ibiquity. However radio is a pretty big hobby of mine (KU7PDX).

I don't know why the situation has been so different here in Portland with HD radio, but we haven't experienced the same issues that listeners are reporting in other areas of the country. We have 3 HD AM stations and many HD FM stations. One of the HD AM stations I would say has had degraded performance since switching on IBOC, however their antenna system performs extremely poorly anyhow and the engineer for the station recommended that they replace the antenna system before going HD. Radio Disney thought otherwise and they turned it on anyhow.

I haven't been able to discern any degraded performance on the other two AM stations with my analog receivers. I haven't experienced any degraded performance on the FM stations either that have gone IBOC. Actually, the only big chain that hasn't gone HD yet in Portland is CBS Radio and I have better analog reception on the stations that have gone IBOC vs. the CBS Radio stations that don't have IBOC yet.

In the end, radio is going digital eventually. I know a lot of people don't like Ibiquity's system, however nobody else is trying (maybe FMextra if it still counts). I would love to see an open-source SDR (for you non-hams, Software Digital Radio) that radio stations could use to transmit DRM (Digital Radio Mondiale). Right now, the message that is being sent is that "we don't want radio to go digital". Projects like FDMDV are a good start, but until we start supporting these experiments (yep, I consider Ibiquity an experiment) we won't have progress.

 

[Mike Walker]

Well put. Radio is GOING DIGITAL! Is Ibiquity's system ideal? HELL NO! It's infuriating the hoops that they require broadcasters to CONTINUE to jump through, and the continuing expenses. But it HAS BEEN CHOSEN (however improperly) as the standard. And it DOES, on FM at least, offer some real advantages over analog. Some disadvantages too, I'd be the first to admit! The coverage IS more limited than analog mono, though in my experience about the same as for noise-free, fully separated analog FM stereo (which is also a LOT less coverage than mono!)

I believe some regulation is in order here. Were I "king for a day", I'd pass three new regulations.

1)-ALL digital radios must be able to receive both HD AND FMExtra.

2)-ALL digital radios must be firmware upgradable in the field for improved codecs, and additional formats

3)-ALL satellite radios must also receive HD. That last one would be quite unfair IF the original rules under which Sirius and XM were licensed weren't completely broken in the deal allowing them to merge. If they're two competitors (to each other, and terrestrial radio), that's one thing. And THAT WAS THE DEAL! But if they're one MONOPOLY, allowed national coverage, at the expense of terrestrial stations who had been, and still are SERVING THEIR COMMUNITIES and the public interest, not just offering a hundred channels of faceless jukebox noise!

I know the playing field has changed for terrestrial radio too. There's far less validity to the argument that most terrestrial stations are operating in the community interest, there to serve their communities in good times and bad than at the time XM and Sirius were announced. But terrestrial MUST return to this model...a model that's working GREAT for public radio, by the way. It's no coincidence that public stations, with their large local news staffs and community outreach, have grown immensely since consolidation of commercial stations started. THEY ARE PROVING THAT THE FORMULA STILL WORKS! And they're eating out lunch(es). How many more talented professionals who have devoted their lives to radio must be forced out to make room for one more damn automation system? How many other communities must suffer when disaster (hurricane, tornado, flood, etc.) strikes, and the local radio station is UNMANNED????

The decisions which result in MORE VARIETY of free programming is always the right one. The airwaves do, after all, belong TO THE PUBLIC! We are simply trustees of them!

 

[Mike Walker]

In the UK DAB radios have exceeded the sale of analog-only units for the last three years, and their sales are GROWING. Just because someone says something, or more accurately copies and pastes something, doesn't make it true.

A friend of mine has the idea that Brits (and Canadians) HATE their single-payer healthcare system. "Copy and paste Man" obviously thinks they hate digital radio. Er, perhaps you should actually pick up a British publication, or talk to a Brit and ask him or her! "Googling" is damn handy. But it tends to find mostly extreme positions, on all sides of an issue, because those who feel passionately are the only ones who will take the time to post what's being "Googled" in the first place. The truth always lies somewhere in the middle.

 

[clouseau]

Hey Bob,

I don't know why the situation has been so different here in Portland with HD radio, but we haven't experienced the same issues that listeners are reporting in other areas of the country.

I'm going to interject here and delete the rest of your post for your own safety. I also have tracked your IP address and filed your application for the HD Radio witness protection program.

Seriously, despite what you hear on this forum, your stories are not unique. (Maybe overall, Portland isn't either)

Is HD radio perfect? Hell No.

Is it the invention of the devil? Some of us think not.

Does it make AM sound better? That's up to anyone under 55. I'd say yes.

Now, we must promise to never talk again or ever be seen together. It's for your own good my son.

Please, change your ham call sign and never speak of HD radio again, lest you ne accused of working for ibiquity.

Godspeed DarkStar.

Clouseau

 

[fybush]

Hey Bob,

I don't know why the situation has been so different here in Portland with HD radio, but we haven't experienced the same issues that listeners are reporting in other areas of the country.

I'm going to interject here and delete the rest of your post for your own safety. I also have tracked your IP address and filed your application for the HD Radio witness protection program.

Seriously, despite what you hear on this forum, your stories are not unique. (Maybe overall, Portland isn't either)

A sense of humor is a dangerous thing, Inspector. I'd be careful...

As for Portland, it was, ironically enough, one of the places where I started to get really skeptical about the robustness of the AM system. I was out there in the fall of 2006 and spent some time riding around with one of the market's engineers in a van equipped with an HD tuner. At the time, only one digital AM was on the air, KEX, pounding 50,000 watts straight into downtown from a textbook-ideal transmitter site just a few miles to the southeast, and I vividly recall listening to its digital signal as we drove over the Burnside Bridge, as close to the "center" of Portland as you can get - only to hear the signal repeatedly lock and unlock, skipping back and forth between analog and digital in a way I doubt many "average" listeners would long tolerate. (I suppose I should note that the engineer I was with was not a KEX engineer.)

That's one data point in what's coming up on six years of listening to the system - there have been better moments, too, beginning with a very impressive 2003 ride through the canyons of lower Manhattan, where WOR's blowtorch of a signal never broke up once - but my anecdotal impression was that Portland was far from the most impressive IBOC market I've ever heard. (But I'm also open to the possibility that the situation has improved since my one and only visit more than two years ago!)

 

[Tom Wells]

Yes, Scott, but it does point out that you are witness and can testify to the weird lobes and phase shifting that does occur making merely
"funny" sounding areas for reception in analog, that totally flummox the HD decode. Oregon has some issues with geography and topology
that twist AM, no? I've been there, so I can see why this would be so.

 

[fybush]

Yes, Scott, but it does point out that you are witness and can testify to the weird lobes and phase shifting that does occur making merely
"funny" sounding areas for reception in analog, that totally flummox the HD decode. Oregon has some issues with geography and topology
that twist AM, no? I've been there, so I can see why this would be so.

Not a lot of geography or topology in the way between the KEX transmitter site, just off I-205 on the southeast side of town, and downtown a few miles away. And KEX is DA-N, so there weren't any pattern-bandwidth issues in the way, either. (This was before the start of nighttime IBOC, so KEX was nondirectional at any time it was using IBOC back then.) Big fat towers, too. Should have been a barn-burner of a signal...yet, at least that day, it wasn't.

Would I have the same experience if I were driving over the Burnside Bridge today? I don't know. This is still new territory in many ways.

 

[Tom Wells]

The "magic" of MW propogation is such that it (geography/topology) doesn't need to be in the way for it to have a profound influence.

I play with my pt 15 AM 100 mw and marvel at the radiation pattern changes with minor grounding and antenna arrangement changes.
My 1972 Motorola lets me hear accurately as I drive how local 50 kw blowtorches have "funny" lobes to the extent I mentally have mapped more than a few. Railroad tracks figure into more than one or two instances. :

 

[KB1OKL]

Yes, IBOC is a wondrous thing, do you work for ibiquity by any chance?

Hey Bob,
I don't know why the situation has been so different here in Portland with HD radio, but we haven't experienced the same issues that listeners are reporting in other areas of the country.

Chris,
Probably because you don't get all the junk like we get from NY here in the NE. For example that blowtorch WOR puts out 30 KHz of noise that kills 700 and 720 and of course not a flicker on the old IBOC meter on the Sony, NY seems to be IBOC central. On a better note WBZ's buzzmaker is off tonight, they had to switch to a 10KW backup transmitter and the signal is better believe it or not. A DXer friend of mine lives in Oregon (not sure where, somewhere near the coast) and he reports that the IBOC is not too bad at his place either.

 

[clouseau]

Probably because you don't get all the junk like we get from NY here in the NE. For example that blowtorch WOR puts out 30 KHz of noise that kills 700 and 720 and of course not a flicker on the old IBOC meter on the Sony, NY seems to be IBOC central.

Goodness gracios, KB. I just went to the V-soft page to see signal levels. And do you know what WOR's is in Worcester, MA? Me either, it doesn't meet the .33 Mv Meter threshold. Yep that's POINT 3. A Third of a mv. As in "Less than SIX TIMES weaker than being considered a local.

Dude, you've GOT to take off the Ham Hat when looking at this broadcast stuff. There's a reason why most people don't put up with the code like we did. They're not interested in out of market listening.

Why is it almost evertime you post about this "Tragedy" we see that it's situations like this. It's always a station with no signal and no ratings.

WOR isn't even on the "Barely perceptable" list at radio locator. ANd the other two stations your whining about are in Chicago and Cincinatti.

There's oh so many things NOT to like about HD radio. Cincinnatti in Massachusettes? Get a clue

Clouseau

 

[KB1OKL]

Probably because you don't get all the junk like we get from NY here in the NE. For example that blowtorch WOR puts out 30 KHz of noise that kills 700 and 720 and of course not a flicker on the old IBOC meter on the Sony, NY seems to be IBOC central.

Goodness gracios, KB. I just went to the V-soft page to see signal levels. And do you know what WOR's is in Worcester, MA? Me either, it doesn't meet the .33 Mv Meter threshold. Yep that's POINT 3. A Third of a mv. As in "Less than SIX TIMES weaker than being considered a local.

Dude, you've GOT to take off the Ham Hat when looking at this broadcast stuff. There's a reason why most people don't put up with the code like we did. They're not interested in out of market listening.

Why is it almost evertime you post about this "Tragedy" we see that it's situations like this. It's always a station with no signal and no ratings.

WOR isn't even on the "Barely perceptable" list at radio locator. ANd the other two stations your whining about are in Chicago and Cincinatti.

There's oh so many things NOT to like about HD radio. Cincinnatti in Massachusettes? Get a clue

Clouseau

Inspector, I invite to my apartment any night to listen to the .33 mv noise of WOR which completely covers up WLW and WGN, although thanks to Karma and the Gods of skywave WOR has been covered up by both of them at various times. What is WINS's or WFAN's strength here? How about WCBS's, yes all these and Cincinnati and Chicago all whoosh right on down here, not all in the same night all the time, but those NY stations are in like clockwork almost every night ruining any kind of reception to their adjacents. Some of whom like I'm sure WSM would like to be heard nationwide like they are capable of and that's a great sounding station when it's not whooshed over. Maybe WSYL's owner would like his station to be heard within it's own contours except for of course WBZ's jarring hash maker which kills it. IBOC audio is lucky to be received at a 30 mile distance but boy can those whooshy sidebands travel!

 

[clouseau]

Inspector, I invite to my apartment any night to listen to the .33 mv noise of WOR which completely covers up WLW and WGN, although thanks to Karma and the Gods of skywave WOR has been covered up by both of them at various times. What is WINS's or WFAN's strength here? How about WCBS's, yes all these and Cincinnati and Chicago all whoosh right on down here, not all in the same night all the time, but those NY stations are in like clockwork almost every night ruining any kind of reception to their adjacents. Some of whom like I'm sure WSM would like to be heard nationwide like they are capable of and that's a great sounding station when it's not whooshed over. Maybe WSYL's owner would like his station to be heard within it's own contours except for of course WBZ's jarring hash maker which kills it. IBOC audio is lucky to be received at a 30 mile distance but boy can those whooshy sidebands travel!

As is usually the case, you've missed the point entirely. And the point is... Why are you griping about lack of service from Cincinntti and Chicago? You PAY for internet radio which gets you service from Cincinnatti and Chicago. You can't get FM from Cincinnatti and Chicago?

Right now, you have a station which broadcasts until 6:45 PM on 700KHz in Mass. I'm not where you are, but 6:45's pretty dark, Right. Why? No one cares about WLW in Mass. There is also full blown night operastion authorized on 720 just north of you in New Hampshire. I would seem WGN wasn't very important to anyone THERE.

Does it look to you like there's much intention of skywave listening in THOSE locales? I grew up listening to CKLW outside of Philly. In college, I used to call up my roomate with "The Big 8" blasting on the phone when we were on break because he lived in the null in Ohio and coudn't get it. Now. from that same locale in PA, I could blast 800 WTMR from Camden New Jersey.Times Change.

WHLO in Akron doesn't protect the west coast anymore.They're on all night. 900 In Philly is on at night. Times have changed.

Clouseau