"HD Power Increase Has Been Trouble-Free"

[dumber than a box of hair]

Out of last week's RAB/NAB Show comes the news from the FCC that there have been no complaints so far about the HD power increase.

http://www.rbr.com/radio/28099.html

So...are there really no complaints, or have people just given up, seeing how the previous complaints were (not) handled?

 

[local oscillator]

Most listeners don't know that what they're hearing is IBOC interference. Unlike analog interference where you can usually identify the interfering audio, IBOC interference is just an insidious reduction of signal-to-noise ratio. Most listeners just change the station or turn off the radio. The one thing they are extremely unlikely to do is complain to the FCC. My station (much like KATY) receives interference from a first-adjacent superpowered FM running IBOC. Take my word for it -- the FCC absolutely doesn't care. I have been pressing the issue with them since 2004. I have stopped pursuing the issue because it has become clear to me that HD Radio will be going away soon. Market forces are in the process of solving the problem without me spending any more in legal and engineering fees.

 

[Savage]

Other likely reasons why there have been no complaints: about sixteen stations have increased digital power (yes, yes, I know - there are actually about 150, it was just exaggeration for effect.) And in many cases it's been only a few weeks or months since the power was increased.
There hasn't been time for problems to manifest themselves.

But the biggest reason is suggested by LO: very few people are even aware of HD radio, fewer still are technically savvy enough to identify interference as coming from HD, and yet fewer still are motivated enough to complain to the FCC. The requirement that listeners identify and complain to the FCC formally about HD interference is a knowing disconnect from reality - a way for the Commission to insulate itself from having to deal with inteference complaints. If the FCC were really interested in HD interference, it wouldn't make it so hard to get the issue heard.

As LO says: in any event we don't need the FCC to swat this down. Listeners and broadcasters are voting with their ears....and feet. Class-action lawsuits are administering a slow-mo coup de grace. There's no point in trying to talk to someone who won't listen.

 

[radiogooroo]

Other likely reasons why there have been no complaints: about sixteen stations have increased digital power (yes, yes, I know - there are actually about 150, it was just exaggeration for effect.) And in many cases it's been only a few weeks or months since the power was increased.
There hasn't been time for problems to manifest themselves.

I don't know of any stations that have done the full upgrade yet, but I know of several in my area that have turned up their existing HD transmitters as far as they can go and remain linear, and the improvement in performance is much more substantial than I thought it would be.

 

[Carmine5]

For Peter Doyle to proclaim that they're "still waiting for their first complaint" is disingenuous. Not only does the average listener not know whether they're hearing digital noise or not on their favorite station, but the entire complaint procedure is onerous. Six complaints from listeners within a station's protected contour? Give me a break. And even if a station does get that many complaints, the stations still have to work the problem out between themselves. Getting the FCC involved is a last resort. Judging from how well the KATY/KRTH issue got resolved, I say good luck with that. A station owner better pray that he/she doesn't have to deal with a major conglomerate over digital interference.

I also don't buy Michael Bogdan's warning that “if radio doesn’t go digital you will get smaller and smaller.” Since when is going digital an iron-clad guarantee against obsolescense and business failure? As it stands now, digital broadcasting schemes of all flavors are failing around the world. Yet, surprisingly, Europeans do enjoy hearing analog radio on their cellphones.

 

[tomservo]

Why should it be assumed that all complaints would come from listeners? Listeners are stupid. They will simply listen to something else if their preferred station is not available, they generally won't have the faculties to complain unless the station's reception is poor everywhere they listen.

Complaints will come from station owners and engineers who know where their signal goes and how it sounds. So far, there have been no complaints over the increased power levels. The KRTH/KATY complaint has nothing to do with the recently increased power levels.

 

[Savage]

The issue, Zach, is that the intent behind the Commission's threshold requirement is that complaints come from the general public.

The FCC has stubbornly ignored numerous interference complaints from the radio engineering and ownership fraternity for years now. They don't want to hear them. Their attitude is "you boys settle this among yourselves."

The new "interference complaint" requirements are obviously imposed to create an impossibly high bar to frustrate even the most legitimate interference complaints. It's not crafted to deal with the issue. It's a deliberate attempt to institutionally ignore it.

 

[audioguy]

Listeners are not "stupid", but they have no idea what IBOC interference sounds like, nor who to complain to even if they did. And most would not bother; with lots of other stations and other kinds of media to choose from, they will just go elsewhere rather than try to figure out the problem. Write letters to the FCC? Are you kidding? Who is going to do that?

In my experience, even industry insiders often don't recognize IBOC interference; often confusing it with man-made noise, especially on AM.

It should have been the responsibility of the FCC and the radio industry to mitigate and mediate these problems when and where they occurred; not left up to listeners. Part of the problem is that the interference is damaging smaller stations disproportionately. The big conglomerate-owned blowtorches have no incentive to resolve interference problems, since most of the time they are the ones causing the problem-- for example, the big CBS AM outlets.

 

[radiogooroo]

The issue, Zach, is that the intent behind the Commission's threshold requirement is that complaints come from the general public.

The FCC has stubbornly ignored numerous interference complaints from the radio engineering and ownership fraternity for years now. They don't want to hear them. Their attitude is "you boys settle this among yourselves."

The new "interference complaint" requirements are obviously imposed to create an impossibly high bar to frustrate even the most legitimate interference complaints. It's not crafted to deal with the issue. It's a deliberate attempt to institutionally ignore it.

Not really trying to stir anything here, but if I were at the Commission, I'd be highly skeptical of any claims against HD Radio. I can't look at consumer reviews or articles about any HD radio products without running across several posts by seemingly unbalanced people who haven't personally bought the product and seem to have made derailing HD Radio their life's work.

Is it any wonder that the Commission's ignore switch seems to be stuck in the on position with regard to HD complaints? If I were at the Commission, and these people were bugging me, I'd ignore them too. I suspect legitimate complaints probably get caught in that same filter, which is a shame.

I'm personally not for or against HD Radio. I don't think it's radio's savior as some do, and I don't think it's the devil as others do. It's just a delivery mechanism that gives stations the ability to broadcast more program streams at low bit rates, and at the usual power levels, with occasional dropouts. My only complaint with it personally is that the HD1 channel is wasted on an inferior copy of the analog audio if you're running any SPS channels (HD2, HD3, etc.)

 

[Savage]

You left out the part about interference. Which, after all, is the major issue.

If you were a licensed broadcaster whose livelihood depended on the readibility of your signal, you too would take a burn to your protected contours being demolished by adjacent-channel invasion through no fault of your own - then having an FCC which charges extortionate "spectrum use fees" cynically refuse to enforce its own rules. It's another case of government and corporate elites steamrolling innocent people for stupid and selfish purposes.

Please stop minimizing the salient and critical issues. It's nice that you have the luxury of theorizing from the safety of an anonymous discussion board. Believe me, if you were a broadcaster being financially injured every day by HD Radio, you'd have an entirely different - let's say "real world" - perspective on it.

 

[radiogooroo]

You left out the part about interference. Which, after all, is the major issue.

If you were a licensed broadcaster whose livelihood depended on the readibility of your signal, you too would take a burn to your protected contours being demolished by adjacent-channel invasion through no fault of your own - then having an FCC which charges extortionate "spectrum use fees" cynically refuse to enforce its own rules. It's another case of government and corporate elites steamrolling innocent people for stupid and selfish purposes.

Please stop minimizing the salient and critical issues. It's nice that you have the luxury of theorizing from the safety of an anonymous discussion board. Believe me, if you were a broadcaster being financially injured every day by HD Radio, you'd have an entirely different - let's say "real world" - perspective on it.

I am an engineer in a top 10 market, and I hear none of this interference, so I really don't think it's worth mentioning. I mostly care for FMs, but I'm an avid AM talk radio listener. The two stations I listen to primarily are great for comparison as one is broadcasting HD and the other is not. I can tell absolutely no difference between the two in either my personal vehicle which has a very nice factory radio, or my work truck which has a very minimal factory radio. The interference I can hear is primarily from Spanish stations after dark on both of those frequencies. I'd gladly trade the Spanish language music for pink noise. With the noise floor of AM being what it is already, I think HD Radio is the least of the industry's worries.

I can hear no difference in my own FM stations with the HD turned on or off on a variety of tuners. There is zero difference in the sound of the stations on a Denon TU-1500RD in either wide or narrow mode with the HD transmitters on, just as there's no difference on my car stereos. I personally have no trouble picking up rimshot stations on 2nd adjacents with HD operating on either side, and from the rimshot itself. I have personally turned the HD off on one of my local stations and done some drive testing to see if it improved reception of a 2nd adjacent rimshot. It did not.

I personally don't get the whole interference argument. I'd concede that HD Radio is probably bad for the DX community, but nobody's making money off them anyway. I'd rather take a shot at monetizing HD subchannels or data services, which is already being done. Traffic data for GPS receivers is being broadcast right now via HD FM and yes, it's making money. I have it on one of my stations. I'd guess other services are coming.

Regardless of all that, I think my theory of why the Commission seems to be ignoring HD complaints as a rule is valid. In my experience, the Commission has been very responsive to legitimate interference issues. I'd guess the signal to noise ratio for HD complaints to the Commission is so poor, they're not interested in capturing the signal anymore.

 

[tomservo]

If you're not hearing HD sidebands bleed over the analog on AM, you've got a pretty narrow radio.

Of 9 receivers (of various types, including OEM car and portable units) only one in a Mazda does not let the digital sidebands hiss through while listening to an AM HD station. Some are worse than others, of course, but all let through some noise that would otherwise not be there. The VW factory unit and (no surprise) the AMAX stereo Walkman let through the most.

If the hissing doesn't affect listenership it's because people who listen to AM generally expect to hear less than perfect audio. But I don't understand why anyone would want to interfere with themselves. You can't control Cuban/Mexican interference, or power lines or computer noise, but you CAN turn off the HD noise generator on AM, or at least at night, and make things better for yourself.

I understand and sympathize with the vitriol regarding AM HD, but the anger over FM HD has largely been unfounded. At worst, it is simply unworkable, but not very harmful. I have yet to year of anyone other than the special-case of KRTH and KATY where interference has been within any station's protected contour area.

 

[audioguy]

On FM, IBOC self-interference manifests itself as an increased background hiss level on some of the better (wideband) tuners. On others, including a range of inexpensive clock radios and mid-to-high end automobile radios, it shows up as increased high frequency distortion. Apparently the IBOC sidebands mix with the high frequency audio sidebands and create IMD products that make sibilant sounds "splatter". Many people apparently don't notice, because they're used to listening to low quality MP3s and over-processed FM.

 

[local oscillator]

Gooroo, stations in top ten markets seem to be oblivious to the mess they create with their HD signals because they are spaced from each other 800 kHz on FM and 40 kHz on AM, therefore not bothering each other. They are, however, trampling the first and second adjacent stations 50 or 100 miles (or several hundred in the case of nighttime AM) down the road -- stations that they don't know or care about in their top ten markets. Savage's "real world" perspective is on the money. We are out here trying to earn a living by providing a service to our local communities while our signals are receiving interference from big-market stations' HD experiments. I'll be perfectly honest; broadcasters out here in the "real world" don't run HD; they're smarter than that.

 

[JimmyJames]

If you're worried about your "local community" then why are you worried about your signal 100 miles out?

Can't have it both ways. There's no "right to DX" even if it is a fun hobby.

 

[local oscillator]

JJ, please re-read my post. I'm not worried about my signal 100 miles out, and I'm not talking about DXing. I'm talking about interference received inside stations' "protected" contours.

 

[tomservo]

JJ, please re-read my post. I'm not worried about my signal 100 miles out, and I'm not talking about DXing. I'm talking about interference received inside stations' "protected" contours.

On AM, at night, yes. But I still haven't heard any non-super power stations on FM or any one AM having this trouble during the day. I'm not saying it can't happen, I'm just saying if it is happening, it hasn't been publicized yet. With all the anti-HD fervor on this forum, I'd expect it'd be trumpeted here before anywhere else.

 

[local oscillator]

It's happening. Talk to technically aware Class A FMs that have nearby Class B/C stations operating with HD on their first-adjacent channels. As I said in my previous post, I have pursued this issue as far as I can with no result. And, I don't think you will always hear things here first. I have been an owner for 22 years and have been fighting this issue for 8, yet have just recently begun commenting on radio-info. An additional point that I haven't seen mentioned: Even if the above-mentioned stations wanted to run HD (I don't), many also have nearby second-adjacent stations that would make HD operation impossible. Nobody seems to want to realize what the FM band would be like if ALL stations of ALL classes were to begin running HD at the permitted levels of -14 dBc to -10 dBc; there would be quite a mess and more "class" warfare than we already have.

 

[stacker]

Zach said,

I'm just saying if it is happening, it hasn't been publicized yet. With all the anti-HD fervor on this forum, I'd expect it'd be trumpeted here before anywhere else.

You have to keep in mind that many who post here are in the business and try not to publicly dump on their fellows in the same and or/other markets.

That said, ask AM operators and you will find instances of HD intermod and spectral regrowth products interfering with stations out to the third adjacent. I'm not talking about a DX issue, but daytime interference within the city grade contour. Like Local Oscillator pointed out, if everyone turned on an IBOC signal it would be hell. I know a market where there are 3 AM stations spaced 20 kHz apart, all putting a city grade signal over all or most of the market. Imagine the chaos if one or all of them turned on HD.

 

[Savage]

Well, all I can say is: one man's "vitriol" is another man's "reasoned argument."

And: if you're not willing to believe there's harmful interference generated by HD Radio, you won't hear it. Period. And all the people out there in the industry - engineers, executives, station owners, who all are experiencing the interference problems must all be insane or have been duped by some anti-HD cabal. Go ahead, live in that world if you want to.

In the meantime: any reasonable person can see that HD Radio is in trouble. Virtually nobody is installing it, and a large majority of those who have it are refusing any further investment in HD.

There are reasons for this. And the primary one is NOT "a bad economy." If the Dow went to 14,000 and capital gains taxes were eliminated tomorrow, HD would still be stiffing.