"HD Power Increase Has Been Trouble-Free"

[dumber than a box of hair]

With the new, increased power levels it's pretty impressive just how well it works.

Actually, it's pretty impressive just how well it increases the noise on the analog side...you remember analog, right? The place where radio makes all its money?

Dave Hershberger, an engineer with transmitter manufacturer Continental Electronics, has documented just how bad the self-interference gets with higher HD power, in a two-part article: http://www.radioworld.com/article/105256 The bottom line is that analog listeners won't know or care why their radio suddenly has all this noise in it. They'll just stop listening, or turn the dial to a station not running HD. And to think that many FM stations regularly kept FM noise 70dB down or better. Not anymore!

All this jockeying with multiple carriers in the passband that were never meant to be there just demonstrates yet again that you can't legislate the laws of physics...or, maybe, that putting lipstick on a pig is pointless.

 

[radiogooroo]

Actually, it's pretty impressive just how well it increases the noise on the analog side...you remember analog, right? The place where radio makes all its money?

Dave Hershberger, an engineer with transmitter manufacturer Continental Electronics, has documented just how bad the self-interference gets with higher HD power, in a two-part article: http://www.radioworld.com/article/105256 The bottom line is that analog listeners won't know or care why their radio suddenly has all this noise in it. They'll just stop listening, or turn the dial to a station not running HD. And to think that many FM stations regularly kept FM noise 70dB down or better. Not anymore!

All this jockeying with multiple carriers in the passband that were never meant to be there just demonstrates yet again that you can't legislate the laws of physics...or, maybe, that putting lipstick on a pig is pointless.

Radio could very well make plenty of money off HD one of these days. Personally, I wouldn't be in favor of implementing a substantial HD power increase on my stations until something substantial changes in the distribution of HD radio receivers that would make it make sense, but then I'd be all for it.

Apparently you missed Dave's comments about any noise being created by HD likely being masked by road noise. People don't listen to radio in anechoic chambers. It's background material in offices, cars, around the breakfast table, etc.

And take a listen to AM. Even powerhouse stations like KFI, WLS and WABC suffer from all sorts of electrical interference. Strangely enough, despite the inevitable buzzes and complete dropouts, people still listen in droves.

On one end of the generational scale you have kids raised on low bitrate MP3s stolen from file sharing sites. On the other end, you have AM radio listeners. The audio each group listens to sounds like crap, yet they still listen. I think you greatly overestimate the tune out potential of a small amount of white noise in the background. The vast majority of listeners wouldn't even know it's there, and the few who did probably wouldn't be bothered enough to tune out.

 

[tomservo]

I consider myself an ever so slightly perceptive listener and have yet to notice HD self interference on FM. What should I be listening for? I only know of one FM in my sphere that increased power and both their analog and digital sounded really good, unlike most CC I've heard lately.

 

[Savage]

The "HD noise is masked by road noise," gooroo? Are you kidding? You think that's a justification for adding noise to analog FM?

This is just another example of the serial insanities constantly coming from the HD contingent, such as "it's okay to trash the entire AM band with noise because" (a) AM has noise problems anyway from light dimmers or (b) AM is a terminal patient anyway with nothing left to lose or (c) we've made the analog sound so bad with 4.4 kHz bandpass nobody's listening any more anyway or (d) every HD critic is a little pi$$ant broadcaster whose station has no merit, etc., etc.

Why would anyone in their right mind sign on for a nihilistic concept like HD, where we destroy everything we've built for 75 years just so, maybe, perhaps, on the "if-come," we can achieve a 3% improvement in audio quality if everyone would just shut up and go out and buy $200 new radios to replace their perfectly-good existing ones?

And some - admittedly, only a few left these days - wonder "why HD isn't catching on." :

 

[radiogooroo]

The "HD noise is masked by road noise," gooroo? Are you kidding? You think that's a justification for adding noise to analog FM?

This is just another example of the serial insanities constantly coming from the HD contingent, such as "it's okay to trash the entire AM band with noise because" (a) AM has noise problems anyway from light dimmers or (b) AM is a terminal patient anyway with nothing left to lose or (c) we've made the analog sound so bad with 4.4 kHz bandpass nobody's listening any more anyway or (d) every HD critic is a little pi$$ant broadcaster whose station has no merit, etc., etc.

Why would anyone in their right mind sign on for a nihilistic concept like HD, where we destroy everything we've built for 75 years just so, maybe, perhaps, on the "if-come," we can achieve a 3% improvement in audio quality if everyone would just shut up and go out and buy $200 new radios to replace their perfectly-good existing ones?

And some - admittedly, only a few left these days - wonder "why HD isn't catching on." :

In anything there are compromises. Read my comments again. I'd be in favor of increasing HD power to that level if and only if something were to happen that would result in many more HD Radio receivers in the hands of listeners. At this point, I think the only way that would happen is via an FCC mandate for HD Radio a la the digital tuners in TVs mandate from 2007.

People these days want choice, not necessarily pristine audio. HD Radio gives stations the ability to add more choices in a convenient, ubiquitous and free format. Of course, without consumers having access to the additional channels, it's all pretty pointless. Expecting anyone to buy a special radio for home or office use to receive this stuff is a silly notion. The concept of what a radio is and isn't is so ingrained in the public's mind that trying to re-define it at this point is futile.

Young people these days have a hard time finding the AM band on their existing radios. That's why many companies are migrating their news/talk offerings to FM where they can. If you can't convince Generation X and Y people to hit the AM button, you can't really expect them to go out and buy a new radio to hit the virtual HD button.

If additional stations just magically appeared on the FM band in their new Prius though, they'd probably check them out and actually like a few of them.

So to sum it up, like with anything else, the costs and benefits have to be weighed. If the noise of HD power increases would be objectionable to most listeners, you would want to wait to implement it until there was a very good reason for doing so. In my opinion, the only thing that would justify such an increase at this point is substantially increased receiver distribution via an FCC mandate because most automakers clearly aren't going to do it without receiving a payoff like they did from the satellite radio folks.

I worked at a class C1 station earlier in my career that had 100,000 watts at 700 feet AGL. When that station signed on in the 1970s, it was with that same power level at 150 feet. This isn't on a mountain, it's over VERY flat land. I've seen pictures of the original tower. The bottom bay was shockingly close to the ground. Obviously, that arrangement didn't yield a very good signal, and when it made sense to do so, the owners upgraded. I see the same scenario playing out with HD Radio if receiver market penetration ever reaches a level where it makes sense. At that same time, accepting some self noise to improve the digital signal would also make sense. Eventually, the analog signals would just go away altogether, yielding 384k digital channels.

 

[local oscillator]

Gooroo, sounds as though you've joined a "race to the bottom." IMHO, a "not good, but not that bad" attitude isn't going to help our industry thrive. OTOH, I appreciate, for example, Frank Foti's article in the current Radio World Engineering Extra discussing a method to reduce noise in analog stereo FM. HD is just plain junk science.

 

[Savage]

I've heard the point made repeatedly that listeners "want more choice" from broadcast radio. Two things about that: one, despite numerous requests for hard evidence validating that assertion, I haven't seen it. And two: if they indeed do want more choice, there exist far better, cheaper, and easier ways to get it than via HD Radio.

HD offers at best three quality-hobbled additional streams in addition to the main channel. The more "choices" there are, the lousier the quality. There is no analog backup for the highly-likely eventuality of digital dropout. Paying $30 to $60 for even the entry-level Insignias in various flavors just to get one, two or three more generic, crappy, unreliable "choices?" Not gonna happen. And it's not just me, in case the essentially nonexistent sale of HD receivers has escaped you. Satradio offers you hundreds of channels for less, and arguably enormously better programming at least when compared with most HD subs.

(Permit me a little side trip here about the fallacious concept of having a "digital" system that "works so well" it has to rely on an analog backup. Excuse me: I don't recall reading that Henry Ford equipped Model Ts with a trailer and horse to drag along behind "just in case." And any time I line up to board an airliner and notice attendants strapping "analog" parachute packs onto passengers in the jetway, I'm excusing myself and heading for the train station, thank you very much.)

As far as dumbing down audio standards goes, history is rife with examples of how "really smart guys" assume that American consumers are too-stupid-to-know-better in the case of this product or that. They always get disproved. Like how Detroit always assumed that people would continue to buy cars with body fit and finish where you could throw a cat through the gaps between panels, and how consumer electronics firms argued in the 1940s that listeners actually preferred limited frequency response. (Until servicemen came back from Europe with vastly superior gear, which led to the multibillion-dollar 1950s high fidelity audiophile revolution.)

 

[radiogooroo]

I've heard the point made repeatedly that listeners "want more choice" from broadcast radio. Two things about that: one, despite numerous requests for hard evidence validating that assertion, I haven't seen it. And two: if they indeed do want more choice, there exist far better, cheaper, and easier ways to get it than via HD Radio.

People want more of everything. Why are there several different flavors of HBO these days? Wasn't one HBO enough? Just because people weren't running around in 1990 complaining that there wasn't several different varieties of HBO doesn't mean they don't appreciate it now that it's here.

As far as these cheaper, easier ways go, what are they? I have an iPhone, which is by all accounts the simplest to use, most effective mobile internet device available. It's a PITA to use in the car, and my car has an input jack for just such devices.

My car radio, which is not HD BTW, is very easy to use by comparison. I don't have to take my eyes off the road to navigate through the Wunderadio app or iHeartRadio to find what I want to listen to. I turn the radio on and hit a preset. The programming I want starts instantly.

HD offers at best three quality-hobbled additional streams in addition to the main channel. The more "choices" there are, the lousier the quality. There is no analog backup for the highly-likely eventuality of digital dropout. Paying $30 to $60 for even the entry-level Insignias in various flavors just to get one, two or three more generic, crappy, unreliable "choices?" Not gonna happen. And it's not just me, in case the essentially nonexistent sale of HD receivers has escaped you. Satradio offers you hundreds of channels for less, and arguably enormously better programming at least when compared with most HD subs.

You're either not reading what I'm saying, or you're intentionally ignoring it to continue this bash fest you seem to love so much. I'm not advocating anything change with regard to HD right now. I would implement changes if something came along that was a game changer in terms of the number of receivers in the field. If Toyota or GM started installing HD Radios as standard equipment, that would be a game changer IMO. If the FCC mandated HD Radio in all cars, that would be a game changer. As it is, there's not even a way to change the factory radio in my work truck unless you mount it in a box of some sort under the dash, and that's simply not going to happen. It's disingenuous to blame HD's lack of market penetration on its inability to get installed as aftermarket radios in today's vehicles. The single or double DIN car stereos of yesteryear are all but gone.

(Permit me a little side trip here about the fallacious concept of having a "digital" system that "works so well" it has to rely on an analog backup. Excuse me: I don't recall reading that Henry Ford equipped Model Ts with a trailer and horse to drag along behind "just in case." And any time I line up to board an airliner and notice attendants strapping "analog" parachute packs onto passengers in the jetway, I'm excusing myself and heading for the train station, thank you very much.)

HD doesn't have to rely on analog as a backup, particularly at higher HD power levels. At -10, al the studies I've seen and read peg HD coverage as equal to or exceeding that of the analog. If the analog were eliminated altogether, I'm certain HD would be even more robust, particularly in the markets where stations are modulating to 120 or 130% and analog is spilling over into the IBOC sidebands.

As far as dumbing down audio standards goes, history is rife with examples of how "really smart guys" assume that American consumers are too-stupid-to-know-better in the case of this product or that. They always get disproved. Like how Detroit always assumed that people would continue to buy cars with body fit and finish where you could throw a cat through the gaps between panels, and how consumer electronics firms argued in the 1940s that listeners actually preferred limited frequency response. (Until servicemen came back from Europe with vastly superior gear, which led to the multibillion-dollar 1950s high fidelity audiophile revolution.)

I'm merely observing the way music is delivered these days. The world's most popular record store is iTunes, which relies on compressed audio. The most popular delivery mechanism for music downloads though is still P2P file sharing, and a huge percentage of those files are of dubious quality. Heading home from a project a few months ago, my assistant and I were playing iPhone music trivia with each other. He was trying to guess my songs and I was trying to guess his. I was appalled at the quality of most of his tracks. He got them off Limewire. Go figure.

If Limewire is considered acceptable by the masses, and by all accounts it is, the general public has a tin ear or just doesn't care about quality. How many iPhone or iPod users do you see walking around with the included headphones vs. people sporting aftermarket ones? The included headphones don't exactly sound wonderful, yet they seem to be more than acceptable to the majority of users.

 

[Savage]

gooroo, go back and read MY post. My discussion of analog backup had to do with the HD subs, which after all represent 100% of the "new choices" you advocate as a justification for HD. Increasing the digital power does nothing in the way of provision of "analog backup." If an HD sub craps out, you get: silence.

And if there are no HD subs, you get: ZERO "new choices."

I will observe that once again, when we challenge those who assert HD Radio answers to provide evidence that listeners want "more choices" from terrestrial radio, the answer which always comes back is: "because they do." Sorry, but that's not exactly persuasive. Especially when you undermine your own arguments by insisting that a "variety vehicle" as unreliable as HD side channels is the fix of choice.

I can see that from the perspective of those who believe in HD Radio that I'm "bashing it." If that's how it looks to you, so be it. I happen to believe HD is a stupid, cobbled, illogical, expensive, outmoded and divisive red herring which is distracting a proud profession from its historic role. If we could just stop diddling with this nonstarter, we could concentrate on doing what we do best.

This discussion board is prima facie evidence of the foregoing. If all the energy and money that's been blown on HD could have been purposed for something really important, who knows WHAT exciting new ground we'd be exploring.

 

[radiogooroo]

gooroo, go back and read MY post. My discussion of analog backup had to do with the HD subs, which after all represent 100% of the "new choices" you advocate as a justification for HD. Increasing the digital power does nothing in the way of provision of "analog backup." If an HD sub craps out, you get: silence.

And if there are no HD subs, you get: ZERO "new choices."

I will observe that once again, when we challenge those who assert HD Radio answers to provide evidence that listeners want "more choices" from terrestrial radio, the answer which always comes back is: "because they do." Sorry, but that's not exactly persuasive. Especially when you undermine your own arguments by insisting that a "variety vehicle" as unreliable as HD side channels is the fix of choice.

I can see that from the perspective of those who believe in HD Radio that I'm "bashing it." If that's how it looks to you, so be it. I happen to believe HD is a stupid, cobbled, illogical, expensive, outmoded and divisive red herring which is distracting a proud profession from its historic role. If we could just stop diddling with this nonstarter, we could concentrate on doing what we do best.

This discussion board is prima facie evidence of the foregoing. If all the energy and money that's been blown on HD could have been purposed for something really important, who knows WHAT exciting new ground we'd be exploring.

Forgive me Savage, I thought we were speaking relative to an HD power increase, which after all is what this thread is all about. With the power increase, HD has the potential to become as robust, or maybe even more robust than analog. With the power increase, the HD subs don't crap out.

What sort of evidence exactly would satisfy you that people want more from radio and might actually enjoy sub channels? I can give you an application that appeals to me personally. I hate sports that displace regular programming on talk stations. I'd rather have a sub channel I could turn to and hear my favorite talk shows on when they're displaced by sports. I know I'm not the only guy that hates baseball season, or football season. There you go - a use for sub channels that real, honest to goodness people would enjoy.

You can bemoan the money and energy that's been "blown" on HD and take solace in knowing it would have been spent on something like bigger bonuses for the big radio CEOs if it hadn't been spent on HD. You can postulate that it would have ended up in dozens of other places, but the one constant I've found in this business is even when you're in the middle of layoffs, the executives at the top will still manage to take home a fat bonus check, just like they did the year before.

What's stopping you from exploring new ground Savage? What's the brighter idea that you're innovating there at your own station?

 

[RadeoEngineer]

gooroo, go back and read MY post. My discussion of analog backup had to do with the HD subs, which after all represent 100% of the "new choices" you advocate as a justification for HD. Increasing the digital power does nothing in the way of provision of "analog backup." If an HD sub craps out, you get: silence.

And if there are no HD subs, you get: ZERO "new choices."

I will observe that once again, when we challenge those who assert HD Radio answers to provide evidence that listeners want "more choices" from terrestrial radio, the answer which always comes back is: "because they do." Sorry, but that's not exactly persuasive. Especially when you undermine your own arguments by insisting that a "variety vehicle" as unreliable as HD side channels is the fix of choice.

I can see that from the perspective of those who believe in HD Radio that I'm "bashing it." If that's how it looks to you, so be it. I happen to believe HD is a stupid, cobbled, illogical, expensive, outmoded and divisive red herring which is distracting a proud profession from its historic role. If we could just stop diddling with this nonstarter, we could concentrate on doing what we do best.

This discussion board is prima facie evidence of the foregoing. If all the energy and money that's been blown on HD could have been purposed for something really important, who knows WHAT exciting new ground we'd be exploring.

Forgive me Savage, I thought we were speaking relative to an HD power increase, which after all is what this thread is all about. With the power increase, HD has the potential to become as robust, or maybe even more robust than analog. With the power increase, the HD subs don't crap out.

What sort of evidence exactly would satisfy you that people want more from radio and might actually enjoy sub channels? I can give you an application that appeals to me personally. I hate sports that displace regular programming on talk stations. I'd rather have a sub channel I could turn to and hear my favorite talk shows on when they're displaced by sports. I know I'm not the only guy that hates baseball season, or football season. There you go - a use for sub channels that real, honest to goodness people would enjoy.

You can bemoan the money and energy that's been "blown" on HD and take solace in knowing it would have been spent on something like bigger bonuses for the big radio CEOs if it hadn't been spent on HD. You can postulate that it would have ended up in dozens of other places, but the one constant I've found in this business is even when you're in the middle of layoffs, the executives at the top will still manage to take home a fat bonus check, just like they did the year before.

What's stopping you from exploring new ground Savage? What's the brighter idea that you're innovating there at your own station?

It's real simple. The kind of power increase you're referring to eliminates analog altogether, and it's still a digitally compressed mess. Raise your hand if you're ready to do that tomorrow.

 

[local oscillator]

With the power increase, HD has the potential to become as robust, or maybe even more robust than analog. With the power increase, the HD subs don't crap out.

HD as robust or more than analog? Subs don't crap out? You're drowning in the Kool-Aid, my friend. Digital = high capability + low reliability; it doesn't matter if you"re talking about HD Radio, HDTV, cellphone service, or the computer I'm using to send this post. Unlike HD Radio, the others don't cause interference and have gained widespread public acceptance. Remember Local Oscillator's First Immutable Law of the Universe: Digital = High Capability + Low Reliability (you can't have one without the other!).

 

[radiogooroo]

It's real simple. The kind of power increase you're referring to eliminates analog altogether, and it's still a digitally compressed mess. Raise your hand if you're ready to do that tomorrow.

Tomorrow? Of course not! If receivers ever become common enough that it makes sense? I'd trade one analog channel for four 96k channels.

 

[Chuck]

Tomorrow? Of course not! If receivers ever become common enough that it makes sense? I'd trade one analog channel for four 96k channels.

That may be a long wait....

 

[radiogooroo]

HD as robust or more than analog? Subs don't crap out? You're drowning in the Kool-Aid, my friend. Digital = high capability + low reliability; it doesn't matter if you"re talking about HD Radio, HDTV, cellphone service, or the computer I'm using to send this post. Unlike HD Radio, the others don't cause interference and have gained widespread public acceptance. Remember Local Oscillator's First Immutable Law of the Universe: Digital = High Capability + Low Reliability (you can't have one without the other!).

It's not particularly high capability. 384k isn't a particularly high data rate. Funny how data becomes more reliable at low rates.

 

[radiogooroo]

That may be a long wait....

Agreed! I'm not saying this is something that will or should happen overnight, but I am open to the possibility if the conditions are right for it to happen.

 

[Chuck]

Funny how data becomes more reliable at low rates.

Not really, it is easy to get a little bit of water through a small pipe. Getting a lot of water though the same small pipe is a lot harder (if not impossible) trick.

HD tries to cram 5 pounds of sh*t into a one pound sack. That's a big part of the problem...

 

[tomservo]

From a technical standpoint, HD has a lot going against it. And for the purposes of this post, I'm only referring to FM; AM HD needs to be killed off two years ago.

I think a lot of the problems people are experiencing are due to a myriad of issues. For example, I'm moving to the Mobile-Pensacola area in a few weeks and the Clear Channel stations are in HD but sound awful. But then the analog sounds awful, too. It's music compressed to within an inch of its life, run through another digital compression stage. Of course it's going to sound bad!

But then there's a few others doing HD. The three Cumulus stations I sampled (WBLX, WJLQ and WYOK) are all running just the one digital channel and all have really good clean analog audio to begin with. They all sound pretty darn good. As computer geeks will tell you, garbage in = garbage out. Fix the audio chain then listen to HD again. Even with sub channels, it can still be passable for quiet room listening if done right… And it blows XM out of the water.

Then there are antenna issues. Now, I'm no engineer; most of you know that. So take this with a grain of salt. But I think half of dropout issues are caused by antenna placement and the other half by running lower power. So many stations have tall towers with good antennas, then throw a two bay deal halfway down the tower for HD. That's not going to cut it, especially on smaller stations or in challenging terrain, of which most of the US qualifies.

The HD has to be as high as possible (if it were up to me, I'd even advocate for putting the HD antenna higher up if possible, over the analog array.) and as powerful as possible. Unfortunately most stations spent their play money on setups not conducive to easy upgrades and are stuck with subpar first generation equipment.

Frankly, I don't blame them for not spending on upgrades now, for something few are even capable of hearing. But it is a necessary step if they really want robust digital audio.

Now, here's a question for the smart guys in the room: can a combined analog/HD antenna setup work well enough so that the analog doesn't lose coverage? I've got a few public radio stations around me that upgraded to combined HD/analog when they replaced their old aging setups and they all lost a little fringe coverage.

Finally, sync and volume. There are products out there to nanny the sync for you so your engineer doesn't have to tweak it each day. They need to be included in the cost to go HD, along with redoing the music library in lossless or WAV format or whatever stations can use these days (FLAC?). And volume.

Of the entire state public radio network, only the stick nearest me has perfect volume between analog and digital. The rest are quiet as a church mouse on HD and when you dropout you GET SOMEONE YELLING IN YOUR EAR! Horrible. No wonder people complain.

The HD scheme is far from perfect but when life hands you lemons, make lemonade.

 

[radiogooroo]

Not really, it is easy to get a little bit of water through a small pipe. Getting a lot of water though the same small pipe is a lot harder (if not impossible) trick.

HD tries to cram 5 pounds of sh*t into a one pound sack. That's a big part of the problem...

How so?

Let's use digital TV for comparison. TV channels are 6 MHz wide. FM channels are .2 MHz wide. HDTV crams 19.3 Mbps into that 6 MHz. If HD Radio takes the entire FM channel, it gives you 384 kbps to play with.

A single TV channel is 30 FM channels wide. Let's divide the bitrate of HDTV by the bitrate of HD Radio if it is using the entire FM channel. 19,300,000 bps / 384,000 bps = 50.2

It would take 50.2 FM channels at the HD Radio bitrate to equal the amount of data being broadcast on a single 6 MHz TV channel.

HDTV is already broadcasting significantly more data proportionally compared to a fully digital HD Radio FM channel.

And I'm supposed to believe this doesn't work? It already does, and then some!

 

[Savage]

I thought we come here to discuss real-world issues, not imaginary scenarios. Rumination about how wonderful HD could be if It Were Only All-Digital seems kind of like a waste of time, since (a) how well HD actually would work in all-digital mode is unknowable in advance and (b) it's not going to happen.

It's fun to daydream about how municipal tap water might be found to be an effective cure for all kinds of cancer. Or about how a biogeneticist might breed a nine-story high German shepherd that eats politicians, poops Kruggerrands and pees hi-test gasoline.

But kind of beside the point, n'est-ce pas? ;D

PS Closed Circuit for gooroo: thanks for the backwards swipe at my radio station. Typical from the HD-booster crowd. If you knew anything about us, you'd know we do all kinds of innovative things every day. But they're programming-oriented: you know, the part of "radio" listeners actually care about.....?