HD Radio: 3 Million Sold - And Counting!

[KB1OKL]

Ask just about anyone what a shortwave radio is and they will at least have some idea, ask them what an HD radio is and you'll usually get a blank stare or a completely wrong answer. Yep, HD is right on the cusp of success :. I still don't know anyone personally besides myself who owns one. I have the vaunted Sony and yes it's analog FM reception is great but it's HD reception is a waste of time. I bought it solely to experiment with IBOC and as far as I'm concerned it is a bomb so the tuner has not even been turned on for months besides the fact the I'm afraid I'll forget to shut it off and might start my apartment on fire.

 

[Carmine5]

Maybe that listener is in the radio industry, hence he contacted the engineer of WTIC personally.

I am one of the first to notice if HD1 and analog is out of sync, or if the HD broadcast is out, and I do post that on said radio station's Facebook page. One hilarious reply I got from a station was "I didn't know we even had an HD broadcast" (uhhh, yes you do, and it's out of sync with the analog). I feel like I'm "special" because I own an HD Radio.

If nothing else, CBS found out just how effective putting an AM feed on an HD2 channel is in the real world of radio listening. Now they have to make the tough decision: just how important is that one listener?

 

[BRNout]

Ask just about anyone what a shortwave radio is and they will at least have some idea, ask them what an HD radio is and you'll usually get a blank stare or a completely wrong answer. Yep, HD is right on the cusp of success :. I still don't know anyone personally besides myself who owns one. I have the vaunted Sony and yes it's analog FM reception is great but it's HD reception is a waste of time. I bought it solely to experiment with IBOC and as far as I'm concerned it is a bomb so the tuner has not even been turned on for months besides the fact the I'm afraid I'll forget to shut it off and might start my apartment on fire.

Likewise, I have yet to meet someone else (in the flesh) who owns an HD radio. Almost no one I know even knows what it is. Although a couple admitted to being freaked out by the ads that the HD Alliance were playing around the time of the (TV) analog shutoff. As in "oh no, we're not going to have to buy new radios too!?!" That's about it for the interest in HD radio.

And, Mr. Savage is absolutely right about these endless, monotonic comparisons of HD radio to the adoption of FM. There is actually very little similarity as far as the circumstances are concerned. FM was considered to be very highbrow and expensive back then; the perception was that it was full of classical music for rich people. And that was a time when consumer technology moved at a snail's pace when compared with today. FM was high-tech stuff when compared with phonographs, but also very expensive.

HD radio, on the other hand, isn't all that expensive. The problem is that we now live in a time when consumer technology is progressing at the speed of light. Yeah, HD radio would have seemed really cool and might even have caught on......in 1992. Now, it's long since been eclipsed by iPods and other personal MP3 players, smart phones, satellite radio (yes, it still has far more penetration than HDR will ever have) and now internet-based streaming.

It simply doesn't offer any real value to the masses. Only to a few geeks, a decent percentage of whom would be just as happy to trade the automated HD-2 format of the week for that formerly solid adjacent frequency signal that we lost when the exciter was turned on.

You proponents need to accept something: HD radio is not catching on. If it were to catch on, it would have already done so. But in a world where consumers are more spoiled for choices/options than ever before, HD radio's paltry formatting options are simply not compelling enough reasons to spend a buck.

One last thing:

This business of people not running out to buy shiny new radios, allegedly because they don't spend money on things like that is 100% pure-bred Kentucky horse manure. Here we have a marketplace where middle-class 16 year olds are replacing $300 cellphone handsets on an annual basis so as to get the latest cool apps/functions. We have people running out to buy the newest iPods, iPads, iPhones, etc., even when the old one works just fine. Simply to avail themselves of the latest and greatest new features. IF HD radio offered that kind of value and piqued that sort of interest, the stores would be selling out. But it doesn't and they aren't. The people have spoken with a collective yawn.

Someone needs to clue in Bob Strubel though. I hope he reads this, honestly. Because he needs a reality check.

 

[tomservo]

This business of people not running out to buy shiny new radios, allegedly because they don't spend money on things like that is 100% pure-bred Kentucky horse manure. Here we have a marketplace where middle-class 16 year olds are replacing $300 cellphone handsets on an annual basis so as to get the latest cool apps/functions. We have people running out to buy the newest iPods, iPads, iPhones, etc., even when the old one works just fine. Simply to avail themselves of the latest and greatest new features. IF HD radio offered that kind of value and piqued that sort of interest, the stores would be selling out. But it doesn't and they aren't. The people have spoken with a collective yawn.

Someone needs to clue in Bob Strubel though. I hope he reads this, honestly. Because he needs a reality check.

But people ARE still buying radios in droves, they're just not buying standalone radios anymore. That's what the HD people need a clue on.

Those fancy cell phones? Most come with a FM radio these days, many with RDS data decoding. Cars all come with factory radios. Home theater receivers still pack a crappy AM/FM tuner in just for fun. Heck even most standalone mp3 players, themselves slowly becoming a thing of the past, have FM radios.

HD would succeed if they a) have a chipset that isn't a power hog and b) buy their way onto new platforms like satellite radio is doing.

Now, if you wanna say (a) has arrived, I won't argue that. My Insignia HD portable, defective though it may be, actually has pretty decent battery life as long as the backlight doesn't stay on a long time. Embedded HD in a product like a Zune or Android phone would only be used occasionally anyway, so like a wifi chip battery life for that option isn't priority #1.

But (b)? They seem clueless to that concept. Everything released so far has been in dead markets: aftermarket stereos, table top radios, radio-only portables. People still buy radios, they just don't buy THOSE radios anymore.

They need to get aggressive about bundling HD for little or not cost to the manufacturer. It needs to be in every mid-cost and up home theater receiver. It needs to be in every mid-level OEM stereo and up. It needs to be in every high end smartphone along with song tagging abilities.

And iBiquity must must must get serious about eliminating the delay between analog and digital. That to me is the #1 turnoff for potential customers. I've heard seamless blends, I've heard obvious-but-not-annoying blends. I can live with those. But the 5 second delay? That @#$% has got to go. The technology DOES exist to lock sync solidly, and iBiquity has GOT to push it on stations as part of the standard installation. If they fix that, then the need for an "HD lock out" would be eliminated.

 

[Savage]

But Zach: the delay problem CAN'T be eliminated. This problem exhibits the same fatal characteristic the interference issue does: if HD's mad scientists COULD have eliminated these issues, they WOULD have.

Like any live-action codec, the digitizing produces a real-world encoding delay. Since the analog and the digital must co-exist and hand off to each other in varying reception conditions, that means that the analog must, by definition, be delayed so that it matches the late-arriving digital stream. Unfixable - just like the interference, because you just can't lie to radio waves. The bandwidth is insufficient, so the digital carriers have to occupy the adjacents. It trashes the allocation scheme: now we have stations which used to be limited to a single channel occupying THREE (or in some cases more.)

It's instructive to look at a far earlier technology doomed by audio sync failures: first-generation sound pictures. The first talkies, using Warner Brothers' "VitaPhone," sync'ed audio from a 33.3 rpm transcription disc mechanically linked to the projectors. If there was any damage to an individual reel of film, or if there was an accidental physical bump of the projector, synchronicity of the image and the sound was lost - often, with ludicrous effects (see the 1952 classic Gene Kelly picture "Singin' In The Rain.") VitaPhone's system was launched in 1926; within five years it was supplanted by sound-on-film with its unfailing synchonization even though the audio was inferior to the Warners discs.

Audio sync has to be bulletproof and 100% reliable - a lesson learned by the motion picture industry EIGHTY-FIVE years ago.

 

[nd2023]

Most stations sync with a profanity delay. That delay is designed to be used for short periods of time, like a 2 hour call-in talk show, not 24/7. It won't have the tolerance to delay audio for exactly x milliseconds for months on end. For a major market CHR station, I notice that the HD sync tends to drift progressively more out of sync every day. One time when it was off by a second, I notified an engineer for another station in that cluster, who notified the engineer for that station and like magic, analog and HD was in sync the next day. It was fine for a week or two, then started to drift out of sync. A month later when it was out of sync by a half second, I notified the engineer, and it was back in sync the next day. This is something that should be done automatically, or at least by the engineer. It shouldn't take a listener to notify the station that the HD is out of sync. And I'm the only listener who cares enough about it more than the radio station cares about it themselves.

Another example: I posted on the Facebook page of a radio station saying that the analog and HD signals were out of sync. A comment from someone at the station "I don't know what you're talking about, we don't broadcast in high definition". A few days later, my post was deleted, and the HD was in sync with the analog!

Yes, an HD2 station made the ratings. That HD2 is heavily promoted on the main channel since the mixshow and PM drive DJs program the HD2. The homepage of the main site has a prominent link to the HD2 stream. They boast about their "record" online listening. A few of those online listeners had PPMs, and hence the HD2 made the ratings.

 

[RadeoEngineer]

Nick, very respectfully, it is an issue of minimal importance to a local engineer. There truly aren't very many people listening in HD and there are much more pressing issues than whether the HD syncs with the analog. I have worked for very large clusters and very poor little stand alones and no matter which you deal with, there's never enough time, money or manpower to deal with the really important issues that happen daily. A large cluster will have massive computer systems that run programming, sales, traffic, phones and anything else you can think of. They don't just sit there and run all happy; you have to deal with them. We have towers in fields with weeds and critters and transmitter sites that have to be kept cool and clean. We have STL's (studio to transmitter links) that have to work or we're off the air entirely. There are demands on time to make sure all of the legal things are covered, and we have conference calls with the big guys that waste our time to justify their existence. These are just a dollop of the issues we face daily.

I don't know where you're trying to listen to HD, but if it's in the car there's too much road noise (in most cars, certainly the junk I drive) to make a difference, and if you're listening at home or in some other relatively quiet environment, I would have to wonder why you're not listening to CD's or some other source of high quality audio.

In short, the operation of iBiquity HD is too time demanding. If the damn sync is off, it can wait. Other things need attention that matter, and also get the boss' attention. HD sync does not. And if the stinking system worked worth a $hit to start with, we wouldn't have people complaining about syncing the digital with the analog because it wouldn't be switching around.

 

[DaveBayArea]

But Zach: the delay problem CAN'T be eliminated.

Actually, Day Sequerra figured it out:

http://www.proaudio.com/product_info.php?products_id=7298

An after-market tool to fix Ibiquity's problem.

Dave B.

 

[Mike Walker]

If there "are more pressing issues" for your engineer than good engineering, you might have the wrong engineer!

When the station I worked-at back in the 90s got a brand new studio complex, I was excited. Until I discovered that the bargain-basement engineer the owner had hired saw no importance to sorting out left and right wiring. Stereo channels were wired pretty much randomly!

Needless to say, that engineer was out of there as quickly as I could convince the owner to dump him. And my buddy and I came in early to work every morning for a month correcting the shoddy wiring! (I was Ops Mgr. and morning dude, he was News Director, but also had his 1st-class ticket, and both of us were radio geeks).

If you're not concerned about every aspect of engineering...everything that goes into making the station sound good, that makes the production sound the way producers intended, that shows the advantages of the new technology the station has just invested heavily in...if you can't do these things, please find another line of work!

The same could have been said of FM stereo in the 1960s! "Why bother? There aren't that many listening. Besides, how many even know what stereo is?" If everyone had that attitude, no one would have ever experienced the fidelity the medium was capable of (and still is).

Can you hear the owner now "let me get this straight...you're not interested in maintaining the integrity of the system I just invested six-figures in per station, because you think there are better uses of your time? Perhaps one of those should be preparing a resume'!"

 

[tomservo]

If there "are more pressing issues" for your engineer than good engineering, you might have the wrong engineer!

Being that I'm not an engineer (I've never even ridden a train) and I'm not "in the biz", I have refrained from saying that exact same thing. But I have been thinking it.

$3,200 sounds like a minor investment on top of the tens of thousands required to refit everything for HD broadcasts. And what's a little more $$$ versus the daily headaches for the engineer on duty to constantly adjust a delay, which wasn't even meant to sync audio to begin with?

Any job worth doing, is worth doing right. It's why I take my car to a mechanic for major maintenance and not DIY because I know I'm incapable of doing it right myself. If I couldn't fix the digital delay, I'd find someone who could so I wouldn't have to babysit a profanity delay.

 

[RadeoEngineer]

If there "are more pressing issues" for your engineer than good engineering, you might have the wrong engineer!

When the station I worked-at back in the 90s got a brand new studio complex, I was excited. Until I discovered that the bargain-basement engineer the owner had hired saw no importance to sorting out left and right wiring. Stereo channels were wired pretty much randomly!

Needless to say, that engineer was out of there as quickly as I could convince the owner to dump him. And my buddy and I came in early to work every morning for a month correcting the shoddy wiring! (I was Ops Mgr. and morning dude, he was News Director, but also had his 1st-class ticket, and both of us were radio geeks).

If you're not concerned about every aspect of engineering...everything that goes into making the station sound good, that makes the production sound the way producers intended, that shows the advantages of the new technology the station has just invested heavily in...if you can't do these things, please find another line of work!

The same could have been said of FM stereo in the 1960s! "Why bother? There aren't that many listening. Besides, how many even know what stereo is?" If everyone had that attitude, no one would have ever experienced the fidelity the medium was capable of (and still is).

Can you hear the owner now "let me get this straight...you're not interested in maintaining the integrity of the system I just invested six-figures in per station, because you think there are better uses of your time? Perhaps one of those should be preparing a resume'!"

Bullshit.

 

[Mike Walker]

A rational, well thought-out response there, RadeoEngineer!

If it's my station, and you're not interested in doing every facet of your job as well as available technology, the station's budget, and your limitations as an engineer allow, then engineer...meet door.

I don't mean to pick on engineers. Even with all the down-sizing and consolidation, our industry is still plagued with too many people who are in it for something other than the only reason a sane person would choose this career path...LOVE! Because radio is that classic "lover who doesn't always love you back". As any love-sick fool would do, you love her anyway...and do right by her! If it's a choice between sorting out ip conflicts in the station's network, tweaking audio levels in the control room, and providing the best possible sound for analog AND digital (terrestrial as well as over the 'net)...and your choice is anything other than "all of the above"...then engineer, meet door.

No truer words were ever spoken than these. There are two types of radio people. Those who have been fired, and those who are about to be. Engineer...MEET DOOR! BUH-BYE!

 

[Play Freebird]

But Zach: the delay problem CAN'T be eliminated.

Actually, Day Sequerra figured it out:

http://www.proaudio.com/product_info.php?products_id=7298

An after-market tool to fix Ibiquity's problem.

Dave B.

I'm not sure how well this box works -- but assuming that it does correct the problem, wouldn't it make sense for iBiquity to provide it free of charge for each of their licensees? I mean, stations paid a lot of upfront money to put IBOC on the air, but it has a major defect which annoys listeners and this may be the solution. Shouldn't iBiquity do the right thing and stand behind their product?

But I just remembered the disclaimer that's written into in iBiquity's licensee agreement: iBiquity provides the licensed software "as is" without warranty of ANY kind... ALL risk of quality and performance of the licensed broadcast software remains with the licensee.

Caveat Emptor.

 

[nd2023]

Let's say that if HD reaches the "critical mass" of say, 5% of all radios, then having the analog and digital out of sync will be a turnoff for the majority of the listeners since there are few places where HD will always come in perfectly without blending to analog. In that case, a station that has its HD out of sync might as well be off the air to the listeners with HD radios. Most people won't think to disable HD decoding, they will just change the station and remove it from their presets, in favor of a station that does care about keeping the audio synced.

 

[dumber than a box of hair]

If there "are more pressing issues" for your engineer than good engineering, you might have the wrong engineer!

When the station I worked-at back in the 90s got a brand new studio complex, I was excited. Until I discovered that the bargain-basement engineer the owner had hired saw no importance to sorting out left and right wiring. Stereo channels were wired pretty much randomly!

Needless to say, that engineer was out of there as quickly as I could convince the owner to dump him. And my buddy and I came in early to work every morning for a month correcting the shoddy wiring! (I was Ops Mgr. and morning dude, he was News Director, but also had his 1st-class ticket, and both of us were radio geeks).

If you're not concerned about every aspect of engineering...everything that goes into making the station sound good, that makes the production sound the way producers intended, that shows the advantages of the new technology the station has just invested heavily in...if you can't do these things, please find another line of work!

The same could have been said of FM stereo in the 1960s! "Why bother? There aren't that many listening. Besides, how many even know what stereo is?" If everyone had that attitude, no one would have ever experienced the fidelity the medium was capable of (and still is).

Can you hear the owner now "let me get this straight...you're not interested in maintaining the integrity of the system I just invested six-figures in per station, because you think there are better uses of your time? Perhaps one of those should be preparing a resume'!"

I will echo the "bullshit" comment. There ARE better uses of his time than worrying about something that was designed broken, when there are real concerns for station engineers which are directly attributable to running a business and directly contributing to the bottom line. I don't see anywhere in what he wrote that he didn't care or wasn't concerned. He needed to prioritize. HD brings in no revenue, so it gets shoved far down the list. (ROI on that six-figure investment, anyone?) Sound crass? Too bad. It's reality.

 

[Mike Walker]

And I'll bet that argument plays well with management who invested six-figures per station to go HD! There sure will be no audience if the freaking engineering department doesn't keep the signal on, and sounding good!

Forget HD. Set that aside for a moment. What part of the engineer's job is important, and needs to be done correctly? ALL OF IT! Or please, hit the door...not just of the station, but the industry!

While radio is and always will be about content, that content is being delivered in many different ways...including online, to portable devices via 3G (and soon 4G or "wi-max") and HD. Each serves a function. That function is to augment and enhance analog delivery, not replace it. And that function frankly is the job of management and programming to define, not engineering!

This "born broken" technology has 100+ mile coverage in my neck-of-the-woods, and vastly-improved tuners are making those once-spotty signals rock solid. The Sony XDR-F1HD is a technological marvel...a true "super-tuner" at a bargain-basement price. The Insignia portable is perhaps the best-performing pocket-portable ever...analog or digital.

It doesn't matter if only three people are listening to an HD channel...if you're my engineer, you by-God better deliver a great-sounding signal to those three! DO YOUR JOB...as defined by management. If THEY say HD is unimportant, then go take a nap. Otherwise...

 

[KB1OKL]

It doesn't matter if only three people are listening to an HD channel...if you're my engineer, you by-God better deliver a great-sounding signal to those three! DO YOUR JOB...as defined by management. If THEY say HD is unimportant, then go take a nap. Otherwise...

From what I've read most managers don't know about nor care about the HD on their own stations, come to think of it most people don't either, so let's waste our time fixing attempting to fix a faulty system when so many other things that actually matter need attention.

 

[pocket-radio]

Management’s time is fully devoted to hitting sales budgets, so they can keep their jobs. The agencies aren't demanding added value or promotions on HD. They just don't ask. Agency budgets are shifting towards digital, not HD radio but web assets because of measurable results. Local advertisers already think they can't advertise on radio because of the over saturation of stations. Digital isn't HD it's monetizing web/phone assets. Most radio employees including management don’t own an HD radio. I can tell you management isn't monitoring their HD signals.

The real world is this. On spreadsheets of broadcasters HD equals an unnecessary expense and on the revenue side it equals nothing. Bonuses are paid on profits, so I'd imagine having to carry HD dead weight doesn't make many managers very happy. Management will only care when HD represents money! Thus far it's an annoyance. Listeners won't decide HD's fate broadcasters will.

 

[pocket-radio]

Where's the billboards? Where's the window stickers and TV spots advertising HD radio. Where's the car dealer remotes.. Come see Billy broadcasting in HD.. come see our new HD van.. Get a free HD radio.

This stuff is suppose to be state of the art that listeners can't live without. You'd would of thunk management would have been peeing their pants just waiting for the first billboards to go up. Uh? Nothing..

 

[davideduardo]

Management’s time is fully devoted to hitting sales budgets, so they can keep their jobs.

And why is sales more important today than, say, 1970? Sales has always been a primary concern of management.

The agencies aren't demanding added value or promotions on HD. They just don't ask.

Agencies that ask for value added expect the station to present the supplements to straight spots they will give to get on a buy...

Agency budgets are shifting towards digital, not HD radio but web assets because of measurable results.

Agencies don't care if a medium is digital or analog or printed. They measure exposure.

Local advertisers already think they can't advertise on radio because of the over saturation of stations.

Direct accounts don't look at the number of stations in a market, but at the cost and benefits of any ad medium. Station counts have been about the same for decades.