HD Radio: 3 Million Sold - And Counting!

[Chuck]

One of the big problems these days is one engineer is usually spread out over an entire cluster, or maybe even over several stations that are some distance apart. Back in the 1970's the ratio was closer to one engineer to one station. A lot of stations had several engineers. (Yes, I know of some that still do, but they are the exception). Quite a few stations don’t have any engineer. Although technology wasn't as reliable back the good old days, it also wasn't as complicated. Changing tubes, replacing phono styli or fixing cart machines required unique skill sets, but the job was much more focused than today’s challenges. Today, they need to be IT and RF experts who can also fix plumbing and mow the grass. Most engineers are over-worked and under-paid.

I own and operate a small market station. I wear many hats, including engineer. I can tell you that despite my best intentions, some things get put off so I can take care of the biggest issues first. When the on air computer crashes for unknown reasons, it is pretty hard to get really excited if our RDS display is not displaying current song info. Although we do not run HD, I can see how worrying about audio sync might not be as great a priority as fixing the traffic computer.

YMMV

 

[RadeoEngineer]

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...

I guess you walk on water too. Mike, with all due respect, you're still full of shit. I guess that's not a lot of respect, but well, it is what it is. You're a voice/production guy right?

Opinions expressed on websites from The Production Room are those of Mike Walker.

Therefore, they are insightful, well-reasoned,

and should be your opinions as well!

I don't think there's anything insightful or well reasoned about your posts on this topic.

Let me let you in on something. People are supposed to work for a living, not live to work. When an engineer gets slapped with a system that doesn't work, that no one cares about and is unwilling to support it with time and money, then it makes it very low on an engineer's priority list when there are serious things to deal with that uppers do actually care about and support. You present an arrogant attitude for which I have no tolerance. And just so you know, I'm retired and don't have to deal with the nonsense of HD radio, but I have friends that still do, and I see the effort they have to make for an unappreciated, non-revenue producing service that means nothing to the glorified uppers, despite their having spent (stupidly I might add) six figures to put this abortion out there. If you think HD is a wonderful system then go for it. Many, many highly experienced engineers and other technical professionals recognize this thing for what it is, which is a waste of money, time and a kluge beast.

Congratulations on your experience of you and your news guy fixing the incorrect left/right wiring in the studio you mentioned, but you seem to have a sneering attitude at what those of us with the training and education are telling you is junk science. And let me suggest one more thing to you as you piss on the engineering community for saying what this crap is; you're dead in the water without us. You better show some stinking respect or expect to get blown off when your needs are immediate and no one wants to take your call. We're management too buddy. On the highest level. We manage facilities that connect to the listener and cost millions of dollars. We work out huge problems to get what the programmers need, which is coverage, and we're as dedicated as they come. We are the buffer between the license holders and the FCC and we make damn sure things are legal and right. We work with our brothers and sisters that compete with us to make sure everyone is doing the right thing and has the chance to succeed. And we do the best we can to watch budgets, but a part costs what a part costs. We didn't break it, and we only want to fix it. How many times does the engineer catch grief for just saying what it's going to cost to get your operation back to working status? Do you have any clue about this?

When you can pass the General Class license exam (well, OK cheap shot, they don't give it anymore, but I happen to have one) and feel competent to answer the phone in the middle of the night and head to a down transmitter site in a lightening storm, then maybe you have some room for your glorified insightful and well reasoned opinions to shower on us poor stinky unwashed grease and grime covered engineers that do manage to get your crap on the air with a high degree of regularity.

And I never was or would be "your" engineer. I would be the Chief Engineer for the station(s) and your silly stuff would be way down on the list of my priorities in our joint world if it ever existed, which I guarantee you it won't. I bet you complain a lot about how you're not being treated with the respect you deserve for your problems by whatever poor bastard is stuck screwing the wires together in your world.

I know exactly what you're about.

 

[davideduardo]

Most stations sync with a profanity delay.

No, they don't. The analog audio is delayed the same amount as the processing time to create the HD digital audio by digital delay that is part of the HD system. The most frequent cause of sync issues is related to updating the HD software and not setting the delay, or by other elements in the audio chain. Delay is part of digital processing.

A profanity delay is often on all programming if call ins, spontaneous remarks, etc., are a legal concern. It delays the studio audio and the dump button is part of the studio system, and the profanity delay is not used for HD synch.

 

[Ai4i]

Someone please explain why this would not work effectively:
Send the audio output from an HD receiver straight to the input of the analog transmitter.
If the analog transmitter adds any delay, it would only be a few miliseconds.

 

[Savage]

Umm...because when the inevitable day comes where the HD exciter craps out, locks up or runs out of RAM....or has one of its frequent fits (after all, it's a Windows-based computer) getting the latest serial firmware update, the station would lose all of its actual listeners. Who would, by definition, be listening to the analog signal.

 

[Mike Walker]

Can't you just reboot the thing once a day, in the wee-small hours? I use a Windows computer for production work, and learned long ago that the best route to a trouble-free Windows experience is reboot once every 24 hours!

 

[davideduardo]

Someone please explain why this would not work effectively:
Send the audio output from an HD receiver straight to the input of the analog transmitter.
If the analog transmitter adds any delay, it would only be a few miliseconds.

In a word: processing.

Most stations employ different processing setups for HD and for analog.

 

[Chuck]

Can't you just reboot the thing once a day, in the wee-small hours? I use a Windows computer for production work, and learned long ago that the best route to a trouble-free Windows experience is reboot once every 24 hours!

Gee Mike, do you think that is really practical for a radio station? Every day? Maybe you could even get a sponsor, "The following two minutes of dead air are brought to you by...."

Oh, I forgot. Nobody's listening. It is HD.

Besides, that might mean somebody would need to be at the station, unless you actually trust a Windows computer to do it for itself.

 

[nd2023]

The analog signal would then have the digital artifacts, another feature of HD radio.
The processing for the HD1 should be the exact same as the analog processing, minus the preemphasis. It is annoying to hear it switch between different audio processing when the HD goes in and out in 75% of the protected contour.

 

[Ai4i]

The processing for the HD1 should be the exact same as the analog processing, minus the preemphasis.

No, it shouldn't. A local station does exactly that with all their heavy processing, and the only way I can tell whether I am listening to analog or digital is to look at the display. Another station processes as best they can, or should on analog, but when the digital pops in, it jumps out at me. The dynamic range and crisp highs truly sound like a CD.

 

[davideduardo]

The processing for the HD1 should be the exact same as the analog processing, minus the preemphasis.

Bingo. This is among the reasons why separate processing is required.

It is annoying to hear it switch between different audio processing when the HD goes in and out in 75% of the protected contour.

HD is not supposed to sound the same as analog AM. It is supposed to sound better and more CD-like. Of course, like there are those who feel vinyl sounds better than CDs, some don't find digital to their preference. But to many, the digital sound is in fact better.

Since most radio listening is not in the car, there are no dropouts.

 

[tomservo]

Since the general public has overwhelmingly accepted the sound of satellite radio and crappy iPods as "good quality" then I'd say those of us who love good processing are in the minority.

Most HD stations I've heard have sounded on par with XM satellite radio sounded way before the merger, before they picked up MLB and started the sports carriage race with Sirius. In other words, decent, but not spectacular.

A few stations, notably those that have no subchannels, sound marginally better. One station with a subchannel, Memphis' WKQK, also sounds unusually crisp and clean. They are also one of the few I know that did the full power upgrade to the HD, so it may be down to better HD processing gubbins.

Besides sync, my second biggest gripe with HD is getting the levels right. It's not much of a problem on music stations that I've noticed, but on NPR with their speech-heavy content.

I'm #1 in line to fuss at over compression (and clipped peaks on modern music CDs) but when it comes to speech, I don't want to lose half my volume when switching to the HD feed. I want them both to be louder and more agressive. NPR is the worst for having hosts that get LOUD and quiet while talking, and on some HD feeds it is really annoying to follow while in a car. Then when the HD drops out as it inevitably does while riding around, I get bombarded by the aggressive, loud analog signal. Either make both equally loud or equally quiet, just try to balance them better! That's all I'm asking and unlike sync it should be a one time setting for stations that are all talk.

The pubcaster in Memphis is pretty bad about this. And MPB's statewide network is hit or miss. The Greenwood site is way off the levels but the Oxford site is sync and volume-perfect. Having driven half the country last month I can say, of the few pubcasters with HD I heard, more often than not the HD signal was way low compared to the analog, which made fringe reception sound like someone crazy was at the volume controls.

 

[nd2023]

The processing for the HD1 should be the exact same as the analog processing, minus the preemphasis.

No, it shouldn't. A local station does exactly that with all their heavy processing, and the only way I can tell whether I am listening to analog or digital is to look at the display. Another station processes as best they can, or should on analog, but when the digital pops in, it jumps out at me. The dynamic range and crisp highs truly sound like a CD.

Zach, your first example is a sign that it is doing exactly what it should do for HD. So you can drive around and hear the audio seamlessly switch between analog and HD. HD2s and HD3s should have lighter processing because there is no analog backup. The average listener won't care about the superb processing of the HD1, but he will notice that the volume changes dramatically as he drives around, leading to a tune out. Then again, the average listener doesn't know what an HD radio is right now.

 

[davideduardo]

Then again, the average listener doesn't know what an HD radio is right now.

The average listener does 70% of their listening in a fixed location, where there are no dropouts anyway.

 

[landtuna]

The average listener does 70% of their listening in a fixed location, where there are no dropouts anyway.

DAMN! DE pounds yet another nail into me, the non-average listener. I do 100% of my radio listening in the mobile environment. So does wifey. And the 3 kidlets I see occasionally around the hacienda. But no HD anywhere to be seen.

 

[dumber than a box of hair]

Umm...because when the inevitable day comes where the HD exciter craps out, locks up or runs out of RAM....or has one of its frequent fits (after all, it's a Windows-based computer) getting the latest serial firmware update, the station would lose all of its actual listeners. Who would, by definition, be listening to the analog signal.

All the ones I've seen are actually Linux-based, but the point is: They're still PCs and must still be rebooted/upgraded periodically. The notion of a reliable broadcast service is being sacrificed for this unreliable, broken, interference-ridden (on AM, anyhow) system called HD.

And, on FM, remember that when the HD exciter dies, HD2, 3, etc. listeners would, by definition, be listening to dead air.

 

[Chuck]

Then again, the average listener doesn't know what an HD radio is right now.

The average listener does 70% of their listening in a fixed location, where there are no dropouts anyway.

I know that Arbitron reports this, and you are only the messenger. Still. I find it a bit hard to believe. Perhaps the time spent listening in a car is too short to accurately measure in a diary? I'm just wondering, since my personal habits, as well as those reported by my station's listeners who call in, would indicate otherwise. Still Arbitron said that almost all of our listeners were in fixed locations, which agrees with your statement.

Does the PPM tell a different story? Or is it too early to tell?

 

[dumber than a box of hair]

that might mean somebody would need to be at the station, unless you actually trust a Windows computer to do it for itself.

Except for the fact that every HD exciter I've ever seen is run on Linux, not Windows, as long as the Windows computer is set to log in automatically, the command SHUTDOWN /R, set as a scheduled task, will reboot the machine without human intervention.

 

[dumber than a box of hair]

Someone please explain why this would not work effectively:
Send the audio output from an HD receiver straight to the input of the analog transmitter.
If the analog transmitter adds any delay, it would only be a few miliseconds.

Because when the HD goes down (as it inevitably will, at least at this stage of the technology), you just killed the signal of your money-maker.

 

[dumber than a box of hair]

I know that Arbitron reports this, and you are only the messenger. Still. I find it a bit hard to believe. Perhaps the time spent listening in a car is too short to accurately measure in a diary? I'm just wondering, since my personal habits, as well as those reported by my station's listeners who call in, would indicate otherwise. Still Arbitron said that almost all of our listeners were in fixed locations, which agrees with your statement.

Does the PPM tell a different story? Or is it too early to tell?

All the PPM data I've seen just reinforces it. Last data I saw actually said that in-office listening is the biggest piece of the pie. And you cannot rely on call-ins or "me and all my friends" for any kind of statistically reliable data.