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HD Radio / IBOC - First Impressions

T

tom

I installed a Kenwood KTC-HR100 HD Radio receiver
in my car yesterday. Since I live a few miles from
the ocean, there were no stations receivable in HD
in my driveway. Heading toward Philadelphia on the
Atlantic City Expressway this morning, I tuned to
95.7, WBEN-FM, which was fairly staticy and not
all that listenable. As I traveled - one of
"Jersey's Favorite Hits" Brandy (You're A Fine Girl)
by Looking Glass came on ... all of a sudden it
went from muddy and distorted to LOUD and clear.
No static, no background noise, very wide stereo
platform ... perfect ! At the same time, the
call letters came up ... WBEN-FM and the title and
artist started scrolling. The transitions back to
analog that happen in weak signal areas are noticable,
but never any clicks, pops, digital effects, nothing
nasty, almost seamless.

I also tuned to 92.5, WXTU - which had the same dramatic
improvement - no noise, dead silent background.

Power 99 was equally as impressive, clean, defined.

WMGK, 102.9 was probably the best sounding, I listened
to that on my way back home, until the HD was no longer
locking in. There was a little "phasiness" as the
radio changed from analog to digital many times as
I traveled through the woods under electrical wires.

At no time did the radio do anything odd ... never any
"cell phone" effect - no digital crap at all, no odd
characters on the display ... all in all very nice.

On AM ... the only station I could get in HD was WIP, 610.
In analog, it was typical static, electrical noise, etc.
When the HD kicked in, it was like FM. Very cool.

Disclaimer: I could care less about the politics of
HD Radio/IBOC. It sounds good - although it's apparent
that it doesn't add any range, the digital works about
as far as RDS travels on FM. The radios have the
capability to "multicast" a couple of channels - that's
where it's at for the broadcasters. The tuner was a
$ 400 add on to a $ 350 receiver, so it's not quite
ready for prime time yet.

Downside: I won't be able to listen to anything local
for awhile. Plugging this into my Kenwood KDC-X789
disables the internal tuner, and the HD Radio does both
analog and digital (analog performance is good) BUT !
It disables the RDS - which is one of the main reasons
I bought the receiver ... so I will probably hook the
HD Radio tuner up as an AUX input and hook up another
controller to it.

Cool Thing You Can Do: I haven't tried this, but there
is a "Broadcaster Mode" where you can put Analog on the
right side and Digital on the left for comparison
and alignment purposes. Sounds like fun.

... tom
 
> On AM ... the only station I could get in HD was WIP, 610.

710 WOR's engineers claim that their signal can be received in digital mode in Philadelphia. Did you try to get WOR to pop into IBOC mode?

The sad fact is, the adjacent channel "hash" caused by an IBOC station -- on either AM or FM -- can be picked up at far greater distances than what its digital signal actually covers. It's sort of like fertilizing your soil with manure -- it may make your property look great, but it stinks up the whole neighborhood!

<P ID="signature">______________
noiboc.jpg
</P>
 
I tried WOR, it never locked in. I was only in the area
of Atlantic County between Atlantic City and Hammonton
in my short trip today.

I haven't noticed the hash ... but I don't tune
around much.

Well ... on a side note ... my XM Tuner came in today,
and the HD and XM won't work together ... so the HD is
back in the box for now. I'm looking for a controller
that will talk to it, so it can work independently.

bitb.jpg


> > On AM ... the only station I could get in HD was WIP, 610.
>
>
> 710 WOR's engineers claim that their signal can be received
> in digital mode in Philadelphia. Did you try to get WOR to
> pop into IBOC mode?
>
> The sad fact is, the adjacent channel "hash" caused by an
> IBOC station -- on either AM or FM -- can be picked up at
> far greater distances than what its digital signal actually
> covers. It's sort of like fertilizing your soil with manure
> -- it may make your property look great, but it stinks up
> the whole neighborhood!
>
 
> I installed a Kenwood KTC-HR100 HD Radio receiver
> in my car yesterday.

I am curious how well the digital component of AM IBOC holds up under noisy conditions, such as during a thunderstorm. That would be an interesting experiment to do with WIP, WOR, and WPEN. Reception of AM IBOC under co-channel interference conditions would be interesting to try, but, since AM IBOC is not currently authorized at night, this experiment would be hard to do.

The biggest downside to the AM form of IBOC, business and political considerations aside, is the obscenely w-i-d-e bandwidth occupied by the OFDM carriers. If IBOC succeeds and if AM IBOC does hold up under conditions that degrade analog AM reception, the digital receivers will give us decent sound. I heard it at the NAB Show in Philly a couple of years ago. But if it doesn't succeed, iBiquity could form a Canadian subsidiary and sell some AM IBOC exciters to the Cubans, for use in jamming stations! The digital hash does remind me of the white noise jammers that the Russians used on shortwave during the Cold War. I remember them well on the 40 meter ham band at night!

There's no reason for me to buy an IBOC receiver at this time. Here in the Great White North(east) of Pennsylvania, no local stations are transmitting IBOC, neither on AM nor on FM. However, our local standards station, WNAK (1 kW nondirectional daytime on 730 kHz) does get interference from the IBOC sidebands of WOR.

You might soon have a fairly local IBOC signal on FM. WJRZ in Manahawkin (100.1) will probably add IBOC soon, as it is a Greater Media station and Greater Media is converting all of its stations to IBOC. WDHA has had it for several years and WRAT in Lake Como (South Belmar) will soon add it, if it hasn't already done so. WMGQ in New Brunswick should also be converting soon, if it has not already done so.
 
Probably Route 50 ... the atmosphere today
was pretty hot - so maybe it wasn't a good
test. For WIP - it was just before the
Route 54 Exit - then nothing but static
once ON 54 heading North .... too noisy.


> Around where in Atlantic County would you say the "limit"
> for HD out of Philly is?
>
> Rt.9? Hamilton Mall? Rt. 50? Rt. 54?
>
 
> You might soon have a fairly local IBOC signal on FM. WJRZ
> in Manahawkin (100.1) will probably add IBOC soon, as it is
> a Greater Media station and Greater Media is converting all
> of its stations to IBOC.

Even FM IBOC has serious issues with adjacent-channel interference (it's more of a white noise "hiss" on FM, rather than the "hash" on AM). There are places even well within 95.5 WPLJ's protected service contour in which their signal is totally blocked out by the IBOC hissssss caused by Philly's 95.7 WBEN-FM. Try Brown Road in Bridgewater, for example. Day in and day out, as you crest the top of that road's hill going from east to west, you go from having a totally perfect signal from WPLJ on 95.5 to having nothing but static when WBEN-FM's digital sideband comes into your car radio's line-of-sight and murders anything in its path. WPLJ is now unlistenably poor in Trenton thanks to 95.7's IBOC; look through the past few Arbitron books and you can see that as soon as 95.7 turned on the IBOC, WPLJ took a big drop in their Trenton ratings. Coincidence? I think not!

<P ID="signature">______________
noiboc.jpg
</P>
 
> Heading toward Philadelphia on the
> Atlantic City Expressway this morning, I tuned to
> 95.7, WBEN-FM, which was fairly staticy and not
> all that listenable. As I traveled - one of
> "Jersey's Favorite Hits" Brandy (You're A Fine Girl)
> by Looking Glass came on ... all of a sudden it
> went from muddy and distorted to LOUD and clear.
> No static, no background noise, very wide stereo
> platform ... perfect !

Have no fear. Once there are more than a handful of people with receivers, the audio consultants will tweak the processing to make sure the digital stream sounds just as compressed and distorted as the analog signal. Have faith dear sir!
 
>> Well ... on a side note ... my XM Tuner came in today,
> and the HD and XM won't work together ... so the HD is
> back in the box for now. I'm looking for a controller
> that will talk to it, so it can work independently.<<


You'd think the consumer electronics people would have more sense. Someone who's interested in HD terrestrial radio will most likely also be interested in satellite radio. I'm surprised at Kenwood. Little mistakes like that will go a long way in slowing down the adapation of the technology.

Steve
KC2LDY
 
Are you serious? I have the same Kenwood Tuner (I love it by the way) and my Sirius Receiver has an input for "CD Changer" which I beleive would also be able to handle the HD Radio Input. Couldn't you just sort of "daisy chain" it?


> Well ... on a side note ... my XM Tuner came in today,
> and the HD and XM won't work together ... so the HD is
> back in the box for now. I'm looking for a controller
> that will talk to it, so it can work independently.
>
>
 
Yep - the Kenwood HD Tuner has a daisy chain connection,
but the receiver won't even come on when the XM adapter
is plugged in. The XM Tuner isn't made by Kenwood, it's
an addo-on by Terk. I'm asking around ... maybe a Kenwood
CD Switcher would work ... I want the HD as a second
tuner, rather than giving up my RDS on the KDC-X789.
So I am looking for a controller (eBay of course)

> Are you serious? I have the same Kenwood Tuner (I love it
> by the way) and my Sirius Receiver has an input for "CD
> Changer" which I beleive would also be able to handle the HD
> Radio Input. Couldn't you just sort of "daisy chain" it?
>
>
> > Well ... on a side note ... my XM Tuner came in today,
> > and the HD and XM won't work together ... so the HD is
> > back in the box for now. I'm looking for a controller
> > that will talk to it, so it can work independently.
> >
> >
>
 
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