HD Radio Report from Baltimore

[Play Freebird]

From today's Baltimore Sun:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/custom/today/bal-to.hd02sep02,0,6053743.story

The article mentions problems in receiving HD radio while moving. With numerous first-adjacent short-spacings between Baltimore and Washington stations, I expect that the proposed 10 dB power increase would be difficult to implement in those markets.

 

[Savage]

It's a pretty lame piece....a lot of "well, such-and-such is true, but on the other hand..." style finessing of the issues.

Salient points include that HD isn't achieving any success of note in the marketplace, and that the prime boosters are investor companies a/k/a The Alliance. But there is a resounding nod to the stubbornness of iBiquity and big companies in continuing to try to force HD on a largely indifferent listening public.

There's plenty of big press-release rhetoric from Strew-Bull and a PD-shill who's all moist about his HD-2 programming and a politely downbeat quote from a retailer opining "they're not seeing much demand."

The HD inteference issues are all but ignored by the writer. There is a good quote from Greg at the HDRadiofarce blog.

 

[Carmine5]

I thought this was a kind of revealing statement from Struble:

"The other major conversions, from AM to FM, from black and white to color, those were decades-long conversions," he says.

It's revealing in that he equates AM to something old, passe, a technology of the past and dying. I think this helps explain why, in part, Ibiquity has done such a half-assed job migrating IBOC to AM.

Granted there are challenges in adding a digital signal to AM given the limited bandwidth but Ibiquity has clearly treated AM as an afterthought and inconsequential in the radio landscape. Struble's comment hints as much.

C5

 

[Carmine5]

BTW, here is another article, this one from across the pond, attempting to explain why HD Radio is not popular in the U.S.

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/personal_tech/article4632857.ece

The author equates what's happening with HD Radio in the U.S. to the lack of interest in DAB in Britain. Apparently the BBC has wasted billions trying to push DAB on indifferent Brits.

I guess there's just something universally uninteresting about marrying digital technology to the radio industry.

C5

 

[Savage]

My theory is that the goal of "audiophile quality" doesn't comport well with the typical marketplace applications of radio. Radio has been most successful as an electronic "town square," not as a primary music transmission medium. Listeners have historically relied on radio as info-tainment, an ongoing show with charismatic personalities with whom they identify. They're the guys who introduced us to Elvis and the Beatles and Madonna. FM has existed for 60 years. If "sound quality" was paramount these artists wouldn't have launched their careers on fading skywave signals and beating, weak Class IV's like they did. Not even in the 1950s and 60s.

Audio quality for the usual application of radio isn't irrelevant, but it's way down the list of priorities for most listeners. That explains the oft-heard exclamation from most lay people: "Replace my radio just to listen in digital? Why? Sounds good enough to me."

Carmine5, actually iBiquity was a reluctant participant in HD-AM. The NAB forced the issue at the behest of its empty-suit big-group managers, typically looking for their quick-fix to declining AM revenues: HD Radio's GOTTA include AM!! When engineers with a lick of common sense and integrity (read: that would EXCLUDE Glynn Walden, Cris Alexander and their furry friends) quietly pointed out that AM's limited bandwidth, the overcrowded band and skywave vulnerability meant that HD digital sidebands would provoke the disaster now afflicting AM, the big-radio clowns said: screw it. You say it won't work? Make the damn thing work. You're the freakin' engineers. If you're not smart enough to figure it out we'll find someone who is.

So iBiquity's predecessor (USADR) subcontracted the HD-AM problem out to an aerospace company - one with absolutely no AM engineering background, essentially, computer dweebs. They did what they were told and cashed the check. And the NAB started developing its new HD campaign: RADIO! Hiss, distortion and dropouts HEARD HERE!! (COVERAGE: NOT heard here!)

Nice to see the NAB, CCU, CBS, Buckley and Crawford getting the disaster on which they insisted. Can't want to watch the heads start to roll in a year or so.

 

[Savage]

Strew-Bull's "decades to convert" comparison is just the latest in a parade of transparent iBiquity talking points, every single one-jack of 'em parroted here by the few lingering pro-HD fans. Sure! If you argue that HD implementation is "just like!!!" the transitions from monochrome to color TV and AM to FM, rhetorically you've given yourself decades to get the job done! And this fallacious metaphor neatly gets you around the embarassing marketplace disaster, where notwithstanding the misleading stats Bob-O chants, radios are all-but-gone on the retail level and station conversions have just about stopped. (I just updated stopiboc.com with new stuff which should be online as soon as my web guy can get to it, but it was interesting to note: the best information is that fewer than a hundred new FM-HDs and about TWENTY (!) HD-AMs have come online since the site was created a year ago. And in fact, the phenomenon of stations dropping HD because of interference, expense and other tech problems is accelerating.) Or, to put it more accurately: the comparison WOULD get you around the problems - if only anyone outside the delusional world of HD believed it, or was listening.

Of course there are massive problems, obvious to just about anyone over kindergarten age, with the "decades to convert" line. These would include, among many others: color TV, FM and FM stereo worked. HD does not. Those technologies didn't impose unacceptable compromises of existing services. HD does. They offered a real, tangible improvement immediately appreciated by any average consumer. HD does not. And on, and on.....

 

[Carmine5]

My theory is that the goal of "audiophile quality" doesn't comport well with the typical marketplace applications of radio. Radio has been most successful as an electronic "town square," not as a primary music transmission medium. Listeners have historically relied on radio as info-tainment, an ongoing show with charismatic personalities with whom they identify. They're the guys who introduced us to Elvis and the Beatles and Madonna. FM has existed for 60 years. If "sound quality" was paramount these artists wouldn't have launched their careers on fading skywave signals and beating, weak Class IV's like they did. Not even in the 1950s and 60s.

Audio quality for the usual application of radio isn't irrelevant, but it's way down the list of priorities for most listeners. That explains the oft-heard exclamation from most lay people: "Replace my radio just to listen in digital? Why? Sounds good enough to me."

Carmine5, actually iBiquity was a reluctant participant in HD-AM. The NAB forced the issue at the behest of its empty-suit big-group managers, typically looking for their quick-fix to declining AM revenues: HD Radio's GOTTA include AM!! When engineers with a lick of common sense and integrity (read: that would EXCLUDE Glynn Walden, Cris Alexander and their furry friends) quietly pointed out that AM's limited bandwidth, the overcrowded band and skywave vulnerability meant that HD digital sidebands would provoke the disaster now afflicting AM, the big-radio clowns said: screw it. You say it won't work? Make the damn thing work. You're the freakin' engineers. If you're not smart enough to figure it out we'll find someone who is.

So iBiquity's predecessor (USADR) subcontracted the HD-AM problem out to an aerospace company - one with absolutely no AM engineering background, essentially, computer dweebs. They did what they were told and cashed the check. And the NAB started developing its new HD campaign: RADIO! Hiss, distortion and dropouts HEARD HERE!! (COVERAGE: NOT heard here!)

Nice to see the NAB, CCU, CBS, Buckley and Crawford getting the disaster on which they insisted. Can't want to watch the heads start to roll in a year or so.

That would certainly explain a lot, Bob--including why iBiquity, when asked to fix HD-AM, has pretty much thrown up its hands and, instead, chosen to focus on its "successes" with FM.

Struble even compared HD Radio's growing pains to the beginnings of the digital cellphone. "Remember that first digital cell phone you got? It didn't work so well", he said. That's probably the closest he's ever come to admitting that HD Radio has some real-world problems.

True, technologies improve with continued R&D but that's cold comfort for the HD Radio early adopters.

C5

 

[wkbam1690]

Struble even compared HD Radio's growing pains to the beginnings of the digital cellphone. "Remember that first digital cell phone you got? It didn't work so well", he said.

Still doesn't...

 

[dumber than a box of hair]

My theory is that the goal of "audiophile quality" doesn't comport well with the typical marketplace applications of radio. Radio has been most successful as an electronic "town square," not as a primary music transmission medium. Listeners have historically relied on radio as info-tainment, an ongoing show with charismatic personalities with whom they identify. They're the guys who introduced us to Elvis and the Beatles and Madonna. FM has existed for 60 years. If "sound quality" was paramount these artists wouldn't have launched their careers on fading skywave signals and beating, weak Class IV's like they did. Not even in the 1950s and 60s.

Audio quality for the usual application of radio isn't irrelevant, but it's way down the list of priorities for most listeners. That explains the oft-heard exclamation from most lay people: "Replace my radio just to listen in digital? Why? Sounds good enough to me."

Cliff's Notes: The ballgame is CONTENT, and that's what all those empty suits seem to forget. If FM radio had been programmed in the 1970s the way it was in the 1950s (i.e., treated as an afterthought) it would have gone nowhere, better audio quality notwithstanding. It was the programmers who stepped up and made it a must-listen. "Sounds good enough to me" is the whole nut as far as HD is concerned. Putting the same or worse programming on the digital streams isn't going to pack 'em in, and relegating the HD2s or HD3s to an automation system stuck in a closet somewhere is symptomatic of the "get me something for nothing" attitude of too many of those empty suits. Nobody in radio is doing the work needed to make HD a must-listen.

 

[Tom Wells]

Struble even compared HD Radio's growing pains to the beginnings of the digital cellphone. "Remember that first digital cell phone you got? It didn't work so well", he said.

Still doesn't...

Depending on where I have to work, the newer ones still don't work well, and each new one seems to have a new downgrade.
Smaller, harder to hold, quieter on ring and listen so I can't hear it in a loud pressroom, not paying attention so it misses the number of the first button pushed, then I have to redial the number again correctly. I long for the old analog Nokia. None of the above drawbacks, and you could hear it trying
to do its best when in weak signal areas. It was much easier to understand voices through some FM-multipath type noise vs the modern digital garbling.
You could even find the best place to stand in real-time and stay there for the best signal, with the digital phone it's as likely to drop out suddenly as it ever was. And what's this about delivering voice-mail and text messages to me the next day, or even days later? ???
Then there's no way to set the dang clock to a time zone and tell it to NOT CHANGE when it gets tropo from the nearby eastern time zone cell-sites.
Nothing more annoying than being hijacked to find your time is wrong AND the last call you made cost mega-$$.

The only improvement I've seen is better fill-in as more cell sites have been established.
Then there's places like Sleepy Eye, MN, where my phone still doesn't work.

They may have gotten cellphones to work pretty well in NYC, but most people don't live there.
And HD is trying to do this with only 1 antenna, not a system of many sites.

 

[Carmine5]

My theory is that the goal of "audiophile quality" doesn't comport well with the typical marketplace applications of radio. Radio has been most successful as an electronic "town square," not as a primary music transmission medium. Listeners have historically relied on radio as info-tainment, an ongoing show with charismatic personalities with whom they identify. They're the guys who introduced us to Elvis and the Beatles and Madonna. FM has existed for 60 years. If "sound quality" was paramount these artists wouldn't have launched their careers on fading skywave signals and beating, weak Class IV's like they did. Not even in the 1950s and 60s.

Audio quality for the usual application of radio isn't irrelevant, but it's way down the list of priorities for most listeners. That explains the oft-heard exclamation from most lay people: "Replace my radio just to listen in digital? Why? Sounds good enough to me."

This theory makes sense.

It's not that listeners value radio less, it's that they see it as a "service" medium. Radio provides information, entertainment and even companionship. I don't think anyone ever demanded that radio be an audiophile medium. That's what LPs, tapes and CDs are for.

But the listening public, at the very least, does expect radio to keep them informed. Selling HD Radio for it's audio quality is a misfire.

C5

 

[Savage]

The current marketing "strategy" for HD Radio is the functional equivalent of someone trying to launch a competitor to Kraft Macaroni & Cheese with a pitch going something like:

Kraft Mac & Cheese is the "cheesiest?" You haven't SEEN "cheesy!" I-BOX has the biggest, brightest, most colorful packaging in prepared foods! Brilliant yellow, royal blue, and big, clear type that's much easier to read than that old-fashioned Kraft box! When the kids are hungry for mac and cheese, ask for I-BOX at your grocery store. The biggest, most beautiful box yet....looks great in your shopping cart and brightens the inside of your cupboard too! This month, get 50 cents off I-BOX when you agree to let them text your cellphone for all eternity. I-BOX! Costs more....but looks SO much better!

(Disclaimer, speed digitally compressed) I-BOX packaging not suitable for consumption, do not attempt to eat. Product may cause minor kitchen fires. Be sure to handle actual food content with protective gloves. Power tools required for opening. Close attention required to expiration dates, as food product becomes instantly toxic after sell-by deadline.