HD Stations from Philly are loud and clear in Lancaster

[SignalSeeker]

As a listener to Philadelphia radio, I would like to comment on the quality of the HD stations I receive 60 miles west of you in Lancaster. My favorite is the quiet storm on WDAS. This station was barely receivable in Lancaster. You need at least a rooftop antenna with a rotor. With the addition of HD I not only can receive the signal better. But I now get double WDAS, because they are multicasting on their second HD channel. Great sound, better signal than their analog signal, and song titles in the text display. WOGL is not hard to get here. Either more power, better antenna location, or the direction they send their signal. OGL is also multicasting so I get a second Oldies 98 for the same price (free) Philadelphia radio is great. Your market is doing many different things with HD, A spanish channel along side a Golden Oldies big band station. Great way to use the technology. I have found that the HD signal is brighter and has more dynamic range than regular FM. I am using the Sangean HDT-1 component tuner. Great machine for $ 199.99. A nice addition to my aging stereo stytem. Great work Philly radio stations, Ibiquity should be proud of you!

 

[rtetro]

Then there is AM........Another story altogether .

We now have at least several of these hiss hogs here in Philly gobbling up bandwidth. Try listening to WCBS since WWDB turned it on, or WFAN since the Disney channel started theirs. Forget it....and we are talking well within those NYC stations' 0.5 contours -- which are supposedly protected.

 

[BRUSSTAR]

I, for one, appreciate and commend you for being a major-market broadcast engineer who has the guts to speak out the truth about the horrible use of this technology on the AM band...

WFIL and WZZD will soon be the only Philadelphia AMs to not sound like poor telephone lines, I'm afraid... Still hoping I'm wrong...

 

[eatspaste]

As a listener to Philadelphia radio, I would like to comment on the quality of the HD stations I receive 60 miles west of you in Lancaster. My favorite is the quiet storm on WDAS. This station was barely receivable in Lancaster. You need at least a rooftop antenna with a rotor. With the addition of HD I not only can receive the signal better. But I now get double WDAS, because they are multicasting on their second HD channel. Great sound, better signal than their analog signal, and song titles in the text display. WOGL is not hard to get here. Either more power, better antenna location, or the direction they send their signal. OGL is also multicasting so I get a second Oldies 98 for the same price (free) Philadelphia radio is great. Your market is doing many different things with HD, A spanish channel along side a Golden Oldies big band station. Great way to use the technology. I have found that the HD signal is brighter and has more dynamic range than regular FM. I am using the Sangean HDT-1 component tuner. Great machine for $ 199.99. A nice addition to my aging stereo stytem. Great work Philly radio stations, Ibiquity should be proud of you!

I'm sorry, I didn't see the "sponsored by" tag in your post? Did I miss it?

Great machine for $ 199.99.

I'd rather take the year+ of XM for the same price!

 

[Radio-X]

I'm sorry, I didn't see the "sponsored by" tag in your post? Did I miss it?

Hahaha! I agree ;D

But in all seriousness, getting HD signals that far from Philly is impressive, considering the fact that they really can't transmit much more than 1% of their signal before crazy amounts of iBUZZ kicks in.

Radio-X

 

[radioskeptic]

What kind of antenna are you using, Signalseeker? The FM antenna supplied with the Sangean HDT-1, or a rooftop antenna? Or perhaps a couple of stacked 10-element yagis on a tower?

I find it hard to believe you could get usable FM Hi-Deaf signals from any kind of indoor antenna, especially when those signals are 23 dB below the level of the host analog signals!

Or have we been having an unusually long spell of tropospheric ducting between Lancaster and Philly lately?

 

[SignalSeeker]

I use a Channel Master $ 69.00 FM only antenna. I put it up 20 years ago. I don't recall the model, it was their fringe to deep fringe FM antenna at the time. Nothing special, no big tower, just a chimney mount on a rancher.

As far as receiving the Philly stations, I receive all them them in HD with the standard dipole supplied with the HDT-1. The only one that is hard to get is WDAS. I could barely get it, mainly because of a strong country station near me, WIOV at 105.1, coming from Ephrata, Pa. The selectivity of the Sangean is phenominal. When I place it on seek, or seek HD it picks out WDAS at 105.3. A second later it displays the HD symbol and then it locks in. It surprised me when the tuner did this. I usually had to tweak any of my other tuners manually to get DAS.

Temple Jazz was also a little hard to get here in Lancaster. It is very popular up here. They got a lot of mail from this area about the signal quality. I remember a newspaper article in our local paper about the popularity of Temple. Consequently they put their signal on a couple stations in central Pa. now I receive them from any one of three locations.

I am not only satisfied with the sound of HD, I am astounded. It sounds great. Contrary to what you have heard, there is no artifact hashing or digital noise on FM HD. You are listening to a digital stream with better frequency range, and dynamic range than analog FM.

As for AM, I don't know. We don't have any stations here in central Pa. broadcasting in AM HD. I understand that radio Disney is sending HD from Philly or New Jersey. I have yet to hear it. I am only using the supplied loop antenna on AM. I'm waiting for the weather to break to run a long wire. Some of you guys seem pretty disgusted with AM HD.

I'm wondering, are any of you with a rooftop antennas swinging them around to New York? Are you able to pick up their HD signals? Like Philly they jumped on the HD bandwagon early. Just about every Big Apple station is pumping HD. I have seen good reports about the AM HD sound from New York city.

The Sangean has two nice features for aiming the antenna, first is a numeric signal meter, and the other is a carrier to noise display. This thing does a lot for $ 199.99.

 

[SignalSeeker]

Great machine for $ 199.99

I'm sorry, I missed the sarcasm in a couple of the previous posts. I don't have any affiliation with any manufacturer. I work for a living! These forums are a great way to share good experiences with others with similar interests. Sort of like the modern day CB radio. If you find a product that performs in an extraordinary way, I hope that you will post about the product. Isn't that what the forums are for, sharing information.

I love radio, its a hobby of mine, no hidden agenda. Don't take my word for it, find a buddy who owns one, listen to it, then write something good or bad about it. I will accept what you have to say as a radio listener. My point was, its not every day that you find a remarkable product at a bargain price. I also enjoy the new technology, that is HD.

Gerald Wilson, Village of Oregon, Leola, Pa. (Lancaster County)

 

[8638]

Gerald:

Where did you purchase this tuner? C.Crane, perchance? I know they sell other Sangean items.

thanks,
Don

 

[SignalSeeker]

Got it at JR Music world. And I don't work for them either!

Laughs!!!

 

[Bill_W]

Re: HD Stations from Philly are loud and clear in Gloucester Twp, NJ

Just got my radiosophy multistream HD radio today in the mail. Sound great so far, even AM. I never listen to WIP but AM in HD does really sound good. It would be nice to hear KYW and WPHT in HD. The teletype in stereo on 1060 and Rush crumpling papers in his formerly nicotine-stained fingers on 1210. Get on it CBS! It's nice to hear Y-rocks on XPN.org on the radio. XPN broadcasts it on 88.5-2. WMMR sound great in HD. Preston & Steve will really rock tomorrow morning in HD! WMMR-2 sounds good too. There seems to be more rock stations hiding in all those 0s and 1s. Before every one bashes HD radio give it a listen. (I also had HD-TV over 3 years ago. I needed to see sports in HD and my wife let me. Now practically all sports and prime-time are in HD.) I also have Sirius for football (Patriots) and XM for baseball (Red Sox) (both for Fox News).

I spend over 2 hours in my car a day. I might get HD radio for the car too to add to the Sirius and XM.

 

[fredflintstone]

Re: HD Stations from Philly are loud and clear in Gloucester Twp, NJ

Before every one bashes HD radio give it a listen.

I bash it for the buzz saw noise and distortion popping up all over the AM band and for all the stations that have become unlistenable.

I can hear Rush crumpling papers online just fine.

CBS has the only viable AM stations left in town. But they should go ahead, spend big bucks and drive away even more people from AM because you need more toys to play with? You need XM, Sirius and HD Radio to keep you amused for two hours in the car? That either says something about the quality of programming or your attention span. And your wife lets you have all these toys? That is mind boggling! ???

 

[Bill_W]

Before every one bashes HD radio give it a listen.

I bash it for the buzz saw noise and distortion popping up all over the AM band and for all the stations that have become unlistenable.

I can hear Rush crumpling papers online just fine.

CBS has the only viable AM stations left in town. But they should go ahead, spend big bucks and drive away even more people from AM because you need more toys to play with? You need XM, Sirius and HD Radio to keep you amused for two hours in the car? That either says something about the quality of programming or your attention span. And your wife lets you have all these toys? That is mind boggling! ???

I guess I just like the toys. In the morning it's just Preston & Steve on the good old FM 93.3.