R
rbrucecarter5
Guest
DavidEduardo said:
Finally - you make a statement I can agree with. But you seem oblivious to the fact that HD makes AM sound TERRIBLE on all but HD receivers. Given the market penetration of HD - and consumer apathy to HD - it make no sense to make AM sound even worse in the interim while the issue of consumer acceptance is open.
I do realize there is a "chicken and the egg" scenario here. But most consumers are probably buying HD for FM HD-2 channels - at least that seems to be the big selling point on commercials I have heard. If I were going to roll this thing out, I would be much more cautious on AM roll out. A bit of a white lie in the interim - widening AM bandwidth and better equalization - so AM sounds incredibly good "in digital". Then when market penetration of HD radios reaches 50% (or some carefully selected threshold), then cut the bandwidth on analog, kick in the sidebands. Call it an "enhancement" to digital AM, and handle the few complaints at that point with free HD radios which should be dirt cheap by that time.
But no - the HD folks jumped the gun - put the system on the air leaving 99.9% of the audience with horrible sounding AM radios, and advertised how HD makes "AM sound like FM" - and the uninformed consumer who doesn't know how HD works says "yeah right, it sounds like _____".
If you are right, and this is to save the AM band - the quick appearance of reduced bandwidth and loud sideband interference did not enhance the position of the HD advocates. Unless, that is, the ultimate goal was NEVER better sound, only jamming small operators out of existance.
I will say this - I had an opportunity to do a bit of nighttime skywave DX the other night. Only one station was operating IBOC illegally - a local 1700. They have been reported to the FCC for illegal nightime operation of IBOC, by the way. But IBOC was not the problem. While some skywave is possible on stations up to 700 or 800 miles away, it was only a handful. Anything much over that, and a good number of closer 50 kW stations are already jammed. I had no idea the magnitude of the problem - but there has been allocation glut. New stations crammed on just about every frequency that was formerly clear. Even on the 50 kW powerhouses, other stations could be heard in the background mixing with them. Mexico, Cuba, and Central America are problems. From my Dallas location, Spanish language stations crammed the dial - every other frequency was dominated by something in Spanish. Maybe they are operating legally. Maybe they are American stations broadcasting in Spanish. I don't know. But it seems that they are flooding the dial. My conclusion is - nighttime IBOC is probably not going to do any more damage than has already been done to the band. I remember a band dominated by Chicago clears, even from Midland. All 5 or 6 of them - buried under new allocations, Spanish or other interfering signals. Same with WSB, WSM, WJR, KSL, all the other stations between 800 and 1200 miles away. New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco - there is not even a realistic chance of hearing them from Texas any more. Nighttime skywave is already dead for all intents and purposes. IBOC will merely nail the coffin lid shut. The fault: the FCC, which is not following its original mandate of preventing interference on the band. Their actions from the last few decades seem intent on generating interference, not preventing it.
