I took the plunge and bought an HD radio

[nd2023]

I bought the Insignia portable HD radio on Black Friday, and I am impressed with it. $40 at Best Buy, it was so cheap I couldn't pass it up even though I don't like the concept of IBUZ. It has sensitivity that rivals my Eton E100 and even my car radio...with just the headphone cord as an antenna. Its selectivity is also superb. I am able to get a 98.1 from 60 miles away when I am just 4 miles from 98.3, something only my car radio could do. The HD range is OK, I can get reliable HD reception 20 miles from New York City and spotty HD reception 35 miles away. Since it is very selective, it has a problem locking on to 87.74 FM (WNYZ-LP 6), since it only tunes in 200 kHz increments (something I would have complained about a month ago but I'll live with for now). The battery charges using a USB port, and lasts 10 hours decoding an HD signal at full volume. Only problem is that it overloads too easily, and when it overloads, HD reception is bad and it gets desensitized. But still, very impressive performance from a radio that's smaller than my palm with no external antenna. The HD and RDS reception is a big plus, I can't wait till the first e-skip opening next year.

The problem with HD is that there is just no compelling reason to listen to the same overplayed music and commercials in "HD". There are no HD2/3 stations in my area that would attract me to HD radio like Pulse 87 attracted me to listen to it through the static. Pride Radio on 103.5 WKTU-HD2 is not even half as good as PartyFM and it's not targeted at a mainstream (heterosexual) audience. I can't get the 2 HD dance stations from Philly. Give me a dance station with reliable HD reception and great on-air personalities, and I will spend $200 to install an HD radio in my car. Even a Club Phusion HD2 would get me to install an HD radio.

At least this radio is good enough for local non-HD reception at my location, and will perform great during DX, and will be nice to carry along when traveling to sample HD radio in other markets. 30 miles from New York City, HD reception is spotty, but analog reception is excellent. I could keep the NYC stations in analog up to 60 miles away, and it was selective enough that IBUZ from the first adjacents from Philly did not interfere with analog reception of NYC stations. I got to enjoy a few great dance stations from Philly only available in HD, it's a shame that HD doesn't travel as far as analog.

 

[DToTheJ]

I bought the Insignia portable HD radio on Black Friday, and I am impressed with it. $40 at Best Buy, it was so cheap I couldn't pass it up even though I don't like the concept of IBUZ... The problem with HD is that there is just no compelling reason to listen to the same overplayed music and commercials in "HD".

And it took you $40 to figure this out?

 

[nd2023]

Well, it is an excellent analog radio.
Some HD radio stations have worse sound quality than the analog.

 

[Savage]

The entire HD digital stream is 96 kbps which, irrespective of the alleged wonderfulness of the codec's algorithms, I would skeptically view as barely adequate for stereo.

But many HD stations whack the 96 kbps bandwidth into THREE streams, which means the primary (main) channel could be as low as 32 kbps although most reserve a minimum of 48 kbps for the main program. Still, any way you slice it, IMO when the subs are in use any sonic "advantage" of digital over analog is lost.

Voila - the digital "enhancement" sounds worse than the original analog.

And the suggestion from NPR that asymmetrical digital sidebands could be employed to mitigate increased interference to adjacents from the contemplated digital power hike means: improved immunity to multipath, the only other arguable HD advantage, will also be negated.

(Tick, tock....tick, tock....)

Footnote department: on the Pittsburgh discussion board under the topic "IBOC crud" a poster with an inside source at iBiquity claims most of the staff has been laid off. This has the ring of accuracy given complaints I've heard that iBiquity licensees are having trouble getting calls returned and support questions answered. If the staff has been pared back to save money, that would be the explanation.

 

[SweetBabyJames]

I hope that you are right about this, because iBiquity's $300,000 loan from the State of MD. and Howard County to move, would now be in violation of the terms of the loan; iBiquity was supposed to keep so many employees, and even add some. When iBiquity laid-off earlier this year, I wonder if they violated the terms, earlier? If this is true, everyone has been very hush about it. It is also interesting that Ford, who is an investor in iBiquity, never installed HD Radio; I'm guessing that besides HD Radio not working properly, they knew that iBiquity might be short-lived.

 

[Tom Wells]

......And the laws of physics are essentially as robust as ever and in no way respect the fortunes of ibiquity,
staffed with people who unfortunately have insuffcient experience with entropy in real-world, real time, real-RF conditions.
Otherwise they'd never have advanced the notion of decoding a bit-stream that is literally "hanging on by the tiniest of threads".

 

[Savage]

300 grand isn't much money. I think I recall reading here that iBiquity made some deal with the State of Maryland that the company would create 80 jobs (or something like that) in return for getting the $300K loan.

Two things about this: if they actually did that, they're stupider than even I think they are. Commit to 80 jobs? Maybe for $10 or 15 million, but not for a measly 300K. I borrowed more than that with a guarantee from the USDA, great terms, low interest, and I didn't have to promise to create a single freakin' job. And I'm just a little entrepreneurial radio shlub without all the wonderful "connections" iBiquity has.

Two: the truth of the matter with these IDA or "development" loans which include a covenant to create jobs is, they're essentially unenforceable. The public and quasi-public agencies which create these loans have no means of getting employment data from the debtor companies (beyond sending a letter asking nicely) and the only recourse if the job-creation promises aren't met is an expensive lawsuit, which the agencies can't afford.

 

[jras20]

I'm done with buying HD Radios after I bought one for my truck, it kicked in and out about 35 miles out of town then the analog station even went out about 40. My factory radio picks up Austin at least 60 miles out on analog. I can even pull in Corpus FM a lot of the time, thats well over 130 miles.

 

[audioguy]

I'm done with buying HD Radios after I bought one for my truck, it kicked in and out about 35 miles out of town then the analog station even went out about 40. My factory radio picks up Austin at least 60 miles out on analog. I can even pull in Corpus FM a lot of the time, thats well over 130 miles.

You better not be listening to any out-of-market stations, jras. Clear Channel would not like that. You're only supposed to listen to your local stations. Otherwise you risk being ridiculed as a DXer. I ought to know; I got the lecture from Cris Alexander on "Adverse Possession."

Don't you know the rules? No DX'ing. No playing music on AM. No local programming. And certainly, no programming for anyone over the age of 30. Those people (myself included) might as well be dead!

 

[jras20]

I'm done with buying HD Radios after I bought one for my truck, it kicked in and out about 35 miles out of town then the analog station even went out about 40. My factory radio picks up Austin at least 60 miles out on analog. I can even pull in Corpus FM a lot of the time, thats well over 130 miles.

You better not be listening to any out-of-market stations, jras. Clear Channel would not like that. You're only supposed to listen to your local stations. Otherwise you risk being ridiculed as a DXer. I ought to know; I got the lecture from Cris Alexander on "Adverse Possession."

Don't you know the rules? No DX'ing. No playing music on AM. No local programming. And certainly, no programming for anyone over the age of 30. Those people (myself included) might as well be dead!

haha well I guess almost everyone is on this crime

 

[bigtom101]

I got to enjoy a few great dance stations from Philly only available in HD, it's a shame that HD doesn't travel as far as analog.

Hence why the need for -14. Good deal on the radio - I love mine & have had it since they came out. Little bugger even does RDS.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

Hence why the need for -14. Good deal on the radio - I love mine & have had it since they came out. Little bugger even does RDS.

Be careful what you wish for - you may actually get it! A lot of us with more experience in engineering are very scared of this - given the AGC circuitry in most FM radios. A local station here in Houston loses 60 miles of range when they turn on -20, they will probably lose a good deal more if they attempt -14. The culprit? AGC circuitry in radios that does exactly what it was designed to do, detect the average signal strength and turn down the gain. Whether that signal strength is first adjacent noise or IBOC, it doesn't care.

 

[nd2023]

I got to enjoy a few great dance stations from Philly only available in HD, it's a shame that HD doesn't travel as far as analog.

Hence why the need for -14. Good deal on the radio - I love mine & have had it since they came out. Little bugger even does RDS.

So I guess you feel like you convinced me to buy an HD radio.
I only bought it because it was ridiculously cheap for an HD radio.

I feel like with -10, this radio would get solid HD reception out to the analog 40 dBu contour. And if HD was equally as powerful as analog, HD would be able to be heard further than the existing analog signal. This radio has picked up HD reception even with first adjacents on both surrounding frequencies, and even where I can't hear the IBUZ. If I'm in the right spot, I can pick up some Philly HDs 60 miles away.

I don't like how I lose HD2s whenever I go under an overpass or go inside.

 

[bigtom101]

So I guess you feel like you convinced me to buy an HD radio.
I only bought it because it was ridiculously cheap for an HD radio.

I feel like with -10, this radio would get solid HD reception out to the analog 40 dBu contour. And if HD was equally as powerful as analog, HD would be able to be heard further than the existing analog signal. This radio has picked up HD reception even with first adjacents on both surrounding frequencies, and even where I can't hear the IBUZ. If I'm in the right spot, I can pick up some Philly HDs 60 miles away.

I don't like how I lose HD2s whenever I go under an overpass or go inside.

I don't believe I have convinced anyone to buy an HD Radio - you bought it because of the price point.

Given the RF soup that is Central Jersey, you won't be at a loss of things to listen too.

 

[radioskeptic]

Quote from rbrucecarter on Dec 7 at 7:50 AM (Reply # 11):

Be careful what you wish for - you may actually get it! A lot of us with more experience in engineering are very scared of this - given the AGC circuitry in most FM radios. A local station here in Houston loses 60 miles of range when they turn on -20, they will probably lose a good deal more if they attempt -14. The culprit? AGC circuitry in radios that does exactly what it was designed to do, detect the average signal strength and turn down the gain. Whether that signal strength is first adjacent noise or IBOC, it doesn't care.

“Whether that signal strength is first adjacent noise or IBOC,” you say? IBOC is first-adjacent noise!

But the action of AGC circuits isn’t the only threat from an increase in IBOC levels. Two other important considerations are selectivity and capture ratio.

Cheap table and clock radios typically have poor capture ratios, and that could be a real problem for major market stations that have a substantial audience at the outer limits of their metros. Those receivers also have very poor selectivity. And many of those stations have second-adjacents at their fringes –- usually Class A’s, but sometimes grandfathered Class B’s in the most populous areas of the East Coast and California.

The gain of the IF in a cheap radio is often down by barely 6 dB on the first-adjacents, and less than 15 dB on the second-adjacents. If an undesired second-adjacent is, say, 8 dB stronger than the desired station, reception is already on shaky ground. If you add -14 dBc IBOC on both stations, or in some cases only on one of the stations, the combined energy reaching the detector could well be high enough that you couldn’t get good quieting with the poor capture ratios typical of bedside clock radios and the small receivers used for at-work listening in office cubicles.

In those cases, an IBOC power hike could be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back -- though it would be more like a sack of bricks than a straw!

 

[rbrucecarter5]

“Whether that signal strength is first adjacent noise or IBOC,” you say? IBOC is first-adjacent noise!

But the action of AGC circuits isn’t the only threat from an increase in IBOC levels. Two other important considerations are selectivity and capture ratio.

Cheap table and clock radios typically have poor capture ratios, and that could be a real problem for major market stations that have a substantial audience at the outer limits of their metros. Those receivers also have very poor selectivity. And many of those stations have second-adjacents at their fringes –- usually Class A’s, but sometimes grandfathered Class B’s in the most populous areas of the East Coast and California.

The gain of the IF in a cheap radio is often down by barely 6 dB on the first-adjacents, and less than 15 dB on the second-adjacents. If an undesired second-adjacent is, say, 8 dB stronger than the desired station, reception is already on shaky ground. If you add -14 dBc IBOC on both stations, or in some cases only on one of the stations, the combined energy reaching the detector could well be high enough that you couldn’t get good quieting with the poor capture ratios typical of bedside clock radios and the small receivers used for at-work listening in office cubicles.

In those cases, an IBOC power hike could be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back -- though it would be more like a sack of bricks than a straw!

I've been mentioning the poor IF filter in AM sections so often - leading to unintentional broadband AND unintentional IBOC hiss - that I forgot about the poor IF filter in the FM section. Not even the 280k Muratas - I don't know WHAT they are putting in there but it is cheap, and wide. But then it is easier to tune the little half inch tuning control with three frequency markings at 88, 98 and 108. Or the little inch long slide rule dial which is usually a piece of flexible plastic tied to that half inch tuning control. But I have caught some radio makers just bypassing the IF filter connections with a capacitor. That converts a superhet architecture into very nearly the old "tuned RF" architecture. But it works - you can hear local stations. The only selectivity in that case comes from the Q of the antenna circuit. I shouldn't even post this, because it will just encourage designers to do more of that, a capacitor is much cheaper than the cheapest ceramic filter. Smaller, too. You don't even get IF connections on some of the newer chips, but usually those are pretty decent using some real digital filtering inside. But you need more selectivity and want to put in a narrow filter? Forget it - the connections are not even brought off the IC. Those little auto scanning radios with no frequency dial at all use those new chips with no IF connections.

Of more concern to stations like KGLK in Houston is that while a Pioneer Supertuner 3D now loses them in Huntsville instead of Centerville (where they dropped out pre-HD), those $5 cheapies now lose them in lucrative suburbs like the Woodlands and Conroe. That is a lot of population coverage, prime demographics advertisers crave, lost just to gain at most a few hundred HD listeners. Although the oldies format on their HD-2 may be spurring sales of HD radios because that is the only way you can get oldies in Houston now.

 

[bigtom101]

I've been mentioning the poor IF filter in AM sections so often - leading to unintentional broadband AND unintentional IBOC hiss - that I forgot about the poor IF filter in the FM section. Not even the 280k Muratas - I don't know WHAT they are putting in there but it is cheap, and wide. But then it is easier to tune the little half inch tuning control with three frequency markings at 88, 98 and 108. Or the little inch long slide rule dial which is usually a piece of flexible plastic tied to that half inch tuning control. But I have caught some radio makers just bypassing the IF filter connections with a capacitor. That converts a superhet architecture into very nearly the old "tuned RF" architecture. But it works - you can hear local stations. The only selectivity in that case comes from the Q of the antenna circuit. I shouldn't even post this, because it will just encourage designers to do more of that, a capacitor is much cheaper than the cheapest ceramic filter. Smaller, too. You don't even get IF connections on some of the newer chips, but usually those are pretty decent using some real digital filtering inside. But you need more selectivity and want to put in a narrow filter? Forget it - the connections are not even brought off the IC. Those little auto scanning radios with no frequency dial at all use those new chips with no IF connections.

Of more concern to stations like KGLK in Houston is that while a Pioneer Supertuner 3D now loses them in Huntsville instead of Centerville (where they dropped out pre-HD), those $5 cheapies now lose them in lucrative suburbs like the Woodlands and Conroe. That is a lot of population coverage, prime demographics advertisers crave, lost just to gain at most a few hundred HD listeners. Although the oldies format on their HD-2 may be spurring sales of HD radios because that is the only way you can get oldies in Houston now.

This speaks more for the fact that people don't want to pay more that $5 or $10 for a radio (unless it plays MP3's or CD's), so manufactures build them as cheap as possible without regard to "quality." Of course this is telling more about how valuable radio is to people if they aren't willing to spend more than the cost of a value meal at White Castle on a electronic device. Kind of like the Muntz TV's of old - great if you lived in Manhattan or urban LA, not so nice if you were in the suburbs. As far as the analog coverage loss goes, maybe Cox didn't do the install properly on 107.5. I remember they had it simulcasting on 97.1 years ago to make up for lost coverage in the northern suburbs.

But I digress - I wish that radio's were given the same amount of engineering and design care that a cell phone or a computer are given. Even if HD ends up like C-QUAM, at least the DSP based tuners will be out there. It's pretty cool to flip between my stock Delco radio and the HD Jump and go from distortion and noise to a listenable FM signal.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

As far as the analog coverage loss goes, maybe Cox didn't do the install properly on 107.5. I remember they had it simulcasting on 97.1 years ago to make up for lost coverage in the northern suburbs.

97.1 is now classic country. Maybe if KGLK had hung onto it, Houston would have oldies back again.

I drive that Houston / Dallas stretch often, and notice any small change. HD is the worst thing that ever happened to fringe reception. Formerly, you could hear Dallas most of the way to Houston and vice versa. You still can on stations that haven't started HD like KLTY. Surprisingly, KGLK was one of the first Houston stations you could get, sometimes as far North as Fairfield, even though it is a lot farther than stations in the Mo City farm. Definitely by Centerville it was solid and stayed there, pretty much no matter what time of year or time of day. That is why it was such a shock when it disappeared - I thought they were in a maintenance interval or something. But the difference was HD. They took it off for a few days, I happened to be driving back and forth, their previous range was back. Then back to HD, I drove it again a week later - utterly gone again. It is dramatic! Same but to a lesser degree on the Dallas Cedar Hill stations and the Mo City sticks. Some lose as little as 20 miles, others 40 or more. HD - bad news for fringe listeners!!! The frightening thing to me - a power increase may reduce the range even more. I've had the "aha" moment about AGC relatively recently, and may try a tuner modified to use manual RF gain to see if the wide bandwidth signal is somehow fooling the AGC and that is the culprit. If so, it is nothing the station is doing, it is all the receivers out there. In other words - impossible to cure with a power increase! If it were something at one radio station, that is easy - but fixing all the radios - impossible.

 

[bigtom101]

97.1 is now classic country. Maybe if KGLK had hung onto it, Houston would have oldies back again.

I drive that Houston / Dallas stretch often, and notice any small change. HD is the worst thing that ever happened to fringe reception. Formerly, you could hear Dallas most of the way to Houston and vice versa. You still can on stations that haven't started HD like KLTY. Surprisingly, KGLK was one of the first Houston stations you could get, sometimes as far North as Fairfield, even though it is a lot farther than stations in the Mo City farm. Definitely by Centerville it was solid and stayed there, pretty much no matter what time of year or time of day. That is why it was such a shock when it disappeared - I thought they were in a maintenance interval or something. But the difference was HD. They took it off for a few days, I happened to be driving back and forth, their previous range was back. Then back to HD, I drove it again a week later - utterly gone again. It is dramatic! Same but to a lesser degree on the Dallas Cedar Hill stations and the Mo City sticks. Some lose as little as 20 miles, others 40 or more. HD - bad news for fringe listeners!!! The frightening thing to me - a power increase may reduce the range even more. I've had the "aha" moment about AGC relatively recently, and may try a tuner modified to use manual RF gain to see if the wide bandwidth signal is somehow fooling the AGC and that is the culprit. If so, it is nothing the station is doing, it is all the receivers out there. In other words - impossible to cure with a power increase! If it were something at one radio station, that is easy - but fixing all the radios - impossible.

I remember when 97.1 flipped from Hot to Legends - my old man got a job out of it....mornings in fact. And I believe that they killed the simulcast due to upgrades to the 107.5 signal a few years ago that made the signal decent up to the Woodlands.

But I digress. I haven't lived in Houston since 2002, and I'm not familiar with the area anymore, so I can't speak about those stations. Oddly enough, the stations around here (NJ) that flipped to HD haven't had a noticeable difference in signal coverage. And being the geek I am, I was told when the one station I work for was doing -10 testing - analog coverage was the same as at -20 (using the stock head unit in my then vehicle & a Visteon HD Jump) going north/south & east/west across the coverage area. But at the same time the HD install was done, the transmitters and antennas were replaced (on two installs that I know of) - in other words, a proper install. Digital coverage goes out to the service contour.

At another local station, the install was not done with as much care - HD signal falls way short of the protected contour (but I didn't notice a degraded analog signal). So it depends on each individual install - that's not to say that the IBOC system is infallible. The sheer number of computers needed to make everything work is scary, and the perpetual licensing seems like it is a PITA.

But I still like hearing everything nice & crisp when the HD kicks in. Especially AM HD DX'ing - listening to WBZ with no noise was a joy.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

I remember when 97.1 flipped from Hot to Legends - my old man got a job out of it....mornings in fact. And I believe that they killed the simulcast due to upgrades to the 107.5 signal a few years ago that made the signal decent up to the Woodlands.

But I digress. I haven't lived in Houston since 2002, and I'm not familiar with the area anymore, so I can't speak about those stations. Oddly enough, the stations around here (NJ) that flipped to HD haven't had a noticeable difference in signal coverage. And being the geek I am, I was told when the one station I work for was doing -10 testing - analog coverage was the same as at -20 (using the stock head unit in my then vehicle & a Visteon HD Jump) going north/south & east/west across the coverage area. But at the same time the HD install was done, the transmitters and antennas were replaced (on two installs that I know of) - in other words, a proper install. Digital coverage goes out to the service contour.

At another local station, the install was not done with as much care - HD signal falls way short of the protected contour (but I didn't notice a degraded analog signal). So it depends on each individual install - that's not to say that the IBOC system is infallible. The sheer number of computers needed to make everything work is scary, and the perpetual licensing seems like it is a PITA.

But I still like hearing everything nice & crisp when the HD kicks in. Especially AM HD DX'ing - listening to WBZ with no noise was a joy.

I too have observed that some FM stations do not experience the loss of analog coverage. At one time I thought it might be the combiner vs. separate bay transmission methods, but it doesn't seem to follow. One thing that is obvious - if the station doesn't take great care, and know what they are doing - unknown factors will severely limit analog coverage. I'll repeat my measurements in a double blind test for any Houston / Dallas station that has lost substantial coverage. If they are interested. It is my experience, though, that HD is more of a religious matter, similar to the Mac vs. PC religion, the linux vs. windows religion, the tube vs transistor religion - i.e. nobody wants to see engineering FACTS that challenge the religious dogma that HD is the savior of analog radio. Yeah - maybe a radio savior with feet of clay that dies on the metal cross of outdoor antennas and in this case takes all of radio down for the ride.

As for AM HD DX, I've never had reliable lock on anything at night, local or distant, in Dallas or Houston. Not even local powerhouses in Dallas like KLIF and KMKI - I could see the KMKI night antennas from my second floor window. As for out of town - whether it is Dallas or Houston, KOA and WOAI's nighttime signal peels paint - almost like locals. Once in a great while - a flash of HD indicator. But lock? NEVER! I am less than 180 miles away from WOAI - I can get lock sometimes in the day, but night - forget it. And that is on two different HD radios, in a house that has been purged of all AM interference sources. Proper wideband loops, used correctly, and of different sizes up from stock that came with the radio up to large. AM nighttime HD DX - it just isn't going to happen. Myth - BUSTED!!!! I'll invite any skeptic into my home to see the results duplicated.