IBOC down or broken on WSCR AM 670 Chicago

[Tom Wells]

Not sure why, but AM 670 WSCR in Chicago is sounding great without the hiss of ibiquity the last 3 days.
As a bonus, I can listen to WSM 650 Nashville on the way to work in the evenings.
At first, I thought it was due to a game on the air, but it's now off in the daytimes, and I truly hope they're done
making a mess of their own signal and others. I actually listened to WSM yesterday morning well after sunrise on the way home.

I'm having a beer to celebrate! It's 9:24 AM, but for me on midnights, it's more like 7:24 PM.

Here's to a hissless future! Click, fshhh, glug-glug-glug. Mmmmm, that's real beer satisfaction.

 

[RJ Kanary]

Similar experiences with our handcuffed flamethrower, KDKA-1020.During the middle of the month pre-sunrise during drive time, they were actually occupying their OWN channel.This went on for days at a time. I could actually hear the Voice Of Butler County WBUT-1050 with their roaring night power of 62 Watts.

And KDKA sounded good. But then........................... "It's BAAAACK! "

RJ

 

[Savage]

Something is going on with the CBS hissmeisters. On recent and frequent occasions WBZ sounds either like they're turned off the Decepticon or they've vastly reduced power, gone non-DA temporarily or some combination. On some nights WYSL has sounded almost like pre- 9/14/07 and KD has been pounding into Rochester like the old days.

Then, as you have noted, sometimes the next night - the roaring interference is back, and on at least one occasion - horribly worse than before.

I suspect tinkering with increasing HD digital levels or asymmetrical sidebands....?

 

[Tom Wells]

They're back and maybe better balanced, I'll have to do some driving around. Still kills WSM.
I think they've boosted EQ at the top end of the their audio bandpass by 3 db.

 

[Len14043]

I thought their audio was punching through a little better in Ohio lately.

 

[audioguy]

The Score has been merrily hissing away for days now, so apparently their abandonment of IBOC was just temporary, unfortunately.

Thankfully, WGN has not turned it back on. How long has WGN been hiss free now? And another Chicago station, 1690, seems to have turned theirs off also. We'll have to see if that lasts.

The worst offenders continue to be the CBS radio stations. I just can't tune them in such that I don't hear that nasty buzz in the background. Get a clue, CBS!

A hopeful sign: I notice that some IBOC stations are no longer promoting HD in their station ID's. In fact, they seem increasingly to be promoting their .com signal. OTOH, listening to Radio Disney today, I heard this announcement: "You don't need a RADIO to listen to RADIO DISNEY! Just go to radio disney.com"!!

Do you think these kids will be RADIO listeners in 10 or 20 years? ???

 

[pqgeorge]

In these longer nights of winter, the AM band is especially cluttered with the hissing of IBOC carriers slopping over two stations above and below the licensed carrier frequency. Before the FCC cleared the way for nighttime authorization of IBOC back in 2007, there was no issue of getting stations one or two frequencies up or down from a local 50,000 watter. For example, one local station, once the "cream of the crop" (pre-IBOC) in terms of high fidelity audio today sounds no better than the best dialup POTS line. The brickwall filtering mandated by IBOC operation really attenuates any audio higher than 4K to 5K cycles. This is to "protect" the IBOC digital carriers. Prior to IBOC, I had no problem whatsoever listening to 1010/WINS, KDKA or 1050/WEPN. The three CBS stations at 1010, 1020 and 1030 are basically having a slugfest every night trying to be "channel master" with their high powered IBOC signals splattering each other. The noise is deafening. Many other AM signals from other radio markets running IBOC at night cause considerable damage to adjacents many hundreds of miles away, even when you cannot hear the main carrier frequency clearly itself. AM HD does not work. It was a great try to digitize the AM band. But the results (the hissing factor) speaks for itself. If even a 50,000 watt IBOC station cannot be heard in crystal clear HD Stereo (without dropping out to mono) within 15-20 miles from its' transmitter site, that pretty much says it. It's not worth the investment. AM would be better off without IBOC and without NRSC filtering/pre-emphasis (pre-1990's). The IBOC radios with AM Stereo ability could be re-purposed for better fidelity (mono or Stereo). Many people have put a considerable investment for their AM plants. Those without IBOC are capable of much higher fidelity than radios produced today are capable of reproducing. The efforts of the station owners have been thwarted by the radio manufacturers who put virtually "zip" into their AM sections of the radios and by the use of AM IBOC to destroy what little high-fidelity there was left on the AM band. FM IBOC is a forgone conclusion. It will either sink or swim within the next two years. Given the lukewarm "reception" of sales (pun intended), well...... you do the math. There's got to be a better way of go digital without interfering with adjacent channel stations, both AM and FM.