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iHeart Makes "Magic" on Select HD2s

Mark Roberts said:
HD-3 channels sound awful to me - the metallic toilet-swirl effect - but I suspect individuals vary widely in their sensitivity to digital artifacts.
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Hi Mark,

It's not really a function of the channel being designated "HD3" that makes it sound less appealing....it is the bandwidth for that subchannel that is being assigned in the station's HD importer. Although I don't see it done in common practice, HD3 could be given a lot of bandwidth and it would sound great(er).
 
Identnut said:
Yeah, I don't think iHeart was ever planning on launching this in the Bay. Latinos in California, let alone the Bay, do not come from affluent backgrounds. They come from rural Mexico or Central America.
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Let's not racially stereotype. There are still affluent/financially solid Latinos speaking Spanish as a primary language still in California.

The bigger concern is that iHeart already has a Soft AC "98.1 The Breeze" in the market and launching the Magic presentation would make that station less mass-appeal. iHeart is not going to launch that format in any market where they already own an AC or Soft AC. San Diego on the other hand...
 
Plate Blocker said:
Hi Mark,

It's not really a function of the channel being designated "HD3" that makes it sound less appealing....it is the bandwidth for that subchannel that is being assigned in the station's HD importer. Although I don't see it done in common practice, HD3 could be given a lot of bandwidth and it would sound great(er).
Click to expand...
The problem, of course, is that there's a fixed amount of bandwidth that can be assigned to the various channels. An HD-1-only broadcast gets the entire allocation; an HD-2 broadcast has to split the bandwidth in some proportion; and so on. KDHT's HD-2 is feeding a translator (the 107.9 for KBPI), and is probably getting more bandwidth than the HD-3 "Magic".

My impressions come from listening to the station on a Sangean HDT-1X tuner. It's possible that newer tuners or radios would have better quality. But KDHT-HD3 sounds almost as bad in my 2019 car as it does on the HDT-1X. I can tolerate an HD-1-only signal just fine; I start hearing artifacts on channels split for HD-2 but can usually put up with it. I realize HD has some advantages but there are trade-offs.
 
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