• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

more HD Radio reception from Australia

D

dxer2_2000

Hi guys

Was getting KMIK 1580 super strong tonight on my Sony XDR-F1HD & the HD logo would be flashing on the display for up to 1 minute on occasions. BUT just before it faded out, the tuner displayed a call sign of "YXNC". Obviously the data being highly scrambled, hence it couldn't display "KMIK" properly.

BUT - that's the 1st time I've received that RDS style data of HD Radio. Usually the HD logo just blinks away merrily :)

KMIK was almost noise free at times - impressive strength :eek:

dxer2_2000 - NSW Australia
 
dxer2_2000 said:
Hi guys

Was getting KMIK 1580 super strong tonight on my Sony XDR-F1HD & the HD logo would be flashing on the display for up to 1 minute on occasions. BUT just before it faded out, the tuner displayed a call sign of "YXNC". Obviously the data being highly scrambled, hence it couldn't display "KMIK" properly.

BUT - that's the 1st time I've received that RDS style data of HD Radio. Usually the HD logo just blinks away merrily :)

KMIK was almost noise free at times - impressive strength :eek:

dxer2_2000 - NSW Australia
Click to expand...

What a great catch down under.
 
Ssshhh.... don't let "INiquity" know that their "system" kinda works long distance, they'll use it for ammo to justify their cause...
 
stormy01 said:
Ssshhh.... don't let "INiquity" know that their "system" kinda works long distance, they'll use it for ammo to justify their cause...
Click to expand...

The odd thing is that it works about as well in Australia as it does ten miles from the transmitters: blinking HD light on Sony XDR-F1HD with analog sound. Almost noise free means it is still analog. You'll know if it's digital AM when the noise floor drops out to reveal those wonderful sachharine artificial highs that grate like fingernails on a chalkboard through a decent system. My Sony also blinks at night from long distance AM IBOC stations, I believe if you are able to receive the station the light will blink no matter how far you are, the trick is to receive it in HD. I get many European splits here for 6 months out of the year, not on my Sony door stop however.
dxer2_2000 what are you using for an antenna?
 
Hi

I use a 100m longwire - unterminated along the ground aimed around 70DEG east. Tonight - 1580 was dominated by a very strong KBLA "Radio Union" - lighting the 3 bars on the sony.

BTW - KMIK is still faulty for the 3rd night in a row - with a problem on its audio feed. The sound is all breaking up. Can't believe a big radio operator would leave it faulty for this long! :eek:

dxer2_2000
 
The sound is all breaking up. Can't believe a big radio operator would leave it faulty for this long!
Click to expand...
Radio consolidation has laid off or "early retired" most of the engineers.
The lights are on, but no one is home.
 
SUPERCASTER said:
The sound is all breaking up. Can't believe a big radio operator would leave it faulty for this long!
Click to expand...
Radio consolidation has laid off or "early retired" most of the engineers.
The lights are on, but no one is home.
Click to expand...

We have a new FM station here in the Chicago area. Well, ok, it's the LP-TV on 87.74 that's playing Smooth Jazz. The station has a website, and until recently, they only had email to contact them (They added a phone number recently, I haven't tried it, but I'll guess it goes to Voice Mail right away) So even if listeners wanted to tell the station there was no sound - which was off and on several hours yesterday, just an RF carrier on, the management and/or the engineer would not find out right away (because they themselves probably listen to the studio monitors, not the off-air sound on a radio - shame on you!) Then who knows if the engineer can correct the problem remotely, or the engineer has to get to the transmitter room in the John Hancock Center and correct the problem there...The engineer most likely works at other stations in the area and who knows what problems the other stations might have been having... no one 'babysits' the transmitters anymore except perhaps the Class A 50kW AM stations...
 
In a similar vein (since this is the HD board) KKGO-HD2 in LA is only broadcasting one channel (the right). They have been doing this for at least a week. I have sent e-mails to KKGO but have had no response. This is LA and there is nobody home.
 
K6JHU said:
In a similar vein (since this is the HD board) KKGO-HD2 in LA is only broadcasting one channel (the right). They have been doing this for at least a week. I have sent e-mails to KKGO but have had no response. This is LA and there is nobody home.
Click to expand...

Alot of those HD2 channels are run by computer only and nobody at the station pays attention.
 
It's unbelievable the stuff I hear on the air (or hear NOT on the air) these days. Small wonder companies are having revenue losses. They''re not reducing staff - they're cutting into muscle and bone. If you don't care about your on-air product, you can't expect the listeners or advertisers to.

I recently heard a local corporate-owned Class A on the air in town with nothing but a dead carrier - for a DAY. As recently as ten or fifteen years ago this would have gotten somebody fired.

It makes me glad our studios, offices and transmitter are co-located - any outage is very quickly addressed. Like this morning when the Jim Bohannon Westwood One feed went out while they tinkered with the satellite power....we spun the hits for about ten minutes. Otherwise there would have been ten minutes of dead air.
 
Yeah, radioman - there's an HD-1 in the region (full Class B) that's been broadcasting for the better part of a YEAR with extremely low modulation - sounds like less than 5% - and a loud 60 Hz hum.

Makes you wonder if it's deliberate - as in, "we hate this thing, but we signed a contract with iBiquity. So there it is. It's on the air. Leave me alone."

GREAT testimonial for the wonderfulness of IBOC.
 
Savage said:
Yeah, radioman - there's an HD-1 in the region (full Class B) that's been broadcasting for the better part of a YEAR with extremely low modulation - sounds like less than 5% - and a loud 60 Hz hum.

Makes you wonder if it's deliberate - as in, "we hate this thing, but we signed a contract with iBiquity. So there it is. It's on the air. Leave me alone."
Click to expand...

I happened to discuss that situation with the station's Chief Engineer this week. Part of the problem is that the company won't purchase HD receivers for engineering staff (or for that matter, any staff), so if the HD equipment has a problem, nobody knows until a listener calls to report it. I guess there aren't any listeners!

The whole thing just amazes me. The people running these companies are willing to sink millions into their capital budgets for HD transmitters (and even more money to bail out iBiquity), yet they refuse to spend a couple hundred dollars on a car radio.
 
KB1OKL said:
You'll know if it's digital AM when the noise floor drops out to reveal those wonderful sachharine artificial highs that grate like fingernails on a chalkboard through a decent system.
Click to expand...

And this, in a nutshell, is why AM-HD is a horrible idea and will fail. Why would anyone listen to such a grating sound? This is NOT FM quality, it's not even internet quality anymore as all the stations I listen to via WinAmp blow away anything i've heard from AM-HD.

BTW what is the average bitrate for AM-HD? I'd like to take a CD track and encode it to HE-AAC to see if I can get better audio. I know IBOC uses HDC, I just want to know how bad the proprieitary system is and how it will eventually kill what it hoped to give life to. ;)
 
ajc, I believe the bitrate for AM HD is 16 kbps. If anyone here has better information feel free to correct me.

On our station's live webstream the bitrate is 96 kbps, which we regard as the minimum for acceptable quality - MONO. Yes, I know the codecs and compression algorithms are different - but they're not THAT different.

Freebird, maybe the reason that station won't buy receivers for the engineers and staff: these days, stations don't need ANOTHER morale problem! ;D
 
HD radio interference can be heard in Australia, but the actual HD radio program audio can not be reliably heard within plain sight of the broadcasting towers.

Analog reception occasionally is less then perfect, but most listeners are satisfied. Not so with problematic HD radio.

If the future of broadcast AM FM radio is totally dependent on the success of HD radio, then AM and FM broadcast radio has no future.

It's time to turn off the HD radio buzz bomb.
 
Supercaster - be careful not to misinterpret information - there is no interference from HD radio out here - if there was, it would be well buried under 1575 or 1584. All I get is HD dectection from KMIK but it never decodes despite a great signal at times.

dxer2_2000
 
Perhaps a better choice of words would be HD radio "noise", instead of "interference". As you say, it never decodes, so noise is probably a better description. Correct?
 
Savage said:
Yeah, radioman - there's an HD-1 in the region (full Class B) that's been broadcasting for the better part of a YEAR with extremely low modulation - sounds like less than 5% - and a loud 60 Hz hum.

Makes you wonder if it's deliberate - as in, "we hate this thing, but we signed a contract with iBiquity. So there it is. It's on the air. Leave me alone."

GREAT testimonial for the wonderfulness of IBOC.
Click to expand...

Amazing that the audio could be so bad and nobody would care.
 
Savage said:
Makes you wonder if it's deliberate - as in, "we hate this thing, but we signed a contract with iBiquity. So there it is. It's on the air. Leave me alone."

GREAT testimonial for the wonderfulness of IBOC.
Click to expand...

I would be willing to bet this goes on a lot, because no able engineers would willingly transmit krap signals unless they were secretly trying to sabotage something they were forced to install that they did not believe in. Either that or they just give up and realized it's hopeless and dead even if they did perhaps believe in IBOC at some time.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom