New HD radio owner

[calstymes]

Savage postulated:

"Digital radio" is a topic of discussion only on radio boards, at radio trade conventions or in the pages of industry periodicals. There is NO real-world demand for this conversion. Nor will there ever be. People just don't care whether their radio is 'digital or analog.'

That may not completely be accurate. I definitely care when I am supposed to be able to listen in digital and I can't because it doesn't work and when those digital signals which I can't listen to because it doesn't work cause my analog reception on adjacent channels to become unlistenable.

 

[briankay]

Whether we're talking digital or hybrid mode, you're always going to run up against the same practical problems. "Digital radio" is a topic of discussion only on radio boards, at radio trade conventions or in the pages of industry periodicals. There is NO real-world demand for this conversion. Nor will there ever be. People just don't care whether their radio is 'digital or analog.'

I remember when CD, DVD, HDTV were topics of discussion only in trade conventions and industry periodicals. All took a long time to get from the drawing board to wide customer adoption. I particularly remember the development and growth of HDTV seemed to take forever. It seemed nobody was interested in it in 1996 and still little interest in 2000 except by tech geeks and insiders. I always thought analog SD TV looked so bad and people would say to me that they thought the quality was "just fine"

I remember a time when cassette audio quality was just fine and now people would not accept it.
I remember a time when VHS quality was just fine and now people would not accept it.
I remember a time when DVD quality was just fine and now people are starting to not accept it.
I remember a time when AM radio quality for music was just fine and now people will not accept it.

Point being even an audio cassette sounds better than mobile analog FM reception in a large % of the coverage area in many markets. Think multipath, blending to mono most of the time, high frequency roll off, (experienced by over 50% of the listeners in many markets). That's why my wife always switches to the CD when in the car as the analog FM sounds "dull" and the swithing back and forth to HD annoys her to no end. Where we drive (25 to 45 miles radius from the Chicago FM TXs), the 10 dB power increase (if it happens) would breath new life into FM listening satisfaction and would bring it back on a competitive footing with the other digital audio options now available.

I think HD radio just needs time as many other technologies in the past needed. It's precursor analog FM has been with us for so long, it's hard to let go.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

I remember a time when cassette audio quality was just fine and now people would not accept it.
I remember a time when VHS quality was just fine and now people would not accept it.
I remember a time when DVD quality was just fine and now people are starting to not accept it.
I remember a time when AM radio quality for music was just fine and now people will not accept it.

Point being even an audio cassette sounds better than mobile analog FM reception in a large % of the coverage area in many markets. Think multipath, blending to mono most of the time, high frequency roll off, (experienced by over 50% of the listeners in many markets). That's why my wife always switches to the CD when in the car as the analog FM sounds "dull" and the swithing back and forth to HD annoys her to no end. Where we drive (25 to 45 miles radius from the Chicago FM TXs), the 10 dB power increase (if it happens) would breath new life into FM listening satisfaction and would bring it back on a competitive footing with the other digital audio options now available.

I think HD radio just needs time as many other technologies in the past needed. It's precursor analog FM has been with us for so long, it's hard to let go.

A few misconceptions:

- What killed cassettes was burnable CDs. If you can record on a CD, why bother with a cassette? A CD is thinner and lighter.

- What killed VHS was TIVO, and burnable DVD's. DVD's are smaller and lighter, but depending on the software used, may be lower in quality than a good VHS recorder. There are still plenty of VHS recorders out there, for people that want to save shows they watch.

- The death of DVD is premature - interpolating DVD players look plenty good in home theaters, and marketplace acceptance of blu-ray is flagging due to the fragility of the disks. There are no auto blu-ray players. There are no portable blu-ray players (why would you bother on the small screen). There are few laptops that can view them, let alone burn them. It may well be a case of a technology few people want.

- What killed AM music was AM talk, along with the inaction of the FCC on AM stereo. AM stereo audio quality is equal to, or better than FM stereo.

- There are a lot of us who think that the only good thing about HD TV is that the color range has improved over what NTSC could provide. Compression artifacts are horrible. No graceful degradation path for HD TV is horrible - with analog you had snow, with digital - NOTHING to tell you your antenna is pointed almost correctly, but not quite. And the loss of low VHF band TV stations leaves millions rural of viewers with NO over the air television. I can tell you truthfully, if I were a TV station owner that had a channel 2 license, I'd be hopping mad to be forced onto UHF, which would limit my range compared to the splendid footprint a channel 2 formerly had! Big square blob breakups in the picture are ugly, intrusive, annoying, and much worse than snow ever was! And the change in resolution on stationary objects is very surreal - a co-anchor gets more and more skin pores as she appears to be in suspended animation, then she moves and her complexion is perfect again, only to slowly get worse over the course of several seconds until she moves again. And those new HD studio sets look cluttered and ugly on small screens! HD TV - should have been in a new band with 30 MHz uncompressed channels!!!! Now it is a kludge that looks like a kludge. Once again, our marvelous FCC blew it!!!

- And if you want to talk about quality - what is the quality of your average iPod and MP3 player? Not even cassette quality, especially through those tiny ear buds. And your average iPod dock has what - 2 inch speakers in it? People don't want quality, they want convenience. iPods are convenient but a huge step backwards in audio quality.

- And while we are on the subject of audio quality - a lot of listening is now done on iPods with tiny speakers in them, or on tiny laptop speakers. It is amazing to me that those little 1/2 inch things do as well as they do - but again people don't want quality, they want convenience.

- I don't live in the East with crowded FM dials and mountainous terrain, so I can't speak to how bad multipath is. But as an experienced DX'er, I can tell you that if the analog signal is degraded, you don't stand a chance of reliable HD lock, and that is going to be true at any power level. So HD doesn't solve any FM reception problem. It just aggravates things by raising the noise floor, and confusing the radio's AGC circuit into thinking there is more signal there than there really is, so analog coverage is hurt. Some nitwit engineer at iBquity should have looked at a little thing known as the gain / bandwidth product, and also the root sum square law of noise before proposing a system that widened the FM channel instead of placing sidebands comfortably inside bandwidth that was already underutilized. The present system is a kludge that won't work at any sideband power level when you get to marginal reception conditions where signal strength varies by several decades, not one decade.

- As for AM, it has been reported to work up to 200 miles away under interference free conditions. Unfortunately, the slightest bit of interference and it loses lock, so the system is unworkable at night given the current glut of stations on the AM band, and FCC ignored interference producers that plagued analog AM decades before the ill-conceived HD system was ever proposed. A glut of stations plus a plethora of legal jammers - including distant AM stations running HD at night - doom the system to failure at night. The interference generators doom the system in the daytime. I still recall being less than 10 miles from KAAM, and never getting reliable lock. But the same station came in perfect stereo 290 miles away in C-Quam stereo with an AM stereo walkman and a small loop. The only interference was more distant KKOB on the same frequency. Not only has their stereo range shrunk from 290 miles to less than 10, their analog coverage has also dramatically decreased. And the music sounds like cr@p now. What a great way to promote HD radio - make the station sound like cr@p to 99.9% of the listeners and you can't lock on the HD anyway. Lest anybody have any doubt - I am an experienced DX'er. If I couldn't get reliable KAAM lock at ten miles - after fussing with various antenna schemes - no casual listener would even have a prayer of doing it.

HD radio - done right - could have achieved its goals without interference. The present AM system is unworkable, there is no reason why AM (or FM) has to be digital to be better quality - AM had the AMAX standard. People didn't want it because AM was relegated to talk radio. FM can use diversity antennas that would solve 90% of analog reception problems. But that never happened, because a snake oil salesman came up with the digital mantra, and a half a billion dollars later, we are no closer to solving reception problems than we were before.

 

[landtuna]

I remember a time when cassette audio quality was just fine and now people would not accept it.
I remember a time when VHS quality was just fine and now people would not accept it.
I remember a time when DVD quality was just fine and now people are starting to not accept it.
I remember a time when AM radio quality for music was just fine and now people will not accept it.

In each of the above examples the "current" technology worked just fine until something better came along. In "AM's" case it took over 20 years and the declining number of music-AM's to drive music lovers totally to FM. CD's obviously had superior quality to cassettes. Color TV was superior to black and white etc.

Although DVD's are superior to VHS, VHS quality is still useful for time-shifting although the ease-of-use of DVR's is slowly making VHS less desirable. For one-time viewing I find VHS still a cost-effective alternative to DVR.

Don't understand your DVD comment. Blu-ray is technically superior to regular DVD but I don't know of anyone who is tossing their collection of DVD's and replacing them with Blu-ray. New purchases most likely will be on the better technology as is normal with any consumer product.

 

[dumber than a box of hair]

I remember a time when cassette audio quality was just fine and now people would not accept it.
I remember a time when VHS quality was just fine and now people would not accept it.
I remember a time when DVD quality was just fine and now people are starting to not accept it.
I remember a time when AM radio quality for music was just fine and now people will not accept it.

Point being even an audio cassette sounds better than mobile analog FM reception in a large % of the coverage area in many markets. Think multipath, blending to mono most of the time, high frequency roll off, (experienced by over 50% of the listeners in many markets). That's why my wife always switches to the CD when in the car as the analog FM sounds "dull" and the swithing back and forth to HD annoys her to no end. Where we drive (25 to 45 miles radius from the Chicago FM TXs), the 10 dB power increase (if it happens) would breath new life into FM listening satisfaction and would bring it back on a competitive footing with the other digital audio options now available.

I think HD radio just needs time as many other technologies in the past needed. It's precursor analog FM has been with us for so long, it's hard to let go.

All well and good, but HD is NOT the quality improvement that FM was over AM, CD was over vinyl or DVD was over VHS. It is full of compression artifacts, and leaving alone for the moment the HD-AM disaster, its degree of "improvement" over analog FM is barely perceptible to most people...certainly not audible on a table radio's small speakers or ear buds...and unless you can convince most people that it's an improvement worth having, which it isn't, it's dead in the water. To have moved only a million or so radios in the time it has been around, when there are one billion analog radios already out there, is not the sign of a promising technology.

It's an answer to a question no one but its pushers asked.

 

[Savage]

Not to jump on your post, hair, but I've noticed in recent weeks a tendency for the various discussions about "number of HD receivers sold" to hover around "a million units."

The problem: it isn't true. (Since this is an HD discussion board, who saw THAT coming?)

Actually those figures sifted down from a variety of vague pronouncements from such impartial and detached sources as iBiquity Digital Corporation, the HD Alliance, the NAB and publisher-turned-little HD portable radio huckster Eric Rhoads. (Things are going so well at Radio Ink these days Eric apparently is reduced to trying to peddle bright red Insignia knockoffs for $35 online. I know times are tough, but I don't recall reading accounts of Henry Luce, founder of Time Magazine, weathering the depression by becoming a spokesman for the Erskine motorcar. Or "Hadacol.")

The last reasonably plausible sales figures we had (garnered from an assortment of sources) would peg actual HD receiver sales at considerably south of HALF that "one million" figure. And of course nobody can say for certain how many of those were returned because of lousy performance. Anecdotally it would appear the returns were extremely high.

 

[SUPERCASTER]

briankay said:

the 10 dB power increase (if it happens) would breath new life into FM listening satisfaction and would bring it back on a competitive footing with the other digital audio options now available.

"You can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear." Not even a slightly larger sow's ear.

In the Philadelphia metro neither AM nor FM HD radio can be recieved reliably indoors within plain sight of the broadcasting towers, with the supplied antennas. The proposed power increase won't mean much, since there are already other stations on the adjacent channels where the HD signals reside. This is true almost everywhere in the nation's most populated areas.

Most listeners will not put up the large directional antennas necessary for reliable HD radio reception, and if they did their analog reception would improve so much that HD radio would be unnecessary. To the average listener any HD radio fidelity improvement is hardly noticable and not worth the expense and inconvenience of fiddleing with the necessary large external antennas, and replacing all their radios. Certainly not in this troubled economy.

 

[Carmine5]

(Things are going so well at Radio Ink these days Eric apparently is reduced to trying to peddle bright red Insignia knockoffs for $35 online. I know times are tough, but I don't recall reading accounts of Henry Luce, founder of Time Magazine, weathering the depression by becoming a spokesman for the Erskine motorcar. Or "Hadacol.")

And to quote Mr. Rhoads:

"I want a small, inexpensive HD Radio receiver. My goal is to put it in the hands of every employee at every radio station in America."

http://ericrhoads.blogs.com/ink_tank/

Isn't that where the majority of HD Radio sales is coming from anyway? I seem to recall that the reason the Insignia portable sold so well on its initial run is that radio people were buying them--not the average consumer.

Plus, in view of what Mr. Rhoads reported earlier; that the radio industry has lost approximately 10,000 jobs this year and is due to lose as much next year, what employee will be left to buy his little red HD receiver?

C5

 

[briankay]

To the average listener any HD radio fidelity improvement is hardly noticable and not worth the expense and inconvenience of fiddleing with the necessary large external antennas, and replacing all their radios. Certainly not in this troubled economy.

Granted, in a stationary environment with a reasonably strong signal such as at home, analog FM in stereo sounds acceptable and is not worth it for the average Joe to upgrade (at home that is), but at home one can also use the internet to listen to that distant hard to receive first adjacent.
But nowadays the majority of radio listenership is in the mobile environment in the car or truck. So for Class B FMs most tuners will have started to blend to mono at about 25 miles out, the multipath and the high frequency rolloff kicks which to a Joe Public listener means it time to put on the CD. Do you think that Joe Public will turn to CD as long as the digital signal is receivable, well if he does then maybe it will be for content reasons and thats another discussion. Multiple sources (NPR included) have confirmed that the area of quality digital mobile reception at -10dBc would exceed quality analog recception in many cases significantly so (up to double and beyond). Yes the mobile digital signal level will fluctuate significantly (by several decades as you say) but because of the time diversity of the audio between the 2 digital sidebands along with 10X the power, the probability of digital dropout will be significantly lower in the primary analog coverage area and beyond and when it does dropout the analog will probably be pretty unlistenable by then.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

Granted, in a stationary environment with a reasonably strong signal such as at home, analog FM in stereo sounds acceptable and is not worth it for the average Joe to upgrade (at home that is), but at home one can also use the internet to listen to that distant hard to receive first adjacent.
But nowadays the majority of radio listenership is in the mobile environment in the car or truck. So for Class B FMs most tuners will have started to blend to mono at about 25 miles out, the multipath and the high frequency rolloff kicks which to a Joe Public listener means it time to put on the CD. Do you think that Joe Public will turn to CD as long as the digital signal is receivable, well if he does then maybe it will be for content reasons and thats another discussion. Multiple sources (NPR included) have confirmed that the area of quality digital mobile reception at -10dBc would exceed quality analog recception in many cases significantly so (up to double and beyond). Yes the mobile digital signal level will fluctuate significantly (by several decades as you say) but because of the time diversity of the audio between the 2 digital sidebands along with 10X the power, the probability of digital dropout will be significantly lower in the primary analog coverage area and beyond and when it does dropout the analog will probably be pretty unlistenable by then.

"distant" first adjacent? Well, maybe in the center of cities. But a lot of folks live in suburbs, and particularly in the east, those first adjacents may not be as distant as you think. In fact, they may be equidistant with the other station. The first adjacent my carry more compelling programming than the HD-2 channel of the other station. Or if the two both use IBOC, neither one may be receivable in HD, without a directional antenna. A 10 dB power increase will do nothing to help that situation.

Stations here don't blend to mono for about 70 miles, about the receivable range of HD radio. No power increase is necessary. I feel bad for those people living in mountainous metro areas, but they are already used to the type of miserable reception that you describe, the present state of HD radio is no different. In those micro nulls created by multipath, or those shadows behind hills, you can see signals fluctuate 60 dB or even more. A 10 dB power increase is nothing - it is laughable given the magnitude of the problem especially combined with long lock times for HD. How do I know this? Because the situation in the East is replicated along the approach paths for airports in Houston and Dallas, probably everywhere else. People less than 10 miles from the towers cannot get reliable lock, even though I observed 70 mile reliable lock away from the approach paths. Why? Because airplane reception causes the signal strength to fluctuate by several decades, and that causes HD radios to lose lock. A 10 dB power increase won't help those folks under airplane approach paths any more than it will people in the East who live in mountainous terrain.

I don't know how NPR did their tests, whether they stopped the car at different locations and took measurements, or what. But reception patterns of real stations aren't the circles on radio-locator maps, even V-tech software is completely inadequate. I've seen nulls 2 feet across, there is no way to combat that type of dropout, and if your lock time is seconds, moving at 60 mph through such an environment will make lock impossible, I don't care how much power they throw at the problem.

What was needed, the only thing that would have made sense, would have been a new, all digital band. If people have to buy new radios anyway to get HD radio, what difference would it have made to include an entirely new band? Instead of wrecking the present AM band, and having a kludgey system for FM that doesn't work very well at all. It may be hindsight at this point, but this system has flopped with consumers - in large part because it doesn't work, and there isn't compelling quality increase or content available on HD-2 compared to satellite or streaming. What OTA radio needed was thousands of new digital only channels in each market, programming every possible format niche - then they could have killed satellite and streaming off. The window of opportunity passed, the public has spoken, and HD radio is probably doomed to market failure.

 

[pocket-radio]

The reason music on AM died, is because rock music fans discovered FM. Music on FM sounded better and there were no commercials either. Nice!

Let's fast forwarward to 2009, shall we..

Free music is everyplace today! The internet, Mp3 Players, smart phones, iphone & black berry. And the FCC is pushing for over the air internet access in the space tv broadcasters gave up.

And rock music fans, are in love with listening to what they want when they want.. Listening to a strangers playlist, with commercials in analog or HD is so 1970's.

Don't you see, even though HD is sold by some as the next big technology it's already out dated because it still relies on playing a strangers, playlist with commercials. Old guys don't mind..
but the 12-24's.. mind a lot and they're radio's future!

Sadly and thus far, HD broadcasters offer a it's listeners a simulcast or the radio stations in a box.
Listeners have shown no interesting in HD, because theirs nothing really compelling or worth listening too. I mean nothing you can't already find someplace else, FREE! Hello, la la la..

And hoping this pig is going to catch on in 20 years is really wishful thinking, because by then newer technology will supercede it.. At best it's a poor stop gap.. and experiment gone wrong, really badly..

NO SOUP FOR YOU!

Next..

 

[Carmine5]

Free music is everyplace today! The internet, Mp3 Players, smart phones, iphone & black berry. And the FCC is pushing for over the air internet access in the space tv broadcasters gave up.

Gave up?! The FCC now wants space TV broadcasters currently occupy and they've only been given three weeks to explain to the Commission why it shouldn't be taken away from them.

It's a shame because the ATSC set of standards has opened up so many new possibilities to television broadcasters, possibilities that may never be explored thanks to an Obama FCC. I could rant volumes about this issue--but this is an HD Radio discussion board after all.

 

[briankay]

The reason music on AM died, is because rock music fans discovered FM. Music on FM sounded better and there were no commercials either. Nice!

Let's fast forwarward to 2009, shall we..

Free music is everyplace today! The internet, Mp3 Players, smart phones, iphone & black berry. And the FCC is pushing for over the air internet access in the space tv broadcasters gave up.

And rock music fans, are in love with listening to what they want when they want.. Listening to a strangers playlist, with commercials in analog or HD is so 1970's.

Don't you see, even though HD is sold by some as the next big technology it's already out dated because it still relies on playing a strangers, playlist with commercials. Old guys don't mind..
but the 12-24's.. mind a lot and they're radio's future!

Sadly and thus far, HD broadcasters offer a it's listeners a simulcast or the radio stations in a box.
Listeners have shown no interesting in HD, because theirs nothing really compelling or worth listening too. I mean nothing you can't already find someplace else, FREE! Hello, la la la..

And hoping this pig is going to catch on in 20 years is really wishful thinking, because by then newer technology will supercede it.. At best it's a poor stop gap.. and experiment gone wrong, really badly..

NO SOUP FOR YOU!

Next..

So your giving up on broadcasting.....
I think radio's edge is the randomness of not knowing what is going to come on next instead of listening to a 2000 song mp3 collection whic gets boring after a few hours at least for me. HD R will just increase the variety and encourage me to listen to it because broadcasts will be listenable where I live if the power increase goes through.

 

[briankay]

Or if the two both use IBOC, neither one may be receivable in HD, without a directional antenna. A 10 dB power increase will do nothing to help that situation.

2 first adjacents with IBOC with both be easily recievable because the digital side bands don't overlap they in fact interleave.

Take this example of 2 IBOC stations on 99.5 and 99.7 FM. Station 99.5's upper sideband goes from [99.6 to 99.7], and station 99.7's lower sideband goes from [99.5 to 99.6] See this Fig. 2.5.2 within this document. http://www.conna.it/angolo_tecnico/iboc%2002.pdf which niceley illustrates this.

 

[SUPERCASTER]

The reason music on AM died, is because rock music fans discovered FM. Music on FM sounded better and there were no commercials either. Nice!

Let's fast forwarward to 2009, shall we..

Free music is everyplace today! The internet, Mp3 Players, smart phones, iphone & black berry. And the FCC is pushing for over the air internet access in the space tv broadcasters gave up.

And rock music fans, are in love with listening to what they want when they want.. Listening to a strangers playlist, with commercials in analog or HD is so 1970's.

Don't you see, even though HD is sold by some as the next big technology it's already out dated because it still relies on playing a strangers, playlist with commercials. Old guys don't mind..
but the 12-24's.. mind a lot and they're radio's future!

Sadly and thus far, HD broadcasters offer a it's listeners a simulcast or the radio stations in a box.
Listeners have shown no interesting in HD, because theirs nothing really compelling or worth listening too. I mean nothing you can't already find someplace else, FREE! Hello, la la la..

And hoping this pig is going to catch on in 20 years is really wishful thinking, because by then newer technology will supercede it.. At best it's a poor stop gap.. and experiment gone wrong, really badly..

NO SOUP FOR YOU!

Next..

So your giving up on broadcasting.....
I think radio's edge is the randomness of not knowing what is going to come on next instead of listening to a 2000 song mp3 collection whic gets boring after a few hours at least for me. HD R will just increase the variety and encourage me to listen to it because broadcasts will be listenable where I live if the power increase goes through.

"So your giving up on broadcasting....."

I don't think anyone here said that.
Broadcasting is just evolving and using other new delivery methods. HD radio has arguably been the most problematic and least successful.

"I think radio's edge is the randomness of not knowing what is going to come on next instead of listening to a 2000 song mp3 collection whic gets boring after a few hours at least for me."

How many formats, stations or HD2 streams have play lists substantially bigger then 2,000 tunes (let's say over 10,000)?
The internet has hundreds of thousands of tunes available, in almost every imaginable format, genre, and sub-genre. Some internet sources even adopt to your listening habits and make suggestions.


"HD R will just increase the variety and encourage me to listen to it because broadcasts will be listenable where I live if the power increase goes through."

The proposed 10 db power increase won't help HD radio much.

 

[SUPERCASTER]

Or if the two both use IBOC, neither one may be receivable in HD, without a directional antenna. A 10 dB power increase will do nothing to help that situation.

2 first adjacents with IBOC with both be easily recievable because the digital side bands don't overlap they in fact interleave.
Take this example of 2 IBOC stations on 99.5 and 99.7 FM. Station 99.5's upper sideband goes from [99.6 to 99.7], and station 99.7's lower sideband goes from [99.5 to 99.6] See this Fig. 2.5.2 within this document. http://www.conna.it/angolo_tecnico/iboc%2002.pdf which niceley illustrates this.

Interleaving HD digital bit goulash. Sounds yummy!

Anyone figure out how to unscramble an egg?

I wouldn't want to be that poor first adjacent channel FM station owner. New interfering "interleaved" HD radio digital signals coming at me from every direction, now asking for a 10db increase!

All AM or FM stations are 1st adjacent to others.

 

[almaniac27]

The reason music on AM died, is because rock music fans discovered FM. Music on FM sounded better and there were no commercials either. Nice!

Let's fast forwarward to 2009, shall we..

Free music is everyplace today! The internet, Mp3 Players, smart phones, iphone & black berry. And the FCC is pushing for over the air internet access in the space tv broadcasters gave up.

And rock music fans, are in love with listening to what they want when they want.. Listening to a strangers playlist, with commercials in analog or HD is so 1970's.

Don't you see, even though HD is sold by some as the next big technology it's already out dated because it still relies on playing a strangers, playlist with commercials. Old guys don't mind..
but the 12-24's.. mind a lot and they're radio's future!

Sadly and thus far, HD broadcasters offer a it's listeners a simulcast or the radio stations in a box.
Listeners have shown no interesting in HD, because theirs nothing really compelling or worth listening too. I mean nothing you can't already find someplace else, FREE! Hello, la la la..

And hoping this pig is going to catch on in 20 years is really wishful thinking, because by then newer technology will supercede it.. At best it's a poor stop gap.. and experiment gone wrong, really badly..

NO SOUP FOR YOU!

Next..

So your giving up on broadcasting.....
I think radio's edge is the randomness of not knowing what is going to come on next instead of listening to a 2000 song mp3 collection whic gets boring after a few hours at least for me. HD R will just increase the variety and encourage me to listen to it because broadcasts will be listenable where I live if the power increase goes through.

"So your giving up on broadcasting....."

I don't think anyone here said that.
Broadcasting is just evolving and using other new delivery methods. HD radio has arguably been the most problematic and least successful.

"I think radio's edge is the randomness of not knowing what is going to come on next instead of listening to a 2000 song mp3 collection whic gets boring after a few hours at least for me."

How many formats, stations or HD2 streams have play lists substantially bigger then 2,000 tunes (let's say over 10,000)?
The internet has hundreds of thousands of tunes available, in almost every imaginable format, genre, and sub-genre. Some internet sources even adopt to your listening habits and make suggestions.


"HD R will just increase the variety and encourage me to listen to it because broadcasts will be listenable where I live if the power increase goes through."

The proposed 10 db power increase won't help HD radio much.

"Broadcasting" might well be on its way out, to be replaced with "narrowcasting". This is happening in other forms of media along with radio, where the audience is becoming so segmented that it's better to have niche outlets to appeal to small audiences than to try to appeal to the largest audience possible. Cable TV started this trend years ago, and the internet is speeding it up. DVRs, Youtube and Hulu show that more and more people don't want to rely on others choosing when they can watch what they want. Media will become more and more on-demand in the coming years in my opinion.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

Take this example of 2 IBOC stations on 99.5 and 99.7 FM. Station 99.5's upper sideband goes from [99.6 to 99.7], and station 99.7's lower sideband goes from [99.5 to 99.6] See this Fig. 2.5.2 within this document. http://www.conna.it/angolo_tecnico/iboc%2002.pdf which niceley illustrates this.

Sorry, but no. There are two problems with this example:

(1) The technical paper illustrates a common misconception among less experienced broadcast engineers, and that is that channel bandwidth is somehow related to IF bandwidth / channel spacing. That is not the case, the two are unrelated. Until HD radio came along, the deviation from center frequency was +/- 75 kHz, with audio recovered in the discriminator. I'm not too sure exactly what IBOC does to that deviation, whether it increased the deviation or not, but based on the incredible levels of first adjacent noise, I would say it must be, especially when they add another transmitter to do the dirty work.

(2) Even if that article is somehow right, it shows the digital sidebands for the first adjacents covering the analog signal. If it is one inescapable characteristic of IBOC, it is that ANY analog signal at all superimposed on the sidebands garbles them, and loses lock. This is true on AM, and it is true on FM. Enough so that I notice WPOZ 88.3 in Orlando shut down WEAZ 88.1 in Daytona Beach. I wouldn't be surprised if they also shut down their 88.5 in Palm Bay for the same reason. But they left their second adjacent satellite on 88.7 on the air, and even put HD on it. I do know that when I have plenty of signal on HD stations 100 to 250 miles away, the slightest hint of a first adjacent and I may get excellent analog signal, with no fading, but absolutely no HD no matter how strong the signal may be at that moment. First adjacents wipe out HD lock on two separate HD tuners that I own.

 

[DaveBayArea]

2 first adjacents with IBOC with both be easily recievable because the digital side bands don't overlap they in fact interleave.

Take this example of 2 IBOC stations on 99.5 and 99.7 FM. Station 99.5's upper sideband goes from [99.6 to 99.7], and station 99.7's lower sideband goes from [99.5 to 99.6] See this Fig. 2.5.2 within this document. http://www.conna.it/angolo_tecnico/iboc%2002.pdf which niceley illustrates this.

Better than that, take the real-world example of a station on 98.9 and another one on 99.1 FM. Coverage areas shown here:
http://www.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/FMTV-service-area?x=FM287363.html
and here:
http://www.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/FMTV-service-area?x=FM143792.html

Both run HD, and neither one locks throughout a major portion of the Bay Area. The analog signal of each is full of static in Fremont and Mountain View, with severe picket-fencing. Figure 2.5.2 of that document presents a great theory, but in practice it doesn't work with a Sony, Visteon, or JVC receiver. I'll let you know when I get my little Mighty Red unit.

Dave B.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

Better than that, take the real-world example of a station on 98.9 and another one on 99.1 FM. Coverage areas shown here:
http://www.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/FMTV-service-area?x=FM287363.html
and here:
http://www.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/FMTV-service-area?x=FM143792.html

Both run HD, and neither one locks throughout a major portion of the Bay Area. The analog signal of each is full of static in Fremont and Mountain View, with severe picket-fencing. Figure 2.5.2 of that document presents a great theory, but in practice it doesn't work with a Sony, Visteon, or JVC receiver. I'll let you know when I get my little Mighty Red unit.

Dave B.

I've listened to that station going over the mountain on that twisty road! Interesting situation - dangerous drive.