New to the board

[Tom_Ray]

Hi All:

Cal Stymes sent me a note and asked that I log into the board.

I'm VP of Engineering for Buckley Broadcasting and am at WOR, New York. Yes, WOR runs and HD Radio signal. And yes, we've been doing it for 5 years, so I have a great deal of experience with it and have been part of a good number of experiments and tests.

I'm here to answer whatever questions you may have regarding HD....or on the new WOR transmitter facility. As I told Cal, I'll put forth the facts and in some cases my opinion - and some may not want to hear what I have to say that are factual statements. That's OK. But my rules are simple. You want to disagree, that's fine. You want to put forth your opinion on the technology, that's great. You want to start name calling and personally attacking me, I will simply go away. I won't say anything bad about you, and I expect the same treatment in return. I have zero tolerance for personal attacks.

I'll be checking back in periodically, so feel free to fire away.

Tom Ray, CPBE
VP/Corporate Director of Engineering
Buckley Broadcasting/WOR Radio
New York City
W2TRR

 

[Tom Wells]

Thank you for introducing yourself in this often contentious forum.

I am a radio engineer who stayed out because it was "just a bit too late", with the 1st class ticket being dropped.
I went into other electronic fields, but have remained RF "active" continuously.

I am neutral on the HD-FM issue, but find the multiple drawbacks of the HD-AM signal crippling.

I carefully tune my inductive slug-tuned AM car radio to WGN or WLS AM in Chiicago, and I KNOW it doesn't
drift, but as I drive, the orthogonal sidebands are not staying balanced, and I must continuously tune out the hiss.

Even when "gone", it's never gone, it's just nulled, and this null still gives the demodulated sound a flat, dull character.
And this is with a radio with 15khz design passband, actually about 20khz, so I get to hear "everything" while center-tuned.
I believe most AMs with HD are limiting positive modulation to avoid any analog clipping, which would produce components sure to confuse the digital, and this lack of positive peaks also makes the analog sound dull.

Then there is the issue of cutting audio brickwall at 5khz, I know the arguments regarding noise, and the very real need to keep
high audio out of the digital carriers, but intelligibility suffers greatly!

I will say WOR sounds the crispest of any of the AMs running HD in NY.
This is good, but of course you must remember the days of running proofs on AM.
I have maintained hifi AMs, modified many to hifi, and maintained a clean environment where AM comes in great, even in Chicago.
I have bemoaned the rise of dimmers, switching mode power supplies, etc.
Inasmuch as my AM reception is great, why must my local AM powerhouses sound like I am 200 miles out?

Then I submit that the resultant HD AM is garbly and time-frame challenged.
I've been annoyed for years at garbly codecs on satellite feed programming already.
I audition the Accurian, and find that individual live announcers sound like twins speaking in unison.
This is an old shortwave reception "flaw". Why is it part of a new standard? Analog MW has no chorus effect.

I see adoption of digital mode on AM-MW as a case of 'playing a violin with a hammer'.
It works, but ignores the nature of the medium, and the multiple modes of listening, many "not protected" but viable many decades.

I did read the white papers by ibiquity long ago, and knew it would sound exactly like this by the description.

I see the loss to local listeners as being greater than the feared night skywave issue.

I am keen to hear your opinions on these issues.

 

[Mike Walker]

I have a couple of questions, Tom. I'm in northwest NC, and get lots of HD FM from Greensboro and Charlotte, but so far there are NO HD AM stations in the area. I have NEVER heard HD AM (other than at NAB show demos years ago).

What is WOR's analog bandwidth? Does it sound worse to you (your analog signal) than before the conversion to HD? Come on, tell the truth

What's the greatest distance YOU have received your signal in HD? What's the greatest distance that it's reliable? And what's your take on interference (to 1st and 2nd adjacents) caused by your HD signal, and other AM HDs? Have YOU found any of the so called "ibuzz" to be objectionable?

WELCOME! I look forward to benefitting from your experience. By the way...you've been in HD for five years, but PLEASE tell some of these clowns in here that radios have only been widely available for about a year!

 

[radiopilot]

Welcome Tom,

As you can see the name calling has already started by the pro-HD crowd without benefit of your comments to those that replied to your post.

Now that being said, you mentioned that you've been broadcasting HD on your AM station for five years... that would put that date to about 2002, if HD radios only came out as Mike has mentioned a year ago(which he's wrong) who then were you broadcasting to?

Was it experimental set-up of the transmitter and it's broadcasting scheme on the new HD system, were you broadcasting music, etc. What type of proof did you obtain by those listening that the signal was on par with the results you expected i.e.: who with an HD reciever called you on the status of the signal, what about people with analog receivers did they call your station to complain about noise and buzzing of their analog radios, and what did your staff do about any complaints?

Tom Wells has more or less asked you about what alot of us are saying about AM-HD and it's drawbacks.


Thanks for sharing your experiences.

Radiopilot

 

[Mike Walker]

I never said there weren't ANY radios until a year ago. I said they weren't widely available. I hang out in audio stores, and electronics "superstores", and I had never seen one until July of last year, when I first saw the Boston Acoustics. And I WORK IN RADIO!

The things were, as they say in NC, "rare as hens' teeth" until last summer/fall. FACT!

As for whether existing listeners are disappointed in the analog signal, I'd guess that the answer is in the ratings. If they've gone down, one might ask what changed. If they've remained the same, or gone up, then it's reasonable to assume that HD didn't hurt with existing listeners.

WOR is a talk station. I doubt they "played music", other than bumpers.

 

[radiopilot]

I never said there weren't ANY radios until a year ago. I said they weren't widely available. I hang out in audio stores, and electronics "superstores", and I had never seen one until July of last year, when I first saw the Boston Acoustics. And I WORK IN RADIO!

The things were, as they say in NC, "rare as hens' teeth" until last summer/fall. FACT!

As for whether existing listeners are disappointed in the analog signal, I'd guess that the answer is in the ratings. If they've gone down, one might ask what changed. If they've remained the same, or gone up, then it's reasonable to assume that HD didn't hurt with existing listeners.

WOR is a talk station. I doubt they "played music", other than bumpers.

Don't get your feathers all ruffled Mike... Let Tom speak first!

As far as your neck of the boonies, I'd say YEAH maybe the radios weren't widely available and perhaps your neck of the woods weren't HD broadcasting till last year.. but the top markets such as NYC would have had these radios in stores and widely available otherwise as I mentioned to Tom who was WOR broadcasting to back in 2002-2004 before the HD radios were put into stores around Christmas of 2004?

I know WOR is a talk station but correct me if I'm right BUMPER MUSIC is MUSIC isn't it? So wouldn't there be listeners that complained about the tinny shrilly shower hiss this would caused and their complaints logged into WOR?

Ratings? Ha ha... you guys crack us up!

"And I WORK IN RADIO!" Yeah... I'm President of StarBucks too.

Radiopilot

 

[Mike Walker]

Uh...Charlotte is a top-30 market, Greensboro a top 50. We've had HD BROADCASTING here for almost as long as New York. The radios WERE NOT WIDELY AVAILABLE...in real stores you could go into. I know you could order them on the "tubular interweb". That's not the same thing. I am a radio geek, and I didn't want to spend a cent until I was pretty certain it would work in my REMOTE location. Finally at 100 bucks (after rebate) I thought, "what the hell, I can always send it back..."

My friend who's a chief engineer at one of the stations I produce for, and has been involved in installations at HD stations hadn't seen a radio OUTSIDE OF THE PROMOTIONAL UNITS HD STATIONS HAD AVAILABLE until last summer. They just weren't widely available.

Sadly, there are millions of Americans to whom NO electronic doo-dad is "available" unless it's at Wal Mart, Target, or the local Radio Shack.

 

[JbeJay]

Welcome, Tom. A voice of reason in the midst of all this shouting may be helpful.

I see that Mike Walker wins the award for the first incident of name-calling:

... these clowns in here ... that radios have only been widely available for about a year!

And Radiopilot wins the award for distorting what the other guy is saying by selectively misquoting him:

... radios have only been widely available for about a year!

... HD radios only came out as Mike has mentioned a year ago ...

Past all that, welcome. There may still be hope for constructive discussion in these threads if we can all get beyond the "HD sucks" / "HD rules" / "No, it sucks" / "No, it rules" level of discourse.

And that would be a good thing.

Jay

 

[PocketRadio]

Hi All:
...

Tom Ray, CPBE
VP/Corporate Director of Engineering
Buckley Broadcasting/WOR Radio
New York City
W2TRR

Welcome, Tom. I am just amazed, that stations are willing to invest $100,000+ in HD/IBOC, especially AM-HD - consumers are almost totally apathetic towards HD Radio, yet with nighttime AM-HD coming in about one month, there is a very good chance that WLW and WOR will clobber each other with adjacent-channel interference. I wonder, if WLW will keep bragging that they cover 38 states, after nighttime AM-HD gets turned on. No one cares about AM Stereo, FMeXtra, RDS-FM, or digital radio, in general - who cares about any supposed audio improvement for AM-HD news/talk/sports, at the expense of only 60% the coverage of analog and adjacent-channel interference. Hopefully, the HD/IBOC conversions will continue to slow, and the HD Radio Alliance will disband, at the end of this year. With AM-HD, and to a lesser-extent with FM-HD, there is very little to be gained, at the expense of alienating listeners:

"Running interference"

"Conversely, when WOR's IBOC carriers were on, and WLW's carrier was 10dB down, the WLW analog signal was rather noisy. It was not bad enough to make me want to tune WLW out, but it was annoying. If WLW's signal decreased to a level of 15dB below that of WOR, the signal was unlistenable. If, however, WLW's signal level was equal to or exceeded WOR's signal level, the noise was only slightly audible and the analog signal was useable."

http://beradio.com/features/radio_running_interference/

As is happening now, some listeners are complaining to stations about AM-HD hissing/interference, but they are met with either apathy and/or hostility. AM-HD will eventually lead to the destruction of the AM band.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

Well, it is certainly nice to see you here, Tom! You and I have had some discussions in other forums, I hope you remember me favorably.

Two issues that I continue to wonder about:

(1) Why do stations that format primarity talk or sports need digital at all? Neither format can benefit from increased bandwidth or stereo. Unless the occasional musical bed and / or stereo commercial is considered. Yet the HD radio I heard was playing a talk show, and it sounded most like medium-high bandwidth streaming. My ears are particularly sensitive to group delay / phase distortion, and I got listener fatigue in minutes and had to quit.

(2) Why do people in the industry persist in saying most AM radios are limited bandwidth. I've done a reverse engineer on everything I have bought in the last five to seven years, and there is not a 3 to 4 kHz bandwidth AM to be found. They all are based on single IC's and have at most one very poor quality ceramic filter, that is wide as a barn door. If they even bother at all - I have found a few of them that just bypass the IF out - IF in connection with a capacitor, relying completely on the Q of the antenna and oscillator coil for their selectivity. I'd hardly call them superheterodynes. I had to go to a 20 year old radio to find one with three IF cans and 3 to 4 kHz bandwidth. Everything else is super wide bandwidth, horrible selectivity, and passes IBOC sidebands like high frequency rushing wind. Add the little 1 inch speaker which is a terrifically good tweeter, and very poor mechanical lash on the tuning dial, and you have a recipe for IBOC self-jamming. I was frankly apalled I spent up to $70 on these cheap, junky radios. Wideband - not for high fidelity, but because they are built shoddy. Yet - I continue to hear over and over again - that most AM radios are narrow bandwidth. Not true - I'd challenge anybody to go to Walmart and find an AM radio based on that antique reference design any more. Manufacturing costs and Chinese reference designs have won the market. A recipe for IBOC self jamming because its hard to get on frequency, and once you are, the 10 to 15 kHz sidebands scream at you like a thousand angry crickets.

Meanwhile, clunky old WBAP AM in Ft. Worth sounds absolutely great on every radio in the house. Wideband AM bandwidth on the cheapies, good, rich, but bassy sound on the antiques. It makes the other talk radio in the area sound pitiful by comparison. Guess where my one talk station preset is set?!

 

[davideduardo]

(1) Why do stations that format primarity talk or sports need digital at all? Neither format can benefit from increased bandwidth or stereo. Unless the occasional musical bed and / or stereo commercial is considered. Yet the HD radio I heard was playing a talk show, and it sounded most like medium-high bandwidth streaming. My ears are particularly sensitive to group delay / phase distortion, and I got listener fatigue in minutes and had to quit.

Let me answer this with a couple of examples.

WTOP in DC moved totally to FM. Stereo and full bandwidth. The 35-54 increased dramatically. The station is now #2 or #3 in the market.

Clear Channel put a talk FM on in Pittsburg... not hot talk, just the normal "AM talk" but on FM. They now beat KDKA nearly 2 to 1 in 25-54.

The under-55 or under-50 listener does not like Analog AM quality enough to stay with it against an FM alternative. Digital is one way of tipping the scale.

(2) Why do people in the industry persist in saying most AM radios are limited bandwidth. I've done a reverse engineer on everything I have bought in the last five to seven years, and there is not a 3 to 4 kHz bandwidth AM to be found.

Bob Orban and the NRSC comittee bought a slew of consumer radios, including car ones, tabletops, portables, etc. Uniformly they were down 10 db at 4.7 kHz. This is representative of 80% or more of the radios out there.

Meanwhile, clunky old WBAP AM in Ft. Worth sounds absolutely great on every radio in the house. Wideband AM bandwidth on the cheapies, good, rich, but bassy sound on the antiques. It makes the other talk radio in the area sound pitiful by comparison. Guess where my one talk station preset is set?!

WBAP is now 19th in 25-54 listening in the market. It is flat or down in billing, in a market where billings are up 20% over last 5 years.

 

[scanman1]

Quote: "The under-55 or under-50 listener does not like Analog AM quality enough to stay with it against an FM alternative. Digital is one way of tipping the scale."

Exactly! The much-improved audio will breathe new life into AM despite the interference to existing analog.

 

[davideduardo]

Quote: "The under-55 or under-50 listener does not like Analog AM quality enough to stay with it against an FM alternative. Digital is one way of tipping the scale."

Exactly! The much-improved audio will breathe new life into AM despite the interference to existing analog.

Interference to adjacent channels is, with a few exceptions, likely to occur only in places where neither the inteferred with or the interferring station have any listening. The fact is, in many AM cases, the HD signal is "usable" beyond the area where the analog signal is noisy and unattractive to listeners.

 

[wgliradio]

Welcome to the board Tom. Good luck in the trenches

 

[Tom_Ray]

Thank you for introducing yourself in this often contentious forum.

Well, that's what makes it interesting, right?

I carefully tune my inductive slug-tuned AM car radio to WGN or WLS AM in Chiicago, and I KNOW it doesn't
drift, but as I drive, the orthogonal sidebands are not staying balanced, and I must continuously tune out the hiss.

That's because the sidebands of WGN or WLS themselves are not staying balanced. We've done a lot of testing, driving around looking at the AM band with a spectrum analyzer. You would be surprised at the changes in sideband levels as you drive around. In the case of the old WOR antenna, in our null, the lower sideband would all but disappear at the NY/NJ border on route 17. And the sideband tilt depending on what was nearby was quite interesting to witness. The system is designed to have no hiss when everything is in balance, as the OFDM sidebands will cancel each other out. By the way, how old is that slug tuned AM radio?

I believe most AMs with HD are limiting positive modulation to avoid any analog clipping, which would produce components sure to confuse the digital, and this lack of positive peaks also makes the analog sound dull.

I'm not so sure about that. We pound away at +120% without any problems.

Then there is the issue of cutting audio brickwall at 5khz, I know the arguments regarding noise, and the very real need to keep
high audio out of the digital carriers, but intelligibility suffers greatly!

That depends a great deal on the radio. If you're talking about a wideband radio, yes, you will notice the difference. On a "typical" radio - the kind that is "hearing impared" starting around 3.5kHz, you generally don't notice a difference.

I will say WOR sounds the crispest of any of the AMs running HD in NY.

Thanks.

This is good, but of course you must remember the days of running proofs on AM.

I remember the days when the FCC could and would come in and make you go down and proof it with them after midnight!

I have bemoaned the rise of dimmers, switching mode power supplies, etc.
Inasmuch as my AM reception is great, why must my local AM powerhouses sound like I am 200 miles out?

That, unfortunately, is "progress", and was the reason WOR moved the transmitter to Lyndhurst in the 1960's, from the Carteret facility. The neon signs and street lights in NYC were becoming too much for the signal.

Then I submit that the resultant HD AM is garbly and time-frame challenged.
I've been annoyed for years at garbly codecs on satellite feed programming already.
I audition the Accurian, and find that individual live announcers sound like twins speaking in unison.
This is an old shortwave reception "flaw". Why is it part of a new standard? Analog MW has no chorus effect.

I've experienced this on a few AM HD's. WOR tends not to have this problem. I believe a lot of it has to do with the audio processing, which must be handled differently due to the needs of the codec and the way the codec handles the audio. Additionally, if the transmitter chain isn't adjusted properly, this will increase the data errors far field and give you the "unlock" effect.


I see the loss to local listeners as being greater than the feared night skywave issue.

A good deal of AM stations already have the local listener loss. In the case of the NYC stations, I don't think any have lost listeners due to their turning on an HD carrier. Those of us in the business, and DXers tend to be a little too close to the situation and don't really see how the listener uses the radio station. What we see as problems or issues, most listeners are oblivious to. Sad, but true.

Tom Ray


I am keen to hear your opinions on these issues.
[/quote]

 

[Tom_Ray]

I have a couple of questions, Tom. I'm in northwest NC, and get lots of HD FM from Greensboro and Charlotte, but so far there are NO HD AM stations in the area. I have NEVER heard HD AM (other than at NAB show demos years ago).

What is WOR's analog bandwidth?

>>Our analog bandwidth is 5kHz.

Does it sound worse to you (your analog signal) than before the conversion to HD? Come on, tell the truth

>>If I use a wideband radio like the GE SuperRadio, yes it does. If, however, I listen on the radio that came with the car, I notice only a bit. I used the stock radio in my Ford Explorer to tune the analog processing when we turned the HD on. By making a few tweeks and coming up with an eq curve, it made a huge difference in the analog signal at 5K bandwidth.

What's the greatest distance YOU have received your signal in HD?

>>>Southern Delaware on I-95. I received a photo from someone in Ohio with a Boston Acoustics radio, showing our HD PAD data and the fact that the radio was locked. That was kinda cool.

What's the greatest distance that it's reliable?

>>>We have a kind of lopsided figure 8 pattern. I can hold it to the Philly City line (this is the second lobe), 90 miles. Conductivity on Long Island sucks big time, but I can get it in HD about 3/4 the way out. I've heard it in Hartford, CT.

And what's your take on interference (to 1st and 2nd adjacents) caused by your HD signal, and other AM HDs? Have YOU found any of the so called "ibuzz" to be objectionable?

>>>I participated in nighttime testing with WLW. Inside the WOR 1/2mV, right at the very edge of the contour, WOR experienced some weak background hiss from WLW's sidebands. Frankly, I found it less annoying than the chatter present from Cuba. WLW's signal at this point also had hiss from WOR's sidebands, but it was a bit more pronounced. Again, I didn't find it annoying as compared to the monkey chatter sideband interference. In skywave territory, it was a crap shoot. Interestingly, when the HD obliterated the opposite station in skywave territory, if the HD carriers were shut off, the interference on the channel was just as bad and the station as unlistenable. I had an interference complaint from someone who was trying to listen to a 500 W station in Massachusetts - in their null - 75 miles from the transmitter. I think that person had other signal issues rather than sidebands from either WOR or WLW.

WELCOME! I look forward to benefitting from your experience. By the way...you've been in HD for five years, but PLEASE tell some of these clowns in here that radios have only been widely available for about a year!

>>>Actually, I had my first car radio about 4 years ago. That being said, it came from iBiquity, and you could buy it for $1000 at Crutchfield only at the time. Realistically, the radios have only been available for about a year to the public, though you could have bought one - at a high price - from a few specialty shops.

Tom Ray

 

[Tom_Ray]

Welcome Tom,

As you can see the name calling has already started by the pro-HD crowd without benefit of your comments to those that replied to your post.

>>>> As long as it's somewhat good natured.....

Now that being said, you mentioned that you've been broadcasting HD on your AM station for five years... that would put that date to about 2002, if HD radios only came out as Mike has mentioned a year ago(which he's wrong) who then were you broadcasting to?

>>>> We were participating in testing with iBiquity at the time. We uncovered some issues with the codec, and proved that the system would work through a rather funky antenna system.


Was it experimental set-up of the transmitter and it's broadcasting scheme on the new HD system, were you broadcasting music, etc. What type of proof did you obtain by those listening that the signal was on par with the results you expected i.e.: who with an HD reciever called you on the status of the signal, what about people with analog receivers did they call your station to complain about noise and buzzing of their analog radios, and what did your staff do about any complaints?

>>>> The exciter we used was an exciter provided by iBiquity, along with their test radio, which was essentially a computer with the proper DSP boards installed. The testing was done with one of these radios in a specially outfitted van that was iBiquity's. The radio would output all types of data - audio frequency response of the analog and digital channels, data error rate, etc, and correlate this with a spectrum analyzer display. The data was quite complex and complete. We actually had 2 of the iBiquity radios - one at the transmitter, one at the studio. We only had a couple of complaints. One was from a guy who repaired analog radios from the 1930's - he called to tell us we had a hiss, and maybe we didn't know about it. We had another guy with a wideband radio in his 1980's era Jeep that was hearing hiss. These were the "normal" listeners who complained. When told what was going on, these listeners seemed satisfied that we were experimenting and thanked us for the explanation. The DX hobbyist complaints were another story.


Tom Ray

 

[Tom_Ray]

As for whether existing listeners are disappointed in the analog signal, I'd guess that the answer is in the ratings. If they've gone down, one might ask what changed. If they've remained the same, or gone up, then it's reasonable to assume that HD didn't hurt with existing listeners.

>>>>It's difficult to tell anything by our ratings - we've had a great deal of on air changes in the past 5 years. We've gone down, come up, stabilized - unfortunately with our format, it's hard to tell.

WOR is a talk station. I doubt they "played music", other than bumpers.

>>>> You'd be surprised at the amount of agency commercials that are in stereo - particularly the ones for the Broadway shows. All of our promos are in stereo. Every year, we run a marathon Christmas special - all in stereo.

Tom Ray

 

[Tom_Ray]

Welcome, Tom. A voice of reason in the midst of all this shouting may be helpful.

>>>> Well, I wouldn't say THAT But thanks!

I see that Mike Walker wins the award for the first incident of name-calling:

... these clowns in here ... that radios have only been widely available for about a year!

And Radiopilot wins the award for distorting what the other guy is saying by selectively misquoting him:

... radios have only been widely available for about a year!

... HD radios only came out as Mike has mentioned a year ago ...

Past all that, welcome. There may still be hope for constructive discussion in these threads if we can all get beyond the "HD sucks" / "HD rules" / "No, it sucks" / "No, it rules" level of discourse.

And that would be a good thing.

>>>> We'll give it a good try!

Tom Ray


Jay

 

[Tom_Ray]

Welcome, Tom. I am just amazed, that stations are willing to invest $100,000+ in HD/IBOC, especially AM-HD

>>>> Actually, that $100K figure is more common for FM. Many AM stations can get HD on the air for well under $50K - depending on the condition of their antenna system and if they have a fairly recent transmitter.

- consumers are almost totally apathetic towards HD Radio

>>>> Well, when radios aren't available, that can be expected.


As is happening now, some listeners are complaining to stations about AM-HD hissing/interference, but they are met with either apathy and/or hostility. AM-HD will eventually lead to the destruction of the AM band.

>>>> I don't think that will happen. Frankly, I 've been testing a new HD radio that's out - and if this is the "typical" radio design these days, we have more to worry about than HD. The performance in this radio, on AM below the 1MV contour, was absolutely abysmal. On FM, the audio level changes in low signal/high multipath environments was like being on a rollercoaster. With radios like this out there, I can fully understand listeners leaving.

Tom Ray