Radio is going through some changes

[nd2023]

There are new stations called HD stations. These changes are perfectly normal, and you will now have more buttons to push, in addition to the buttons you have now.

Do you like the ad campaign for HD radio now? Personally, those ads remind me of those videos I watched in high school sex ed class. Yeah, it really makes me want to rush out and buy an HD radio (sarcasm)

 

[Tom Wells]

I have knobs.

I will give up my knobs when you pry my cold dead hands off them.

The offerings are not worth the many disadvantages imposed particularly for AM.

And WLS AM has the iboc on tonight. I have to hope it's an accident.

 

[LinoNYC]

I have knobs.

I will give up my knobs when you pry my cold dead hands off them.

The offerings are not worth the many disadvantages imposed particularly for AM.

And WLS AM has the iboc on tonight. I have to hope it's an accident.

I don't know Tom, WABC had their iboc on at 4:35 am Sunday (still dark).

Lino

 

[KB1OKL]

There are new stations called HD stations. These changes are perfectly normal, and you will now have more buttons to push, in addition to the buttons you have now.

Do you like the ad campaign for HD radio now? Personally, those ads remind me of those videos I watched in high school sex ed class. Yeah, it really makes me want to rush out and buy an HD radio (sarcasm)

Well if I were 15 I might have like the "radio with a boob job" ad, I thought that one was particularly good if you like terrible counterproductive ads. ;D

 

[Tom Wells]

I have knobs.

I will give up my knobs when you pry my cold dead hands off them.

The offerings are not worth the many disadvantages imposed particularly for AM.

And WLS AM has the iboc on tonight. I have to hope it's an accident.

I don't know Tom, WABC had their iboc on at 4:35 am Sunday (still dark).

Lino

WLS turned off iboc at sundown tonight. I hope yesterday was a fluke.

They have , however, been running an HD radio promo they produced in-house.

It is not obtuse like the alliance spots, and matter-of-fact-ly advises the availability of HD of AM and the FM with a new radio.

 

[clouseau]

They have , however, been running an HD radio promo they produced in-house.

It is not obtuse like the alliance spots, and matter-of-fact-ly advises the availability of HD of AM and the FM with a new radio.

My God, an HD radio ad that just promotes it straight? I thought we were still 2 years away...

<sarcasm=off>

Clouseau

 

[Savage]

Checking WLS and WABC last night around 9:10pm, no IBOC evident. CBS stations mutual annihilation of KDKA, WBZ, WINS roaring away.

 

[Mike Walker]

If only those digital carriers (on AM) actually accomplished something. I've about given up trying for an even fleeting capture of an AM HD signal. It's just too elusive. Like the "compassionate conservative". They may well exist (compassionate conservatives, AND AM HD stations), but I'll be damned if I'm having much luck locking onto either!

 

[Tom Wells]

If only those digital carriers (on AM) actually accomplished something. I've about given up trying for an even fleeting capture of an AM HD signal. It's just too elusive. Like the "compassionate conservative". They may well exist (compassionate conservatives, AND AM HD stations), but I'll be damned if I'm having much luck locking onto either!

Even as your FM iboc experience is great in your "higher elevation", it IS odd that you haven't gotten even brief capture of AM iboc.

Is your general vicinity clean, noise-wise for QRM on the AM band?
Are you sure all noise generating stuff is off (completely)?

Maybe it's time for me to build a AM preselector/amplifier designed for a passband of 50 kilohertz.
Hafta be some kinda lowered q arrangement... Variable R in series in the external loop?
I could sell a few, maybe...

Mike's situation is the perfect argument for what's wrong here. There's no good reason for a system that won't or can't serve a
significant portion of the population. Even less if it decreases the usefulness of the existing system.

I am spending less and less time listening to my previous favored AMs in Chicago, I just can't take the hiss and the muffling.
Sounds to me like the radio has an oscillation in the IF somewhere, and it's splattering everything with a 100 khz heterodyne.

In fact it sounds like a 1920's homemade regen tube receiver run into oscillation, on tin can headphones.
The audio only goes up to 4-5k, and there's a rushing hiss in the background! Just like HD!
Presto! AM radio brought back to 1926 levels of performance by ibiquity.

 

[Mike Walker]

I've used an outdoor longwire, an indoor tuned loop ("AM Advantage" and Select-a-tenna). I understand the passband is probably too broad with the loops, but the longwire?

The station I've been trying to receive (daytime) is WBT-AM Charlotte (1110), which comes in just fine in analog (though noisier than before IBOC). I freakin' give up, and no longer care. The recordings I've heard from people who actually get AM HD have convinced me that we had it FAR BETTER with C-Quam AM stereo, or plain wideband mono.

 

[KB1OKL]

Checking WLS and WABC last night around 9:10pm, no IBOC evident. CBS stations mutual annihilation of KDKA, WBZ, WINS roaring away.

Also for Mike Walker:

I'm In MA, about 50 miles from WBZ's hash grinder machine and WINS NY is the strongest out of the three here and actually is the only one that comes in clearly. WBZ has definitely lost analog strength and fidelity since it turned on the noisemaker. I can (with 2 400 ft LW antennas and a phaser) and an R-390A eliminate most the hash from WINS but still can't receive KDKA at all anymore of course since it's in the middle of the hash triumvirate, it was never very powerful here anyway but I could bring it up out of the noise wth my phaser before, now it's impossible. I know many of you don't care but I was an avid AM DXer until they turned on the noise makers last year, now not much at all. Yup out of the two at least at present AM IBOC is a complete waste of time and money and is creating MUCH more noise on an already crowded band. Perhaps many non-DXers don't realize just how far the hash will go at night? I have had WCKY 1530 Cincinnati COVER WWKB 1520 Buffalo at dusk and early evenings and dawn many times here. WCKY is at least double the distance from here and both are 50KW stations. WFAN completely stomps WSM here at night and this used to be a very good sounding station here at night. I can phase out most of the noise but due to how skywave changes I have to do this every few minutes most of the time making WSM unlistenable here now because of a loudmouth IBOC sports talker. NY AM IBOC stations kill us down here with their jamming.

 

[OKCRadioGuy]

Aside from doing something really intellegent like using out of band channels for HD, would it make more sense technically for the FCC to just assign other frequencies within the AM band for stations that want to do IBOC to do pure digital instead of the hybrid mode? I really think finding a couple of frequencies per market to run a kilowatt or so of digital for the handful of stations that would want to do it would work better and cause less interference than the current situation. At least the interfernce would be moved to where it would do the least damage instead of just being adjacent to a current allocation. Chances are the digital signal would be better than the analog in the local market which is what everyone seemed to want in the beginning for AM anyway.

 

[LinoNYC]

Aside from doing something really intellegent like using out of band channels for HD, would it make more sense technically for the FCC to just assign other frequencies within the AM band for stations that want to do IBOC to do pure digital instead of the hybrid mode? I really think finding a couple of frequencies per market to run a kilowatt or so of digital for the handful of stations that would want to do it would work better and cause less interference than the current situation. At least the interfernce would be moved to where it would do the least damage instead of just being adjacent to a current allocation. Chances are the digital signal would be better than the analog in the local market which is what everyone seemed to want in the beginning for AM anyway.

Where?

http://www.nyradioguide.com/amlist1.htm

Some 28 AM stations just for NYC and Metro area. I expect that most major areas have similar crowding. Not counting all of the out of town signals the squeak in between those and would have to be protected.

What would make sense is to allow AM's the option to go all digital beginning in five years or depending on sales of iboc receivers on a region-by-region basis.

Out of band is dead.

Lino

 

[Mike Walker]

Maybe the future for AM stations to distribute their audio digitally, with better fidelity is that newfangled interweb. It's not a truck, it's a series of tubes (in case you were wondering).

 

[Mike Walker]

As for the title of this thread, someone please name a time in it's more than eight decade history when radio hasn't been "going through some changes". It's the nature of radio, and all mass media to constantly change, and reinvent itself.

 

[Tom Wells]

It's a pity the industry has so marginalized engineers to the extent the AM debacle ever happened.

It's a travesty the FCC ignored the warnings of hundreds or thousands.

There's a good reason radio was such a successful technology that we enjoy it today.

As an analog technology, it works along with natural WAVE propogation.

Inasmuch HD wants to be pulses, it will be working against natural WAVE propogation.

Re-inventing the wheel into an oblong shape is NOT an improvement, no matter what the white papers read.

 

[kenglish]

Aside from doing something really intellegent like using out of band channels for HD, would it make more sense technically for the FCC to just assign other frequencies within the AM band for stations that want to do IBOC to do pure digital instead of the hybrid mode? I really think finding a couple of frequencies per market to run a kilowatt or so of digital for the handful of stations that would want to do it would work better and cause less interference than the current situation. At least the interfernce would be moved to where it would do the least damage instead of just being adjacent to a current allocation. Chances are the digital signal would be better than the analog in the local market which is what everyone seemed to want in the beginning for AM anyway.

Didn't the FCC "require" Expanded-Band AM's to do AM Stereo, as a part of their new licenses? I think that's fallen by the wayside, too.

 

[4dude]

The offerings are not worth the many disadvantages imposed particularly for AM.

I agree........ HD RADIO is garbage and should be done away with!

 

[Mike Walker]

It's a digital world, guys. Debate this specific digital technology, but Tom, Dude, ALL future media will be digital. Digital offers some compelling advantages, which you kind of gloss over. So does analog...like a signal that degrades gracefully with distance, and is still receivable (with noise) at tremendous distances with simple equipment. I think requiring analog tv to be switched off is actually a risk to public safety, because many in rural areas (myself included), even those with expensive antennas (again, me included) have trouble receiving digital tv under adverse weather conditions. By the way, I lost ALL digital tv to the east of me (I'm in Northwest NC) the other day when the storm was off the NC coast, but every HD FM station to the east of me still came in (via the same roof-mounted antenna). I know, different band...the DTV signals are UHF. Still...

 

[Tom Wells]

I love hearing "It's a digital world". You really can't have engaged much thought to be able to say that, or you just
have little background in electronics.

I live and make my living in the scraping friction between what is or isn't network/computer/application/PLC interlink with all its'
distributed digital and analog controls/digital/analog/sensors/voltage/adjustments/mechanical/air pressure/temperature/other permissive
and safety permissves/interlocks.

And there is nothing digital that is not also analog in ways you're forgetting about.

Your "new world of e-existance" may be a digital world, but it is still all dependent on analog technology.

Go ahead and tell us how the various modes of oscillation and cut in a quartz crystal is ever digital.
It may be fed back to oscillate with digtial, but within the crystal itself, it's always a sine wave.

It's running the oscillator and time base in your computer....why didn't they just let any old free running digital osc
serve as the clock base?

I will find no fault with use of digital in places where there is benefit. It makes things more complicated
so customers can't figure out problems themselves, then I get called in. It is a source of job security.

On the other hand, I see stupid applications of digital technology with no benefit over a simpler answer, like
a hall effect sensor where a switch would do. The mechanical switch, broken or misadjusted will cost you some downtime.
It is always easier to adjust/repair/replace/retrofit the switch than the hall effect sensor,
and the hall effect sensor can be every bit as flukey as a bad mechanical switch.
No one in town has the hall-effect switch in stock, but "we can have one there for you First AM delivery... Is that OK?"
"oh wait, what's your ZIP code.....It'll be afternoon.."
That may be ok with some desktop computer, but it is NOT an acceptable mode of vulnerability for radio.

More failure modes is NOT an improvement, even if they are impressive and baffling failures.

Please come back with something that works, and doesn't wreck my AM radio.
The hissing has reduced my AM local listening on drive-time to new lows.