D
dybas
Guest
Re: The IBOC rant is joined!
> > Do any of you agree with my thoughts, or am I totally off
> > base when it comes to IBOC?
>
> Yes, I fully agree with you about IBOC, for several reasons:
>
>
> IBOC is a solution running around in search of a problem
> that doesn't exist. I have yet to hear anyone say, "I don't
> listen to radio anymore because AM (or FM) sounds horrible,"
> but I *have* heard people say that they abandoned radio
> because of lousy programming. If stations that play stale
> voice-tracked playlists or schlock infomercials think they
> can magically expand their audience shares by broadcasting
> such program content in IBOC, I have some prime Martian real
> estate for them at a very reasonable price... It's ironic
> that IBOC's backers are pushing it primarily for car
> receivers, because with the ambient vehicle noise the
> supposedly better audio quality wouldn't be apparent anyway.
>
>
> The AM IBOC night-time skywave problem and IBOC's problem of
> drowning out weaker adjacent stations with "digital hash"
> are reason enough for it to be prohibited for AM band use.
>
> When television was black-and-white, color television was an
> obvious and anticipated improvement. The North American
> NTSC color television system may not be quite as good as PAL
> or SECAM (especially on the early color sets which were
> fidgety about color adjustment), but it was
> backward-compatible with existing black-and-white television
> sets. IBOC would require roughly one billion radio
> receivers (many of them expensive, high-end home and vehicle
> tuners) to be junked because it isn't backward-compatible
> with them. I'm an audiophile, and analog AM audio on a
> high-quality AM receiver sounds perfectly clear, crisp,
> warm, and rich to my ears. Mostly likewise for FM, although
> FM sounds dry, sterile, and "over-crisp" to me (probably
> because of the upper/lower audio wave peak clipping due to
> the frequency modulation).
>
> IBOC is touted as providing Compact Disc (CD) quality sound,
> but the CD is an inferior standard for radio audio quality.
> A late friend of mine, a fellow audiophile, once
> dramatically demonstrated this to me. He had two large
> Leslie tone cabinets (used with the Hammond X66 electric
> organ) that were fed by a kit-built Lafayette tube amplifier
> that he kept in peak operating condition. He had an Empire
> turntable, a Revox 1/2" reel-to-reel tape recorder/player,
> and a high-end Sony CD player, all of which could be played
> through the amplifier and tone cabinets. Doing direct ABC
> comparisons using the same vocal and instrumental pieces (by
> Frank Sinatra, Perez Prado, Tony Bennett, Herb Alpert,
> etc.), the Empire turntable sounded best of all, with the
> Revox tape deck a very close second. The CD player sounded
> like a cheap 70s-era kid's phonograph by comparison. Neil
> Young once commented that when he first heard a CD
> re-release of one of their old albums, the sound "washed
> over me like a wave of ice cubes." He said that the warm,
> rich sound of the original vinyl LP record just wasn't
> there.
>
> The generally mediocre quality of AM audio today is due to
> inferior receivers, not inherent flaws of AM. Older AM
> receivers (particularly older car receivers) have excellent
> audio quality. Also, currently available AM receivers such
> as those made by Sangean and Lennox are as good or better
> than the older radios, even in the pocket receivers. I have
> a Sangean DT-200V and a Lennox "Sports Radio" (both pocket
> AM/FM radios), and they have superb AM audio quality. Also,
> some AM stations don't bother to optimize their audio chains
> because "AM is for talk radio anyway, so who cares about
> high fidelity if we're not broadcasting music?" Back when
> AM *was* primarily broadcasting music, AM stations did take
> the time to optimize their audio chains. (In the 1950s, WLW
> 700 AM proved that high fidelity AM could sound better than
> FM.)
>
> HD might as well stand for "Hyped Digital." "Digital" is
> one of those marketing hype buzzwords (as "Turbo" was and
> is) that are used to try to 'wow' the public. "You've got
> digital clocks and digital computers, why not bring your
> radio into the digital age?" To which I reply: "I already
> have a digital radio. I push a button to tune in a station,
> and then I see the station's frequency on a liquid crystal
> digital display." -- JasonW
Well put...a solution looking for a problem...that echoes my sentiments exactly. With AM being dominated by Talk anyway, who the heck needs stereo?
AND...I can't see paying someone(Ibiquity) for a licensing fee to broadcast in stereo, that's just plain shameful.
AND...I like things just the way they are, with 7.5 Khz wide audio that is intelligible...not that muffled 5Khz stuff I hear on the local IBOC stations.
Hot Dang!
Dr. Dave
> > Do any of you agree with my thoughts, or am I totally off
> > base when it comes to IBOC?
>
> Yes, I fully agree with you about IBOC, for several reasons:
>
>
> IBOC is a solution running around in search of a problem
> that doesn't exist. I have yet to hear anyone say, "I don't
> listen to radio anymore because AM (or FM) sounds horrible,"
> but I *have* heard people say that they abandoned radio
> because of lousy programming. If stations that play stale
> voice-tracked playlists or schlock infomercials think they
> can magically expand their audience shares by broadcasting
> such program content in IBOC, I have some prime Martian real
> estate for them at a very reasonable price... It's ironic
> that IBOC's backers are pushing it primarily for car
> receivers, because with the ambient vehicle noise the
> supposedly better audio quality wouldn't be apparent anyway.
>
>
> The AM IBOC night-time skywave problem and IBOC's problem of
> drowning out weaker adjacent stations with "digital hash"
> are reason enough for it to be prohibited for AM band use.
>
> When television was black-and-white, color television was an
> obvious and anticipated improvement. The North American
> NTSC color television system may not be quite as good as PAL
> or SECAM (especially on the early color sets which were
> fidgety about color adjustment), but it was
> backward-compatible with existing black-and-white television
> sets. IBOC would require roughly one billion radio
> receivers (many of them expensive, high-end home and vehicle
> tuners) to be junked because it isn't backward-compatible
> with them. I'm an audiophile, and analog AM audio on a
> high-quality AM receiver sounds perfectly clear, crisp,
> warm, and rich to my ears. Mostly likewise for FM, although
> FM sounds dry, sterile, and "over-crisp" to me (probably
> because of the upper/lower audio wave peak clipping due to
> the frequency modulation).
>
> IBOC is touted as providing Compact Disc (CD) quality sound,
> but the CD is an inferior standard for radio audio quality.
> A late friend of mine, a fellow audiophile, once
> dramatically demonstrated this to me. He had two large
> Leslie tone cabinets (used with the Hammond X66 electric
> organ) that were fed by a kit-built Lafayette tube amplifier
> that he kept in peak operating condition. He had an Empire
> turntable, a Revox 1/2" reel-to-reel tape recorder/player,
> and a high-end Sony CD player, all of which could be played
> through the amplifier and tone cabinets. Doing direct ABC
> comparisons using the same vocal and instrumental pieces (by
> Frank Sinatra, Perez Prado, Tony Bennett, Herb Alpert,
> etc.), the Empire turntable sounded best of all, with the
> Revox tape deck a very close second. The CD player sounded
> like a cheap 70s-era kid's phonograph by comparison. Neil
> Young once commented that when he first heard a CD
> re-release of one of their old albums, the sound "washed
> over me like a wave of ice cubes." He said that the warm,
> rich sound of the original vinyl LP record just wasn't
> there.
>
> The generally mediocre quality of AM audio today is due to
> inferior receivers, not inherent flaws of AM. Older AM
> receivers (particularly older car receivers) have excellent
> audio quality. Also, currently available AM receivers such
> as those made by Sangean and Lennox are as good or better
> than the older radios, even in the pocket receivers. I have
> a Sangean DT-200V and a Lennox "Sports Radio" (both pocket
> AM/FM radios), and they have superb AM audio quality. Also,
> some AM stations don't bother to optimize their audio chains
> because "AM is for talk radio anyway, so who cares about
> high fidelity if we're not broadcasting music?" Back when
> AM *was* primarily broadcasting music, AM stations did take
> the time to optimize their audio chains. (In the 1950s, WLW
> 700 AM proved that high fidelity AM could sound better than
> FM.)
>
> HD might as well stand for "Hyped Digital." "Digital" is
> one of those marketing hype buzzwords (as "Turbo" was and
> is) that are used to try to 'wow' the public. "You've got
> digital clocks and digital computers, why not bring your
> radio into the digital age?" To which I reply: "I already
> have a digital radio. I push a button to tune in a station,
> and then I see the station's frequency on a liquid crystal
> digital display." -- JasonW
Well put...a solution looking for a problem...that echoes my sentiments exactly. With AM being dominated by Talk anyway, who the heck needs stereo?
AND...I can't see paying someone(Ibiquity) for a licensing fee to broadcast in stereo, that's just plain shameful.
AND...I like things just the way they are, with 7.5 Khz wide audio that is intelligible...not that muffled 5Khz stuff I hear on the local IBOC stations.
Hot Dang!
Dr. Dave
