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This HD-1 sounds worse than analog

A

ajc_trw

While listening to my brother-in-laws HD ready Toyota car stereo I tuned to KCBS-FM and noticed it sounded fine. Then the HD kicked in and it sounded like a low bitrate webcast. To make sure I wasn't wrong (see title) I hit the HD button and it fell back to analog and the artifacts disappeared. When I turned the HD back on back came the thin webcast sound. This was due to the fact they are doing CBS Sports on HD-2.

Seriously? I thought when they ran an AM-HD in a city where the same program was on an FM (San Francisco) HD would be embarassed. Now with KCBS-FM degrading with a switch from analog to digital this should put this iBiquity BS out of all our miseries.

BTW when I want to hear FM quality of AM stations I turn to my iRadio (iPhone). :D ;)
 
It's never going to sound great when subchannels are in use, but there might be a processing issue that could be dealt with.

I'm of the understanding that the HD feed, even though it's carrying the same audio as the analog side, must have its own processing setup. Is that right? Maybe CBS skimped on the HD's processors or didn't set them properly.

I have that issue with my market's strongest and most reliable HD. This country station sounds fine in analog and has a robust digital signal but the digital sounds like someone turned the treble up to 11 just for the sake of screwing with listeners. The HD-2 carries classic country and has ZERO processing at all: it's quiet, tinny and a real pain to listen to. It's either a case of someone not caring about how the HD sounds or doing it on purpose to scare off the few people who haven't disabled HD yet on their car radios. It really sounds obnoxious.

Strangely enough, the competitor in town's HD stations sound really fantastic. They suffer from the same reliability and reception issues everyone else has but at least when it works, it sounds reasonably good and/or better than the analog.
 
Re: This HD-1 sounds worse than analog (wifey don't like it)

My wife just got a new Toyota with the souped up radio. I took the car out for a drive last week and noticed she had disabled the HD radio option. I come back and I'm like why?? After all, there are more channels and it's supposed to sound better. ;)

Come to find out, she hates how the sound changes when the HD kicks in and out when you're 25 miles from the city like us. So, I check it out for myself.. and low and behold, the HD sounds crisper.. and when it downgrades, it sounds like good old fashion analog (more dull - and if it goes to a mono, which seems to happen a lot if you lose the digital, it's even more noticeable).

It seems to be across the board with all the stations, so I'm wondering if it's actually the radio that's sending a slightly different EQ curve for the digital feed. Regardless of whose fault it is, add this one to what seems to be a long list of HD radio failures.
 
HD is good for five extra Khz of freq response, plus, with its infinite s/n ratio, their is no need for heavy processing.
The wife does not want to be constantly reminded about how bad the analogue sounds in comparison.
 
On FM there is a small difference in perceived brightness between HD and analog reception, and it could be easily missed
or the switching not noticed.

On AM, ibiquity designed the circuitry to make analog AM sound more or less like a 1920's metal diaphragm horn speaker,
with such poor high frequency response that intelligibility is greatly impacted.
This is pure theatrics. NO AM signal sounds as bad as ibiquity's muddy presentation.

Sandbagging, dragging one's heels, doing such a poor job that no one wants to ask you to a job again.....
"acting stupid", pretending to be stupid..... there are many parallel situations to describe what's going here.

It's like corrupt sports players intentionally "throwing" a game.

I might even liken it to sabotage.

I can forgive the shortcomings of design where something doesn't work (or sound) as well as hoped.

But the way AM analog sounds thorugh an ibquity designed radio is worthy of condemnation.
They actually WANT AM to sound that bad.
 
The same thing has happened with 98.7 KLUV and 103.7 KVIL in Dallas/Fort Worth before a few months ago when they finally fixed the audio quality on the HD signals. It hasn't bothered me much, though they do have a point on the processing issue.
 
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