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Well if you can believe it

J

jras20

I actually was able to find a good spot for my dipole antenna to pull in Austin HD pretty decent now. All but KKMJ comes in good 30 miles of Austin. KBPA is the strongest at 72db on my signal to noise dial on my HD Radio. Now that I have it working its pretty good. I really enjoy listening to Mega the dance channel on KBPA HD-2. I don't know why KKMJ Is weak though. All the other stations including KDHT which is 61.1 miles from me comes in HD at 60db. So while its working I'm happy :)
 
While I certainly can't say anything specific about KKMJ - I know nothing about their TX installation - I can tell you an appreciable number of HD sites would probably pop up in a Google search for the term "Rube Goldberg."

Many installs involve such charmingly innovative measures as side-mounting separate HD arrays on a freestanding tower leg - which causes not only bad digital penetration on the "back-side" (the side of the tower farthest from the digital antenna) but also increased self-interference with the analog component. This kind of install also places the digital radiator - arguably the one which needs the most careful placement, given the much lower power of digital - farther down the tower, so the digital component suffers from a lower HAAT and center of radiation. A lot of these HD-FM installs have been obviously slapped together in the typical HD "screw the objections. Just get the damn thing on the air" attitude. (It's another byproduct of downsized corporate radio's massive pressures on depleted engineering staffs, BTW - more work, fewer resources, same pay. Thanks for the help, HD Radio.)

Some TX sites are extremely cramped, such as the top floors of older office buildings. There simply isn't the physical space or air-handling capacity for the wished-for increase to -10dBc, even if it were to be approved, for HD-FM. Chalk this looming problem up to the endless list of improbable technical demands imposed by HD, a system never designed for widespread implementation in the real-world conditions of actual radio broadcasting and listening.
 
radioracket said:
"One of HD-2's challenges seems just to be staying on the air. At DCRTV.com, Dave Hughes gave Clear Channel's eRockster (now heard on WWDC's multicast channel) a plug only to note the next day (July 12) that it was off the air, as was WTOP's HD-3 traffic/weather channel. That's an experience I've had with many of New York's HD-2 channels as well, by the way. What's even more pathetic about the 'here-one-day-and-gone-the-next' status of local HD Radio channels is that I'm probably the only one who's noticing the absences, Hughes writes."
Click to expand...

Who cares about HD-2 if the main channel doesn't work either?

True story: I was driving I-90 from Buffalo to Cleveland a couple of weeks ago for a meeting and when I got a few miles from Painesville, Ohio, I decided to scan around and see how many HD stations in the Cleveland market would lock at that distance on my JVC car radio. 107.9 WENZ (owned by Radio One) was one of the first, because its transmitter site is way east of the city. However, after acquiring digital lock, there was no audio at all on HD-1; the receiver just blended to... silence.

Several miles down the road, I tuned to WENZ's sister station, 93.1 WZAK, and it was the same deal! After the HD locks, there's no audio -- and it's drive time on a Friday afternoon. Maybe the engineer had been laid off, who knows. In any case, it doesn't appear that Radio One will be spending any more money on HD for a while, based on the comments of CEO Alfred Liggins in yesterday's (last) quarterly conference call. Not that the company should have bothered in the first place.

On Sunday, on the way out of town, WZAK's digital audio had been restored but WENZ was still having problems- which probably doesn't matter, since it's hard to get a solid digital lock in the inner city on WENZ due to the rural transmitter site.

Do the exciters still have that pesky memory leak, that forces them to crash - seems so. Once the HD Radio investors bought into iBiquity, specifically the HD Radio Alliance stations, it was too late. iBiquity had complete control and at that point, could put garbage in the field, and stations were helpless. Of course, iBiquity must have promised the HD Alliance stations that IBOC interference would take care of those pesky community radio stations.
Click to expand...

Judging from comments on the Pubtech list, memory leaks and password issues are still frequent concerns.

I've had conversations with some HD transmitter manufacturers and they're just as frustrated. But analog FM is still a pretty healthy market. Crown even considers it "bullish":

http://www.crownbroadcast.com/
 
OK... I’m now the “nearly-proud owner” of an “HD”-capable tuner—the Sony I positively panned here earlier. AM performance is “pedestrian” at best [sorry Inspector]... FM analog is EXCEPTIONAL—maybe even “groundbreaking”. Nonetheless, “HD” reception beyond the 60dbu circle is unreliable. Within the solid 70dbu-plus territory of my environ in Charleston, “HD” reception and gratification was fine, but when I toted the tuner to the center of the Cincinnati-Dayton-Indianapolis triangle – ALL BETS WERE OFF – NO RELIABLE HD RECEPTION... Only a blinking “lock” light, and that was fed from a rooftop antenna up 50-feet.

'Seems the major culprip was adjacent-channel interference [how shocking]. “HD Radio” appears reserved for the fortunate folks within range of the “Big Boyz in the Big Town” of corporate radio – a scenario that promises CERTAIN DOOM based on the lackluster performance of this crew in these times. "HD Radio" continues to rank at the very bottom of consumer interest - NOT AT ALL SURPRISING given the desending popularity of OTA programming and this lackluster "technology".

“HD” FM beyond a stones throw from the stick is A BUST—it's only a “luxury” for those within the immediate urban confines of an FM signal... Hardly a basis for success! I return to my original premise: IBOC is a defective and destructive “technology”... JUNK SCIENCE.
 
I have the same tuner and it took you about as long as it took me to experience what I already knew from a few encounters with iBlock in stores: even one of the best receivers on the market can not reliably pick up and lock onto either an FM or AM HD channel for any length of time if they will lock onto them at all. Mine has not been on in over a month. I've listened to both analog AM and FM since, listened to computer radio and have listened to Satellite radio (even though Sirius-XM is rapidly going down the tubes as far as I'm concerned). XM alone was WAY better than the combined effort so far.
 
Which is why I probably will never upgrade my truck to HD Radio since it is only good to a point. If they ever increase the power,, maybe....I did order me the Sony HD Radio home tuner for grins because I wanted one out in Lavaca county for fun.
 
jras20 said:
Which is why I probably will never upgrade my truck to HD Radio since it is only good to a point. If they ever increase the power,, maybe....I did order me the Sony HD Radio home tuner for grins because I wanted one out in Lavaca county for fun.
Click to expand...

They're not much fun. ::)
 
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