When will the HD be a full power increase?

[audioguy]

"to allow commercial group operators to evade ownership caps via FM translators."

And my opinion, this is a total scam. If anything, translators should be used to provide relief to daytime AM'ers.

 

[tomservo]

Well the point is, to hear more. When your out in the middle of the country and only 2 local FM stations come in, yeah you wan to DX something to get more. I still refuse to pay for radio because I can still get it for free.

That's kind of a contradiction, isn't it? You can get radio for free but out in the boonies it IS often 2 locals (or less) and 3-4 weak signals.

You're literally getting what you pay for.

Sorry to kvetch on this, but this is my first year without XM and after having taken several major road trips across the fruited plain, I must say, I regret giving up my satellite radio. It was down to Sirius, imho, ruining several good XM channels, that I decided to save my money.

And you know what? Going back to terrestrial radio hasn't cut it for me. HD is great in big cities where the signals are strong and the choices good… but on the open highway the preponderance of programming was either country or religious and I am a fan of neither. And that was including DX. Seriously, between say Oklahoma City and Amarillo? It was a maddening amount of religious satellite rebroadcasters, C&W and a few off the bird CHRs and that was IT. No real public radio, no classic rock, no jazz or college/indie stuff, not even any good talk radio, except a few distant AMs buried in noise.

I remember driving through the Navajo Nation on I-40 near the AZ/NM border and thinking, "Yep, I'm getting what I paid for. Jack shit."

Not bringing my mp3 player on that trip was one of the biggest entertainment mistakes I've ever made.

(And FWIW I listened to HD feeds of one kind or another almost exclusively while in LA, Vegas, OKC, Little Rock and St Louis…)

 

[Gatekeeper007]

Getting what you pay for sounds like a person best suited to be in the city most of the time. I believe it started out at a cross roads or ocean port, then a small town, soon for some it became a small city, then a medium city, and then a big city, and now we have some people use to the city life which there is nothing wrong with but don't forget we all started the same way. Also country music has the word country in it, our country is the USA and I think the two words started the same way also, and by the way there is nothing wrong with liking different types of music, as for HD radio I think in it's present form it is a bad idea, too many problems, FM extra would be a lot better way to go.

 

[tomservo]

FM extra would be a lot better way to go.

Howso? The way I see it, it still has several problems inherent with HD radio. There's still a delay between analog and digital because of processing times, as far as I know. And that is one of the biggest gripes with HD — bad sync.

There's the issue of poor digital sound quality at low bit rates, and I don't see FMX fixing that if stations for for two or three subchannels.

There's the issue of coverage. I don't have much experience with SCA reception so I cannot say if FMX would mimic SCA coverage areas, be better, or worse. Input on that would be very much welcome. If like HD it doesn't work outside the 60 dBu contour, that is still another problem. I'm sure the digital dropout problem would still exist with FMX because it'd drop out whenever the analog signal did since it's being packaged inside the analog spectrum.

Finally, portable reception and battery life. Are there any portable FMX prototype radios out? If so, their battery life probably isn't all that hot, like HD radios. So that's one more problem FMX would have along with HD.

The advantages I see are cheaper equipment and licensing. That only benefits the station owner.

 

[nd2023]

My portable HD radio lasts 10 hours on a full charge, about the same as my iPod.

 

[RadeoEngineer]

FM extra would be a lot better way to go.

Howso? The way I see it, it still has several problems inherent with HD radio. There's still a delay between analog and digital because of processing times, as far as I know. And that is one of the biggest gripes with HD — bad sync.

With FMeXtra, there are no sync issues because it isn't designed to fault to the analog. It also doesn't require that any digital channel be a duplicate of the analog. It is a completely independant system operating on a subcarrier channel. Different animal altogether.

There's the issue of poor digital sound quality at low bit rates, and I don't see FMX fixing that if stations for for two or three subchannels.

Actually, FMX does a pretty good job with audio. It does depend on what you do with it. You can run two full fidelity stereo channels or break it down to as many as nine low bandwidth channels. It's up to the broadcaster what they want to do with it.

There's the issue of coverage. I don't have much experience with SCA reception so I cannot say if FMX would mimic SCA coverage areas, be better, or worse. Input on that would be very much welcome. If like HD it doesn't work outside the 60 dBu contour, that is still another problem. I'm sure the digital dropout problem would still exist with FMX because it'd drop out whenever the analog signal did since it's being packaged inside the analog spectrum.

Actual on air tests have shown that FMX remains robust out to the 54 dBu contour.

Finally, portable reception and battery life. Are there any portable FMX prototype radios out? If so, their battery life probably isn't all that hot, like HD radios. So that's one more problem FMX would have along with HD.

To my knowledge, there aren't any portable FMX receivers out there, but I believe it has been shown that they can be built and operated at a low power consumption.

The advantages I see are cheaper equipment and licensing. That only benefits the station owner.

Actually there are numerous advantages. FMX is addressable meaning an operator could sell subscriptions, it doesn't cause interference to other stations, is very simple to operate and reliable as you could ask, and actually works well. Now one of the problems is SCA isn't allowed for general broadcast by the FCC. That's why SCA has always been a subscription service of sorts (with some exceptions such as reading service for the blind), but that rule could be changed and FMX on SCA be adopted. This would open the door for just about any FM broadcaster to be a participant.

One big problem remains though. What compelling programming would you put on all of these new channels?

 

[tomservo]

Are there perchance any audio samples or demonstrations of how FMX sounds? I can read and understand some about audio codecs, but the real deal is in hearing it myself. One thing I've learned is that no one seems to hear this stuff like I do, so descriptions from others aren't real helpful for me.

(I hope it sounds better than satellite radio or HD.)

 

[Ai4i]

Zach, have you not yet figured out that be it WMA, Real, MP3/4, AAC+, DAB, DRM, Sat, HD, or FMX, it all depends on how the bandwidth is proportioned. Any of the aforementioned can sound gr8 and any can sound like a prewar long distance phonecall via HF link.

 

[tomservo]

Zach, have you not yet figured out that be it WMA, Real, MP3/4, AAC+, DAB, DRM, Sat, HD, or FMX, it all depends on how the bandwidth is proportioned. Any of the aforementioned can sound gr8 and any can sound like a prewar long distance phonecall via HF link.

Yes I understand that, but I still think a demo of the system is in order, best foot forward and all that. I wanna hear what FMX sounds like with one digital channel on a standard FM broadcast (stereo, RDS carriers intact). I wanna hear 'the best it can do'. Is that too much to ask?

 

[RadeoEngineer]

Zach I don't have the time right now to do the research for you, but if you search the board you should find a great deal of info on FMeXtra provided by Lyle Henry from the L.A. area. A couple of years ago he went cross country with an FMeXtra system and put it on several stations and did some pretty extensive testing. Do some searching and you should find what you're looking for.

 

[Chuck]

I can't provide you with a sample, but a few years ago, I had the opportunity to try FMeXtra on a 74 watt Low Power FM station. The installation took only a few minutes, and was configurable however you wanted to use it. We set it up for 96 kbs AAC+ as I recall. In actual tests driving around, it held together very well, with no problems, even when the analog signal was obviously having some multipath and picket fencing problems. That was approximately at the 50 dbu contour.

The FMeXtra encoder was fed off the XLR balanced outputs of the station's DXP-X audio processor/stereo generator. To me, the audio quality sounded considerably better than the analog FM signal. Signal to noise was vastly improved and high frequency response had a really nice clear and transparent sound. I'm no "golden ear" but I've been in the professional audio business for about 40 years, and a member of the Audio engineering Society for about 30 of those years, so I have a pretty good idea what to listen for. When you did an A-B comparison of the signals, the FMeXtra was clearly the winner with a great "Oh wow." factor. While it was not the same as an uncompressed file, it sounded much better than any other digital (audio only) broadcasting system I’ve heard. Of course, you could configure this system in many ways, so you make your choice about quality vs. available bandwidth. Obviously, the more streams you run, the lower quality each stream will be. That is simple math. There is no free lunch, but this thing did work very well.

Better yet, there is nothing proprietary about the system. It was a one-time equipment purchase, which was basically a Dell rack mounted computer with a special sound card, and some software to do the magic. Just about any FM station could afford this. There were no on-going licensing fees, and the system did not make any noticeable interference to the primary analog signal, nor did it pollute any of the station’s RF neighbors. There wasn't much to not like other than a lack of receivers, and of course the lack of the FCC's blessing to make it a broadcast standard. It is legal to use it, but as was mentioned earlier, the FCC does not consider SCA services to be intended for public consumption.
That is a pity, because it was clearly a very elegant and affordable system.

 

[pocket-radio]

THe real issue is that consumers in Canada, as in Europe, have shown little interest in buying radios with new bands because they are not interested in buying radios... consumers are looking for multifunction devices that combine entertainment options. That's also why expanding the FM band is not going anywhere.
[/quote]

Once upon a time before cable, broadcasters had all the tools.
Now listeners have their own tools. There's been an explosion of content from multiple channels.

Listeners are happy with what they have and when they become bored it's really easy to find content thats interesting.

So why buy another radio to hear the same thing?

To hear hundreds of new stations? Nope. To enjoy CD quality music, not even close.

So forcing listeners to buy new radios only to hear the same thing doesn't seem very smart, or it's the ultimate scam and very smart! nah it's dumb and the public isn't buying it.

 

[semoochie]

2 pages back, there was a discussion about why broadcasters are piggybacking their analog signal with a digital one. Then someone disagreed with the explanation and another person takes their side. About 20 years ago, the Eureka 147 system was tested for use in Europe. American broadcasters wanted to use it and went to the FCC. In order for the system to work without using too many repeaters, it would have to be on L-Band. The US government refused to relinquish the band. They were offered the S-Band but again, it required too many repeaters. CBS Labs, the NTIA and several other companies went to work on a hybrid system, using an in-band solution, either on channel or adjacent channel. Sometime later, the S-Band was offered and accepted by what became XM and Sirius. I'm a little uncomfortable with the concept of arguing about known facts.

 

[Don Juan]

So forcing listeners to buy new radios only to hear the same thing doesn't seem very smart...

Ummmm...who's forcing anyone to do anything?

Don't want one? Don't buy one?

It's just another choice for the consumer.

 

[Tom Wells]

When my neighbor has an outrageously loud party that intrudes upon my normal peaceful use of my property my choice is only to endure, it, right? I don't have to opt-in, apparently?


I smell sulfur.

 

[KB1OKL]

When my neighbor has an outrageously loud party that intrudes upon my normal peaceful use of my property my choice is only to endure, it, right? I don't have to opt-in, apparently?


I smell sulfur.

sulfer and a red cape.