WLS AM 890 off IBOC at luchtime

[Tom Wells]

Listened to WLS on the way to the drive-through. They seemed awfully clear and sharp. A slight side tune showed they were in glorious
unmolested analog. The bed of silence behind the local content and even Rush seemed dreamy-smooth.
Another bump to the right showed WGTO 910 faintly coming in, and at 920, WOKY Milwaukee with music, in IBOC,
even sounding better than they do up in Milwaukee. At 90 miles, they are weak but the muffled audio is no longer fighting the sidebands quite as badly, and they "almost" sound just like any other music AM with decently loud processing, at the limits of noise-free
reception with a good radio. I was surprised at how much better they sounded without
WLS being in IBOC. At 920, I would expect no interference, but it is surely clearer and cleaner.
This tells me that wideband radios, even with good RF rejection (selectivity) , will still see detrimental effects to weak 3rd adjacents, even while no overt noise is found in the 10 khz wide passband containing the 5khz audio. It may be just todays conditions, but
I've checked this out more than a few times.


This was in Rolling Meadows, about 25 miles nw of Chicago.

Now, WHAT could be the matter with the HD this time?
Has something failed on a beautiful day out of a clear blue sky, or is Citadel deciding to have the best sounding
AM station on dial in Chicago? Because today they are the best sounding.
WSCR 670 has IBOC on now, after a lot of missing-in-action. If we're lucky, the iboc sidebands created as images off WGN AM 720
will wreak havoc with HD decode of WSCR 670 and WBBM 780.
Can anyone tell us if WBBM and/or WSCR are decoding in HD today?

 

[wkbam1690]

Listened to WLS on the way to the drive-through. They seemed awfully clear and sharp. A slight side tune showed they were in glorious
unmolested analog. The bed of silence behind the local content and even Rush seemed dreamy-smooth.
Another bump to the right showed WGTO 910 faintly coming in, and at 920, WOKY Milwaukee with music, in IBOC,
even sounding better than they do up in Milwaukee. At 90 miles, they are weak but the muffled audio is no longer fighting the sidebands quite as badly, and they "almost" sound just like any other music AM with decently loud processing, at the limits of noise-free
reception with a good radio. I was surprised at how much better they sounded without
WLS being in IBOC. At 920, I would expect no interference, but it is surely clearer and cleaner.
This tells me that wideband radios, even with good RF rejection (selectivity) , will still see detrimental effects to weak 3rd adjacents, even while no overt noise is found in the 10 khz wide passband containing the 5khz audio. It may be just todays conditions, but
I've checked this out more than a few times.


This was in Rolling Meadows, about 25 miles nw of Chicago.

Now, WHAT could be the matter with the HD this time?
Has something failed on a beautiful day out of a clear blue sky, or is Citadel deciding to have the best sounding
AM station on dial in Chicago? Because today they are the best sounding.
WSCR 670 has IBOC on now, after a lot of missing-in-action. If we're lucky, the iboc sidebands created as images off WGN AM 720
will wreak havoc with HD decode of WSCR 670 and WBBM 780.
Can anyone tell us if WBBM and/or WSCR are decoding in HD today?

Have they bypassed the 5 kHz brick-walls, and restored full 10 kHz audio?

 

[Tom Wells]

On the drive home, 4-5 PM, I had to time to listen critically, and they are full tweaked NRSC audio,
AND is sure nuff seemed like it's back to fat 125% peaks. I don't think they or anyone can go full 10 khz, but it sounded good enough
that I had to call them and tell them how wonderful they were sounding.
I have no C-QUAM capable receivers so I don't know if it was in stereo.
It seems different from other times when the IBOC has been off and the audio is still cramped.

 

[RememberWHEN]

10:20AM EDT Elkhart, Indiana. Spot check. I'm not in a particularly good location. AM stereo auto radio. No C-Quam. I am hearing what initially strikes me as typical IBOC hash on 880. Inconclusive as to what is happening on the upper sideband of 'LS.

Regards,

RememberWHEN

 

[Tom Wells]

Today it's back to IBOC.
The A/B comparison is like hearing clean FM, then listening to the same thing recorded at low level on the cheapest normal bias cassette.


Sure do wish someone would share the reasons for the outages.
I don't think I've heard a HD promo on WLS ....maybe ever.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

Today it's back to IBOC.
The A/B comparison is like hearing clean FM, then listening to the same thing recorded at low level on the cheapest normal bias cassette.


Sure do wish someone would share the reasons for the outages.
I don't think I've heard a HD promo on WLS ....maybe ever.

I remember hearing them in static free stereo in the late 80's in Jackson, Michigan - about 200 miles distant. I seriously doubt their digital signal goes that far.

 

[Wthom100]

I live in the Detroit area northern suburbs. Several days ago I was able to get hard lock on the WBBM signal on my BA Receptor HD radio - it was around 2 a.m. The WBBM moniker came-up on the display. It was only for a minute or so but this is the first time I was able to get a hard lock on a distant station that was broadcasting in digital. Usually I can get distant stations and the "HD" symbol just keeps flashing in the display - never locks.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

I live in the Detroit area northern suburbs. Several days ago I was able to get hard lock on the WBBM signal on my BA Receptor HD radio - it was around 2 a.m. The WBBM moniker came-up on the display. It was only for a minute or so but this is the first time I was able to get a hard lock on a distant station that was broadcasting in digital. Usually I can get distant stations and the "HD" symbol just keeps flashing in the display - never locks.

Ridiculous. Not your report - AM IBOC at night. C-Quam had no trouble at all making it 1000 miles at night from a 50 kW station. NO WAY this can be a commercial success if good, careful observers like us cannot get it to work at night. The FCC decision to allow nighttime broadcasting in IBOC has only done two things:

(1) Proved everybody was right - it WILL increase interference
(2) Proved that the system does not work at night.

End of story. The experiment failed. In the engineering world, we would scrap it and move on to a different solution. Unfortunately, too many people with too much money in the system and too much arrogant pride are going to keep on running legal jammers until forced to turn them off.

 

[KB1OKL]

I live in the Detroit area northern suburbs. Several days ago I was able to get hard lock on the WBBM signal on my BA Receptor HD radio - it was around 2 a.m. The WBBM moniker came-up on the display. It was only for a minute or so but this is the first time I was able to get a hard lock on a distant station that was broadcasting in digital. Usually I can get distant stations and the "HD" symbol just keeps flashing in the display - never locks.

Ridiculous. Not your report - AM IBOC at night. C-Quam had no trouble at all making it 1000 miles at night from a 50 kW station. NO WAY this can be a commercial success if good, careful observers like us cannot get it to work at night. The FCC decision to allow nighttime broadcasting in IBOC has only done two things:

(1) Proved everybody was right - it WILL increase interference
(2) Proved that the system does not work at night.

End of story. The experiment failed. In the engineering world, we would scrap it and move on to a different solution. Unfortunately, too many people with too much money in the system and too much arrogant pride are going to keep on running legal jammers until forced to turn them off.

Well it's Sunday (early Monday morning actually) but I say amen brother.