WOGL HD3 and HD4 are Both broadcasting WPHT

[athegymtday]

I guess HD4 is still being tweeked while they are running WPHT but I wonder how long it will be before they will be playing the hits of the 50's and early 60's

 

[musichead1029]

To check out WOGL-HD4, I plugged in a pair of headphones to my HD radio setup (never a pleasant prospect as HD radio audio is far from audiophile quality, heck, far from the quality of the analog channel). The HD3 and HD4 signals have identical audio quality, and it's better than it was when the HD3 first came on. The HD2 and HD1 signals sound about the same - okay for music if you don't pay too much attention. But I wonder how good music will sound on the HD3 or 4 channels. Maybe someone who knows can fill us in on the bandwidth of the 3 supplementary WOGL HD channels. Comparing the HD3 and HD4 to WPHT-HD, the sound quality is pretty close, with the AM HD in stereo and the FM HD 3 and 4 channels in mono. The HD3 and HD4 sound a bit more compressed than WPHT-HD. But at least the volume levels are now consistent between the AM HD and the FM channels..

 

[Savage]

What's the bandwidth on the HD subchannels? The answer is, "it all depends."

It works like this: the iBiquity codec operates with a total of 96 kbp/s for the digital stream(s). Depending on how you use the bandwidth, the 96 gets whacked up into one, two, three or four parts. Typically stations use half the bandwidth (48 kbp/s) for the main channel (HD-1) which duplicates the analog, because if they reduce it further the digital main channel sounds worse than the analog. Can't have THAT. (For my money I prefer the analog even if there are NO subs and the station is using the entire 96 kbp/s for digital, because I can still hear the artifacting, but that's just me. Or maybe not....)

So now you've got three audio channels in the case of a full-boat HD-4 station, which have to share the remaining 48 kbp/s. That computes to 16 kbp/s per channel. I don't care how heroic the codec is - there is just no way that bitrate is going to produce anything better than "doesn't suck TOO much" audio. Many stations are programming in mono on the HD-3 and 4 subs to keep the audio "acceptable." I've seen statements to the effect that this produces the equivalent of AM audio, around 7 kHz bandpass.

Such is "progress" in the digital age of US radio.

 

[tommygraser]

WOGL HD-4 will NOT be Oldies98 hits of the 50's & 60's. I called Bob Charger the other night to see if he knew when HD-4 would be playing 50's & 60's and he told me if it was going to be Oldies on HD-4 he would be one of the first to know and no one told him anything. He keep telling me no one wants that kind of music (it's dead) I told him I was 34 years old and I love 50's & 60's music he said I was not the average 34 year old maybe if there was 50 thousand more of me walking around it would be different. I said ok & hung up the phone and I thought to myself I still have KLUV,Krth & Wnjo.com on my Android phone & I when on with my night..

 

[nd2023]

That would have been great if they brought back the "Oldies 98.1" imaging and the 50s/60s music on the HD subchannel. It would be a perfect HD format because it appeals to a niche that isn't advertiser friendly, and people would buy HD radios or stream it online to hear that format if available.
Or perhaps just have a 60s format on the HD subchannel. The most popular formats on satellite radio are the decades channels, so in the Philly market, 60s and 70s would be on WOGL-HD2/3 and 80s is on WBEB-HD2. That would make the HD choices a good subset of the satellite radio offerings.

 

[gunsmoke]

KLUV should be put on their HD-2 and move that 70's repetitious sound on the 3 and PHT on 4. KRTH would of been my choice for the HD-2, but after listening to KLUV the last few weeks, I think they are much better, but KRTH is so much better than the 70's format OGL runs now, is it in-house must be. It seems OGL's playlist is predictable no matter what format they choose.

 

[tommygraser]

KLUV is much better then KRTH. KLUV sounds just like Oldies 98.1 did back when it was a real Oldies station. Same voice over guy that does the station jingles & everything!!

 

[gunsmoke]

Better yet, KLUV sounds like WCAU-FM Golden 98, Solid Gold Radio, in the early 70's, under the tutelage of the genius, the late, great, Diamond Jim...don't know if you are old enough to remember this fantastic Oldies station, the flagship/blueprint of all oldies formats.

 

[kfitz]

The HD 2-3-4 shares the remaining 48 kps. On the Harris system you can pick one of 4 settings for each channel; 1. Auto-Stereo (tries for best stereo and bit rate); 2. Stereo only (tries for best bit rate but defers to 1. Auto-Stereo above); 3. Pseudo Stereo (will switch to Mono if poss and defers bit rate to 1 and 2); and Always Mono (defers bitrate) to 1, 2, 3. I might be a little off here....I'm quoting from memory, I was working on our system on Wednesday in Scranton. By the way....special processing for the HD channels is a must! Without it the artifacts don't sound good relating to Savage's post earlier. In Scranton we are using Neustar 4 by Neural supplied by Harris. There are many many settings...I played with this for days. I think it sounds good now. Without Neustar 4 it isn't that great. Neustar adds an additional delay to the signal which already has plenty of delay caused by the HD system's delay. You can hear this HD-2 feed on your analog radio if you are in Scranton on 102.7 FM.

 

[gunsmoke]

I was up in W.B. last June, I drove my friend to see Adam Lambert at the Kirby Center. While he was at the show I was sitting in that big park across from the center. I had my HD radio with me and most all of the stations I received had an HD-2. The formats were great from Rock, Classic Rock, Alternative, Talk, Jazz, even a comedy format, you name it. Forgot most of the calls, but I remember the mountain DMT and GGY was Jazz I think, KRZ, ILK was talk. The funny thing was in the park they all came in crystal clear on HD-2 and I know ILK was a distance and they were loud and clear.