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WPHT is broadcasting over their HD bands

TheDaChicken

TheDaChicken

For some reason WPHT still uses AM HD (which is cool) BUT! Their main AM signal is broadcasting over their HD enhanced sidebands. Making it almost impossible to decode the extra bitrate! They didn't turn down their low-pass filter.

This COULD be on purpose since it does increase frequency range of the AM sound. Though the HD bands add noise to the AM signal. For those who should be able to receive the enhanced side bands, this reduces overall bitrate from 30ishkbps to only 18kbps.

This is an IQ recording from my friend who lives like 6 miles away from the WPHT transmitter. They can receive WPHT without an antenna plugged in their SDR.

This is a visual of it:

This is what the HD sounds like LOL for those who wanna know.
NRSC5 cannot decode enhanced streams so the bitrate is gonna be 18kbps no matter what.
 
I have to assume it's purely to enhance the sound of their analog transmission since most people don't have HD radios anymore (or never did to begin with). To be fair, even with the 30kbps audio, it still doesn't sound that amazing. A full 20khz wide analog AM signal, with the proper EQ, received on a nice tube radio always sounds better than HD AM to my ears. Case and point - WTMR 800 sounds amazing on an old tube radio. When they play some old gospel tunes once in a while, I'll tune in just to hear a decent sounding AM broadcast.
 
1210 has never sounded great to my ears and it’s even worse since HD has come along. I catch Sinatra on Sundays from time to time but the audio is dull and flat even on my 1941 floor model Zenith. Back in the 90’s when music was still somewhat prevalent on AM, even the old WSSJ on 1310 sounded better than Oldies 1210 IMO. Another station that comes to mind was 640 WJZ, and while their big band programming was unique and usually very good, their audio was terrible. The best sounding music AM station that I’ve ever heard was WPGR, engineered by the late AM genius Mike Venditti. I don’t know how he did it but that station sounded incredible.
 
I learned that they have the ability to turn off the enhanced bands. They don't have them turned off even though they are broadcasting over them.
 


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