The Nail in HD Radio’s Coffin – And What It Means For You: Mark Ramsey

First check out the cool gravestone on Mark Ramsey's latest blog.

"First, understand that HD radio always has been a crappy experience for consumers: A digital solution grafted onto an analog expectation with a jumble of unpredictably random Frankenstein products indifferent to consumer tastes built by and for the broadcasters which finance it."

"What could possibly go wrong?"

"It’s not about being first out of the gate, it’s about solving problems for consumers in ways that resonate. It’s not about prominence in car ads, it’s about being worthy of that prominence."

I don't know about anyone else but what that means to me is that ibiquity has been pushing HD radio as a silk purse when most of us have always known that it's a sow's ear, or you can fool some of the consumers some of the time but you can't fool all of them all of the time. IBOC radio has never worked as it was advertised, drop outs galore and lousy range have always plagued it. It's been out since 2007 and it has not been improved one bit. They have tried stuff like boosting the percentage of the digital component kludged onto the main carrier which only caused more sideband interference and a few receivers came out such as the Sony XDRF1HD HD which WERE so good they are now collectors items for DXers who of course disable the HD part and DX FM. Why do I bold WERE? Because almost all HD radios are now history. And now it looks like the carmakers are wising up to HD. Will it now completely die like all bad products which don't work should? No probably not at least for now because it is now used to circumvent ownership caps which are in place to prevent the excessive concentration of media ownership which of course this current politicized FCC could not care less about. What makes the fact that GM is dropping HD so exciting is that ibiquity spokesman Bob "Strooby Dooby" Struble has been trumpeting how successful HD is becoming, it is in 40% of new cars! etc etc etc. and they are now dumping it as fast as they installed it. Jeez louise who could have seen that coming?

see more at:

http://www.markramseymedia.com/2014/08/the-nail-in-hd-radios-coffin-and-what-it-means-for-you/

The real problem, though, in terms of what it means for you, is there is no replacement for HD. No other company working on a technology to address the problems the FCC has created with AM. Of course the obvious solution would be for the FCC to simply reverse a lot of their out-dated rules that affected the fidelity and signal of AM. But no one seems to be talking about that. The only proposal on the table for improving AM fidelity is to allow owners to get FM translators. That's not solving the AM problem. That's not going to result in improved AM fidelity or improved receiver fidelity or improved interference control.

HD was the last attempt in a long series of technical solutions for improving AM. Once it's gone, we're left with AM radio with limited frequency response, huge interference issues, and awful receiver quality. And in the long run, it means the investment money will disappear from AM (it already has), and the programming content will drop even lower than it is now. THAT, ladies & gentlemen, is REALLY what it means for you.

TheBigA said:

The real problem, though, in terms of what it means for you, is there is no replacement for HD. No other company working on a technology to address the problems the FCC has created with AM. Of course the obvious solution would be for the FCC to simply reverse a lot of their out-dated rules that affected the fidelity and signal of AM. But no one seems to be talking about that. The only proposal on the table for improving AM fidelity is to allow owners to get FM translators. That's not solving the AM problem. That's not going to result in improved AM fidelity or improved receiver fidelity or improved interference control.

HD was the last attempt in a long series of technical solutions for improving AM. Once it's gone, we're left with AM radio with limited frequency response, huge interference issues, and awful receiver quality. And in the long run, it means the investment money will disappear from AM (it already has), and the programming content will drop even lower than it is now. THAT, ladies & gentlemen, is REALLY what it means for you.

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Actually - most AM radios made today are inherently broadband and sound great when there is no interference - I've documented this by doing an analysis of the reference design: http://earmark.net/gesr/Current_Radio_Design.htm. The lastest trend is to eliminate the ceramic filter on AM completely and just use a capacitor - so the entire selectivity of the radio is due to the Q of the antenna coil. A few more cents saved - but great broadband audio response!

Interference on the band is another issue - the FCC didn't do their job and protect AM. Listening environment is so bad in most homes and offices that AM is effectively jammed. I expect, though, that the band will survive as a haven for religious, ethnic, and niche formats, because those groups are all motivated enough to put up with - or eliminate - interference.

TheBigA said:

The real problem, though, in terms of what it means for you, is there is no replacement for HD. No other company working on a technology to address the problems the FCC has created with AM. Of course the obvious solution would be for the FCC to simply reverse a lot of their out-dated rules that affected the fidelity and signal of AM. But no one seems to be talking about that. The only proposal on the table for improving AM fidelity is to allow owners to get FM translators. That's not solving the AM problem. That's not going to result in improved AM fidelity or improved receiver fidelity or improved interference control.

HD was the last attempt in a long series of technical solutions for improving AM. Once it's gone, we're left with AM radio with limited frequency response, huge interference issues, and awful receiver quality. And in the long run, it means the investment money will disappear from AM (it already has), and the programming content will drop even lower than it is now. THAT, ladies & gentlemen, is REALLY what it means for you.

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Yup I agree, the FCC has ruined AM with their stupid decisions, too many stations and lousy pinched fidelity. When I was a kid (ahem) AM radio sounded great. Good frequency response, just enough stations, the dial was not so crowded all you heard was a cacophony of noise like on some frequencies nowadays. I've been listening on old hifi console standup radios (yes there is such a thing) from the thirties lately and once in a while I'll find a music station (usually oldies or big band jazz, even Disney radio sounds good with all it's bottom as long as the IBOC is not rumbling on the pinched edges of the signal) which sounds good. I wish people that have grown up with the lousy pinched fidelity it now has (FCC mandated of course) could listen on an old console to a wideband AM station, they'd be amazed.

rbrucecarter5 said:

Actually - most AM radios made today are inherently broadband and sound great when there is no interference

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Most? What percentage? Because from what I've seen, the vast majority of radios sound awful. Yes, the FCC didn't do their job. They, and NRSC, effectively destroyed AM. The minute those changes were made, radio companies began abandoning AM in droves for FM. The ONLY thing that kept AM viable for the past 25 years is news, talk, and sports. Those formats are starting to die out, leaving religious, ethnic, and what you call "niche formats." None of them will be able to attract the revenues required to keep AM afloat for the future. AM radio will soon be the burnt out urban core that was once a vital city. And it happened for the same reason: Lack of investment and bad regulation.

KB1OKL said:

I wish people that have grown up with the lousy pinched fidelity it now has (FCC mandated of course) could listen on an old console to a wideband AM station, they'd be amazed.

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That's not the direction we're going in. People are not going to be buying console radios. That was one of the mistakes iBiquity made. They thought people would rush out and buy table radios. No one did. People aren't buying high quality receivers for any platform, including the internet. They're streaming Pandora on their phone. That is what we're dealing with now. For AM to survive, it needs to be able to live in today's market. Not the 1930s.

TheBigA said:

Most? What percentage? Because from what I've seen, the vast majority of radios sound awful. Yes, the FCC didn't do their job. They, and NRSC, effectively destroyed AM. The minute those changes were made, radio companies began abandoning AM in droves for FM. The ONLY thing that kept AM viable for the past 25 years is news, talk, and sports. Those formats are starting to die out, leaving religious, ethnic, and what you call "niche formats." None of them will be able to attract the revenues required to keep AM afloat for the future. AM radio will soon be the burnt out urban core that was once a vital city. And it happened for the same reason: Lack of investment and bad regulation.

And I know you know what I mean when bringing up wideband consoles, of course no one is going to buy them, but the point is that AM radio can sound very good when it is broadcast unplugged-up on a decent receiver, and as rbruce pointed out they could be cheap, although better than the cheap krap he is talking about, haha!.

That's not the direction we're going in. People are not going to be buying console radios. That was one of the mistakes iBiquity made. They thought people would rush out and buy table radios. No one did. People aren't buying high quality receivers for any platform, including the internet. They're streaming Pandora on their phone. That is what we're dealing with now. For AM to survive, it needs to be able to live in today's market. Not the 1930s.

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I believe if AM radio was streamed and it was wideband (it's not when streamed, just as pinched) and had interesting formats on it, people would stream it. I also believe that techies are usually the first persons to buy a new technology and print reviews of it. HD never pleased many of them because of it's lousy range, it never got off the ground floor because it's a flawed technology and didn't past muster with anyone and there was a spate of negative reviews. The people who have praised it usually happen to belong to the radio business, or in other words advertisers and who believes them? My experience with decent new AM radios has usually been in cars and they usually are very narrow band also, like listening to a radio with a pillow over the speaker.

KB1OKL said:

I believe if AM radio was streamed and it was wideband (it's not when streamed, just as pinched) and had interesting formats on it, people would stream it.

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Streaming is expensive. Streaming stations must pay music royalties that count for more than 50% of revenues. The more people listening to the stream increases the royalty rate. The only way to pay for streaming is with OTA advertising, which is sold at a higher rate than online. In fact because of AFTRA, most OTA spots can't be played online. So what you're suggesting isn't going to be profitable. As evidenced by Pandora.

The impending demise of a zombie technology like HD doesn't really mean anything to consumers or radio stations. Let's face it, AM HD is dead in the water and will continue its slow death march except on a few key blowtorch signals in markets with robust coverage and high listenership. But FM HD isn't going anywhere, even if it begins to disappear from the dashboard.

FM HD is widely being used now to feed translators to let station owners get around ownership caps (or to allow smaller owners to cheaply expand) and I don't see that going away anytime soon. Once that horse is out of the barn it's going to be impossible to put it back. HD works fine for point-to-point reception, especially when you're receiving it through a dedicated FM antenna as one might do in theory at a translator. So as long as HD keeps on working for that, it'll have a place on the broadcast band, much to the dismay of the few noisy DXers who think it's the devil's dishwater.

But iBiquity couldn't have botched this harder if they had not been trying. They got manufacturers making the wrong kinds of radios, are charging for the tech instead of subsidizing it or making it free to use, were overly cautious about the power during the initial big buildout so that stations can't afford to upgrade to higher power now even though it's proven to work well and not interfere like everyone said it would… The stupidity goes on and on.

HD radio shouldn't really be in cars at this point because stations don't have the power to make it work on the go and the formats carried are so bad in most markets they're not getting people the least bit interested in upgrading. And of course table top radios are something that died out with my grandfather. But HD radio could have a place in SDR (software defined radios) and in home theater systems, which still include an AM/FM tuner. Again, it's a fixed reception point so the signal will either work or it won't, negating the most annoying aspects of the system as it's currently set-up.

The consumer may not have ever had HD on his or her radar, but that doesn't mean HD hasn't benefited them. Pubcasters have been able to offload unprofitable and unliked classic music to a subchannel and bring in more listener requested news and entertainment programming. And HD-fed translators have been a boon in markets like Montgomery and Atlanta and Birmingham where there are no full power vacancies and ownership caps are an issue.

TheBigA said:

Most? What percentage? Because from what I've seen, the vast majority of radios sound awful.

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Most - as in virtually ALL. The all Japanese six transistor reference design hasn't been produced in 30 years from what I can tell. The reason is cost. You can't even get some of those IF cans any more - and if you do find a supplier they are expensive. The Chinese who make these things squeeze every penny out of the design and pocket the difference. I know, because I have dealt with them for over ten years.

The ONLY reason why an AM radio today isn't broadband is that somebody put a low pass filter on the audio, and skimped on interstage DC blocking capacitors. The high and the low end are chopped off. But that doesn't change the fact that one cheap ceramic filter on AM is going to pass +/- 10 to +/-40 kHz depending on the model, and I have heard the resulting poor selectivity. My daughter and her "Bratz" radio. She wanted to hear Radio Disney on 620, it was covered up by KSKY on 660. That is 40 kHz! A better ceramic filter and the radio worked great - that is if you consider the audio out of a 1 1/4 inch speaker to be working great. But RF wise - my job was done. Not even the 1 inch ferrite bar inside the radio - which the coil almost completely covered - would keep 620 out. The less you pay for a radio, the more likely it is to have a piece of junk ceramic filter with very wide response - time after time I have revived such clunkers and made them into fairly good radios. The premium my father got for subscribing to Time Magazine for example. Another very wide ceramic filter exhibiting the same symptoms - put in a three stage one salvaged out of a wireless mouse and the radio had fantastic sensitivity! Put in a 200 mm ferrite bar and it DX's like crazy even without an RF stage. Get a slightly more expensive radio - my daughter liked Mary Kate and Ashley so we got a boom box. The thing was amazing out of the box - selective and sensitive. She abandoned it after a few years and I got inside - exactly the same IC and design as the junk radios, just a better ceramic filter and larger ferrite bar antenna. I souped it up even more with an even better ceramic filter and 200 mm ferrite bar - DX machine on my bench!

tomservo said:

The impending demise of a zombie technology like HD doesn't really mean anything to consumers or radio stations.

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I agree. However, it was the last hope for fixing AM, and since it was such a failure, we will not see another technology come along to attempt to deal with the audio issues killing AM. But yes, consumers and radio have moved on to something else already.

rbrucecarter5 said:

The ONLY reason why an AM radio today isn't broadband is that somebody put a low pass filter on the audio, and skimped on interstage DC blocking capacitors. T

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Somebody? Come on! Almost ALL radios have that filter, plus the NRSC limited the highs to 10K. So you have two forces at work: Electronics manufacturers and regulation. If the government is really serious about saving AM (which it isn't) these are two things it could do to fix it.

TheBigA said:

I agree. However, it was the last hope for fixing AM, and since it was such a failure, we will not see another technology come along to attempt to deal with the audio issues killing AM. But yes, consumers and radio have moved on to something else already.

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I still think the HD folks ought to regroup behind C-Quam, which has no problems and still decodes on most HD radios. Static free range with a Sony SRF-A1 was 290 miles daytime on KMKI, I easily decoded C-Quam nightly on WLS from Houston, close to 1000 miles. So C-Quam makes sense as a plan-B, it gets the stations in stereo, and bandwidth on HD radios is decent to give good quality on AM. Both C-Quam and HD require product detectors instead of envelope detectors, which increases the sound quality quite a bit. Even if they do not fall back to C-Quam, product detection and wider bandwidth alone would make wonderful wideband AM mono.

The interference problem on AM is something that needs to be addressed differently. I think a combination of regulation and elimination of HD, along with an intelligent approach to re-allocation of frequencies as stations go dark might help a lot. Remaining stations could power up in an attempt to counteract some of the interference.

rbrucecarter5 said:

I still think the HD folks ought to regroup behind C-Quam, which has no problems and still decodes on most HD radios.

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For years RCA refused to make LP records. Somewhere I have Beethoven symphonies on 45 RPM records. It took about 10 of them. When a company is built around products it invents, it's not too interested in using someone else's technology, even if it means the survival of their company.

TheBigA said:

Somebody? Come on! Almost ALL radios have that filter, plus the NRSC limited the highs to 10K. So you have two forces at work: Electronics manufacturers and regulation. If the government is really serious about saving AM (which it isn't) these are two things it could do to fix it.

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I don't think it's a low pass audio filter, it's a tight intermediate frequency filter which cuts intelligibility and keeps adjacent noise out, it's the same as turning a communications receiver to a tight filter position, 3 khz or less is about what modern radios sound like to me which is very narrow, the more narrow an IF filter, the less treble you receive. With a 10 khz band spacing like AM radio has there is 4 khz between stations, the tight IF doesn't even allow your radio to pick up the full spectrum of what is transmitted. I believe radio manufacturers do this in response to all the noise in the spectrum nowadays since the FCC doesn't enforce part 15 regulations any longer.

And Ajit Pai at the FCC wonders why AM radio is in trouble. He has become the Michael Copps of this group. Talks a lot and gets nothing done.

TheBigA - you've got a point - Pai needs to get his arse in high-gear and make the AM updates WITHIN 6 MONTHS! AM is in stage 4 cancer and needs treatments NOW.

JohnnyElectron said:

TheBigA - you've got a point - Pai needs to get his arse in high-gear and make the AM updates WITHIN 6 MONTHS! AM is in stage 4 cancer and needs treatments NOW.

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Unfortunately nothing happens quickly at the FCC. It takes months for them to order lunch.

And they have way higher priorities, like auctioning off DTV spectrum and putting a stake in network neutrality.

diymedia said:

And they have way higher priorities, like auctioning off DTV spectrum and putting a stake in network neutrality.

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Exactly. Someone needs to tell Commissioner Pai. He obviously didn't get the memo.

Perhaps it's one of those things he hopes to make his post-public service career on? Cushy board seats with big broadcasters? You do have to plan ahead....