minneapolis radio on hd?

[jlvideo]

I have a question for anyone who has or knows anything about hd radio. I am moving soon from wi back to northern mn. How far does hd radio go in mn? Is it likt sat tv? Can someone get hd radio signals up by duluth or not? I'm doing some reasearch on sometime getting one.

 

[Grrrradio]

Most studies have shown that HD signals are rarely detectable past the 60 dBu of their analog parent stations. (In the case of the northern MSP metro, going up I-35, this means you'd probably be out of luck after North Branch -- or maybe Harris if you're lucky.)

Granted, this is in part because they run lower power (something like 1000 watts, as against 100,000 on many of the analog signals... but even then you're dealing with a 50 dBu signal, which would come in perfectly fine in a lot of cases if it were analog. The human ear is a lot better at sorting out "Music" from "Music + Crap" in realtime, than a digital device is at sorting out whether a given one or zero (representing 1/40,000 of a second of audio) plays a tiny role in Music or a tiny role in Crap. So, the "all or nothing" nature of that digital signal unfortunately removes the listener's discretion to put up with a little static in order to hear his or her favorite station. Progress? Hard to say.