Driving back from Western New York I found myself in a classic Schuylkill backup coming towards the Vine Street Expressway. Wanting to check on road conditions I did the natural thing: I tuned to 1060.
Let me just say that this was the first long trip I've taken since installing a new HD-compatible radio in my car, and my first time really using the tuner at all. (I mainly plug in my iPod when driving.) I went with this model because once sales and discounts at Crutchfield were factored in this one with HD and Pandora support (which I have no interest in at all) was cheaper than the next model down without it.
I had played with HD an hour south of Buffalo two nights before and was considerably underwhelmed. I was most notably disturbed by WLKK (the FM simulcast of WBEN 930) where there was a noticeable "echo" effect when the digital signal kicked in or out. Since the town I was driving through (Great Valley) is on the fringe of reception for the digital signal the transitions were frequent and annoying. Once I hit the Southern Tier Expressway and was homeward bound, I went iPod all the way.
Now, sitting in the World's Longest Parking Lot masquerading as an Interstate waiting to see if the hassle of 676 would be worse than the hassle of the Walt Whitman construction, I had my first real taste of KYW-HD. I was very pleasantly surprised. The sound quality of AM HD has been advertised as "FM-like" but I found it better than some FM's I've heard in my time. The transition was absolutely seamless with no echo or pre-echo; I guess CBS can afford better engineers than Entercom when it comes to things like programming their analog delays. And the digital signal was nice and strong...
...until we started moving.
Hitting the 676 turn-off the digital signal blanked out and the radio switched back to AM analog. Once again there was no echo effect but the sudden significant loss of fidelity was very jarring. A few car lengths later it came back. Then it dropped out again. Then came back. Every time I got near an underpass (not just under but near) the digital signal would wink out and I'd find myself back in analog. And this was in Center City with an amplified antenna designed for picking up weak signals! The experiment was a failure. AM HD was not for me.
Remembering that KYW was simulcast on 94.1-HD2 I flipped over to the FM side and dialed up WIP. I never noticed any transition at all as HD kicked in and I was listening to Sports in digital. My experiences with WLKK/WBEN in Western NY may have been annoying because of the echo effect but there was a HUGE difference in sound quality between the digital audio and the analog. I noticed no improvement at all with WIP-FM. If the fidelity was the only thing 94.1-HD had going for it I'd have suggested CBS save the money and stick with analog.
Once I realized I had the digital signal and the Multichannel icon lit up, I nudged over to HD2. KYW started up almost right away. However, I was shocked to hear the end of the sports report that I flipped in the middle of. I flicked back and forth between the bands to try and gauge how far behind the FM version was. 94.1 HD2 was anywhere from 30-45 seconds "later" than KYW on AM, digital or not. True, most people are going to tune once and sit there (in theory) and not jump back and forth so this delay shouldn't be that bad under normal conditions. Still, getting my Traffic and Transit on the Threes instead of the Twos was a bit annoying. And thank goodness I no longer tried to synchronize my watch to the top of the hour tone.
94.1 HD2 stayed with me, solid and clear, all the way across the Ben Franklin, down to 42 and 55. It was as I was approaching Clayton (exit 43 off of 55) that I got my first momentary loss of signal, and by the time I crossed US 40 into Vineland the signal was completely unlistenable. I thought about going back over to AM but just switched back to the iPod. (Which was nice, since no station around here plays "Change Reaction" any more, and that was the first song that came up in the shuffle when I switched back.)
So, with my limited experiment (one station, two frequencies) here's what I think about HD Radio:
* AM digital sound quality is AMAZING. It's light years ahead of normal AM. However, signals are too unreliable to consistently get a signal. I can't imagine what it would have been like trying to get an HD signal inside a building instead of in my car.
* FM digital sound quality CAN be amazing (my experience in Buffalo showed that) but CBS can't be bothered to tweak the processing. Or for all I know it might still be tweaked for the music that was on WYSP-HD last year and they never thought to adjust it.
* FM digital signals are still too weak to properly cover the market. I can get WIP-FM nearly all the way to the shore (WIBG-FM starts stepping on them in Cape May County but most modern tuners can handle that) but I can't get their digital signal more than 30 miles south of the Ben Franklin. There's no point in programming multichannel if about a quarter of your market can't get your -2, -3, -4 signals.
In the end, the belief I had about digital broadcasting before I had a chance to experiment with it properly still stands: unless we have a concerted effort to convert radio to digital the same way we did analog television, which includes massive signal increases and an abandonment of even the concept of IBOC, it's pointless.
Let me just say that this was the first long trip I've taken since installing a new HD-compatible radio in my car, and my first time really using the tuner at all. (I mainly plug in my iPod when driving.) I went with this model because once sales and discounts at Crutchfield were factored in this one with HD and Pandora support (which I have no interest in at all) was cheaper than the next model down without it.
I had played with HD an hour south of Buffalo two nights before and was considerably underwhelmed. I was most notably disturbed by WLKK (the FM simulcast of WBEN 930) where there was a noticeable "echo" effect when the digital signal kicked in or out. Since the town I was driving through (Great Valley) is on the fringe of reception for the digital signal the transitions were frequent and annoying. Once I hit the Southern Tier Expressway and was homeward bound, I went iPod all the way.
Now, sitting in the World's Longest Parking Lot masquerading as an Interstate waiting to see if the hassle of 676 would be worse than the hassle of the Walt Whitman construction, I had my first real taste of KYW-HD. I was very pleasantly surprised. The sound quality of AM HD has been advertised as "FM-like" but I found it better than some FM's I've heard in my time. The transition was absolutely seamless with no echo or pre-echo; I guess CBS can afford better engineers than Entercom when it comes to things like programming their analog delays. And the digital signal was nice and strong...
...until we started moving.
Hitting the 676 turn-off the digital signal blanked out and the radio switched back to AM analog. Once again there was no echo effect but the sudden significant loss of fidelity was very jarring. A few car lengths later it came back. Then it dropped out again. Then came back. Every time I got near an underpass (not just under but near) the digital signal would wink out and I'd find myself back in analog. And this was in Center City with an amplified antenna designed for picking up weak signals! The experiment was a failure. AM HD was not for me.
Remembering that KYW was simulcast on 94.1-HD2 I flipped over to the FM side and dialed up WIP. I never noticed any transition at all as HD kicked in and I was listening to Sports in digital. My experiences with WLKK/WBEN in Western NY may have been annoying because of the echo effect but there was a HUGE difference in sound quality between the digital audio and the analog. I noticed no improvement at all with WIP-FM. If the fidelity was the only thing 94.1-HD had going for it I'd have suggested CBS save the money and stick with analog.
Once I realized I had the digital signal and the Multichannel icon lit up, I nudged over to HD2. KYW started up almost right away. However, I was shocked to hear the end of the sports report that I flipped in the middle of. I flicked back and forth between the bands to try and gauge how far behind the FM version was. 94.1 HD2 was anywhere from 30-45 seconds "later" than KYW on AM, digital or not. True, most people are going to tune once and sit there (in theory) and not jump back and forth so this delay shouldn't be that bad under normal conditions. Still, getting my Traffic and Transit on the Threes instead of the Twos was a bit annoying. And thank goodness I no longer tried to synchronize my watch to the top of the hour tone.
94.1 HD2 stayed with me, solid and clear, all the way across the Ben Franklin, down to 42 and 55. It was as I was approaching Clayton (exit 43 off of 55) that I got my first momentary loss of signal, and by the time I crossed US 40 into Vineland the signal was completely unlistenable. I thought about going back over to AM but just switched back to the iPod. (Which was nice, since no station around here plays "Change Reaction" any more, and that was the first song that came up in the shuffle when I switched back.)
So, with my limited experiment (one station, two frequencies) here's what I think about HD Radio:
* AM digital sound quality is AMAZING. It's light years ahead of normal AM. However, signals are too unreliable to consistently get a signal. I can't imagine what it would have been like trying to get an HD signal inside a building instead of in my car.
* FM digital sound quality CAN be amazing (my experience in Buffalo showed that) but CBS can't be bothered to tweak the processing. Or for all I know it might still be tweaked for the music that was on WYSP-HD last year and they never thought to adjust it.
* FM digital signals are still too weak to properly cover the market. I can get WIP-FM nearly all the way to the shore (WIBG-FM starts stepping on them in Cape May County but most modern tuners can handle that) but I can't get their digital signal more than 30 miles south of the Ben Franklin. There's no point in programming multichannel if about a quarter of your market can't get your -2, -3, -4 signals.
In the end, the belief I had about digital broadcasting before I had a chance to experiment with it properly still stands: unless we have a concerted effort to convert radio to digital the same way we did analog television, which includes massive signal increases and an abandonment of even the concept of IBOC, it's pointless.