High Definition Radio is Here

nfranzen submits this story/advertisement: "Yesterday, I had the opportunity to buy the first High Definition (HD) Radio in the United States. HD Radio, invented by iBiquity Digital, adds a digital channel to the sidebands of an existing analog FM signal. The technology is still pretty new, but I can tell you first-hand that listening to my favorite local FM station in HD sounds just like I am listening to a CD. Well, except for the commercials (grin). Here are some links to local TV news coverage and a news release for more info. HD receivers will hit the open market following the Consumer Electronics Show next week in Vegas." We had an old story about the FCC approving these digital broadcasts in the FM radio bands.

Neat!

[cb8100]

Sounds cool to me...but would it really be any fun to listen to a CD quality radio station that is full of static from poor reception, passing airplanes, and neighbors who violate every FCC violation in existence? :)

Solution looking for a problem

[micromoog]

Yay, HD radio . . . wait, why do we want this again?

Realistically speaking, the only big problem with FM radio quality is that it attenuates above 16kHz . . . a range that you more or less can't hear in the poor listening environments where FM is typically used (vast majority of the time being, of course, in moving vehicles).

What's the catch?

[gpinzone]

Encoding digital signals in a small amount of bandwidth has to come with a catch. What's this sound like if the signal strength is low? What kind of digital qaulity is this? Is there lossy compression used?

Re:Solution looking for a problem

[BrookHarty]

Yay, HD radio . . . wait, why do we want this again?

So Local radio stations can compete against XM and Sirus.

Satellite radio

[glinden]

That's an interesting alternative to satellite radio [xmradio.com]. Both require new equipment, both have very high quality. Satellite radio has little or no advertising, but you do have to pay a monthly subscription fee.

This will sound great in my car

[Gothmolly]

Or on my crappy $10 headphones. Or at the gym, cranked up to distortion levels on the hifi system. Seriously folks, few people listen to FM in an environment where 'high definition' radio makes a difference. Its like playing crappy MP3s on your free-with-the-PC speakers - you can't even tell that the MP3s suck, because the speakers suck more. I guess hearing the voices on NPR at 16bit,44.1KHz may make some people's day, but this is not like the upgrade path from tape to CD. This is a product looking for a market.

Re:Solution looking for a problem

[ackthpt]

Realistically speaking, the only big problem with FM radio

Thanks to engine noise, etc, it's marginally better than AM. Thanks to borish DJ's it's no better than all the talk-radio crap which has taken over AM. Tapes or CD's were all that was left, or go satellite.

not sound quality but programm quality matters

[twms2h]

The sound quality of today's FM radio is fairly good, but the quality of the actual content is not. And it seems to be getting worse by the day.

The same goes for television. Who needs digital high resolution television if there isn't anything you want to watch?

Re:I'll pass

[isorox]

While you exploit your analog "hole" (until its shut off. DAB is a long way off, but analog TV should be off in 10 years) in reception, millions others will exploit the rarely used "headphone" socket.

Re:Neat!

[jeffgeno]

Um, it's digital, so there won't be any static. Poor signal will probably sound like a bad cell phone connection, with cutouts, echos, and "robot voices." I think I'd prefer the static.

Re:Solution looking for a problem

[Dielectric]

Hm, seems to me, the people that may fork out the ca$h for a HD-FM tuner would also drive things like M-B, BMW, and Jaguar cars, which are cathedral-like and make pretty decent listening environments, all things considered. It's still a car, not a studio, but the road noise is all but gone in a luxo-ride.

I find it surprising how much you miss when you attenuate at 16kHz. I think it's more to do with harmonic distortion than actually listening to 16kHz+ tones.

Of course, for the other 95% of us that drive noisier cars, you're probably right. I listen to my engine a lot lately, because I love the sound of a flat-4 and a turbo spooling up (Subaru WRX).

Re:Solution looking for a problem

[BrookHarty]

There is no local radio anymore. It's all Clear Channel and...somebody else.

They still play local radio ads, local news and local weather reports, school closings.

Try to buy a car without a radio. (-;

Re:HD Radio vs. DAB?

[sane?]

Here in the UK there are large numbers of DAB radios, of all shapes and sizes, costing 60 upward ($110 US, no idea in CDN)

Works fine, all the benefits of digital (MP2) and selling better than their non digital counterparts.

I've got one on my computer, 40, and it can download data, music, etc.

High Definition?

[-tji]

High Definition sounds kind of misleading for this technology.. Detail on the quality of the broadcasts is conspicuously absent from the information I could find on this technology. They only describe it as "CD-like".

So, where High Definition video is clearly defined as 1920x1080i or 1280x720p (~ 5x the resolution of a DVD), "HD" radio is lower quality than a 25 year old audio standard.

They should stick to caling it what it is, Digital Radio. It's really cool technology, with a lot of advantages over analog - but it's not setting a new bar for quality like HDTV is compared to DVD.

this path for digital FM (IBOC) is lame

[lotsolint]

96kbps stream is not CD quality. Their algorithm is proprietary - no chance for an online comparison to ogg/mp3. Then when the station starts using the secondary audio channel for added revenue at 32kbps, their main channel is now 64kbps... gee wiz, sign me up for upgrading all my radios. The FCC should have done the same for radio broadcasters that they did for TV broadcasters. Given them a new frequency band for digital. Instead radio broadcaster have to squeeze this digital stream on the same packed frequency band the analogs are on. (until all the analog receivers are gone and then they'll go all digital - that's the "plan" anyway - lame). AM is on the same path by the way. except 32kbps. they also can't figure out how to keep the digital signal contained at night. so no digital at night for AM. Digital would be great given higher bit rates, but this is not the way!!

Re:I'll pass

[gorilla]

I wouldn't be so sure about analog TV being off in 10 years. 405 line TV was obsolete in 1964, when 625 line replaced it. Yet 405 transmissions weren't turned off until 1985. [transdiffusion.org]

If it takes 21 years to go from 405 to 625/PAL which has a clearly explainable advantage to the average consumer, and where sets were unreliable, then it's going to take a lot longer to eliminate analog.

Also the reason for wanting to do it has gone - they can't make money selling spectrum any more.

Why bother

[DVD Spark]

Why would anyone want High Def radio when you can get an Ipod and carry 5000+ songs with you everywhere in CD-like quality? I hardly listen to radio now and not because of FM audio quality issues. Shuffle play on my Ipod is far more intersting than anything played on Radio.

So, to sum up.

[i_r_sensitive]

In summation:

No-one sees the point of buying HD radio, after all who wants to hear 25 out of every 60 minutes listening to HD commercials. Better to just get an MP3 player, since we all have all the music we want on our hard drives anyways.

But wait, if we all stopped unlawfully copying music to our hard drives, perhaps RIAA would stop trying to reclaim the lost revenues from other sources (read: increasing radio royalties), which would in turn allow the radio stations to reduce the ad content to bearable levels. (Okay, so the royalties aren't likely to come down in the near future, but no need to drive them higher...)

Or alternatively you could go with satelite radio, but that has subscription costs, because they don't have commercials, but the subscription costs are pretty high, because they have to pay those same royalties, because RIAA perceives that they are losing money to our hard drives.

So, before you pan radio for the problems, think about how much you have contributed to the sources of those problems.

Re:analog vs. digital

[mlyle]

Agreed on all points. Yes, digital reception falls off much quicker than analog. But by the time digital drops, AMPS would have been unusable for a long time. Not to mention the benefits of adaptive transmit power on battery life, etc etc etc.

Phone codecs have gotten a lot better at rejecting background noise and sending just speech. But yes, that needs to improve, too. There are problems with the user experience-- one of my brothers always talks very loudly into his cellular phone... causing clipping and all kinds of harmonics to go to the codec, making him unintelligible even when there's tons of signal strength. So things like that need to get better. But all in all, a cellphone isn't a device to send music.. it's intended to send speech from one or two people in conversational tones.

The fact is, with our limits in battery density, spectrum, and antenna technology... you can't have it all. Perhaps intelligent cell sites with beam steering phased arrays will mitigate some of these trade-offs, but it's not happening anytime soon.

Re:I stand among philistines, and they do not hear

[nate1138]

As anybody with an appreciation for music can tell you:

No highs, no lows, must be Bose!

Seriously, Bose sucks. And it has nothing to do with the article. Your Bose doesn't get HD radio.

If you want to hear a real audio dream, find a Martin-Logan dealer and take a listen.

Re:So, to sum up.

[SnakeStu]

Amazing that this nonsense is being moderated as Insightful. Where's the insight? I can't find it amongst the ridiculous assumptions, like how we're "all" "unlawfully copying music to our hard drives" and how radio stations would "reduce the ad content" (it's always so likely that a business will decline a revenue source!) if we contribute more directly to the RIAA's coffers, and that I have "contributed to the sources of [radio's] problems." What a load of bunk.

invented and patented

[dgp]

invented? thats a strong word. patented [uspto.gov] may be closer to reality. I havent gone through each patent but its likely that only iBiquity can say who makes these new HD-FM radios.

If the FCC is going to be blessing a new standard for radio, it should be a free and patent unencumbered standard.

Re:Solution looking for a problem

[smacktits]

In any case, who the hell needs radio when you have a 12-cylinder choir singing to you from 2 feet away :>

Re:Why bother

[SmurfButcher Bob]

Actually, it's even more basic than that.

Why bother with High Def radio IN A CAR? The ambient noise level is louder than any difference in quality this'll make. Turn on your air conditioning or open a window (or sunroof) because it's summer, or crank up the defroster because it's winter... yeah, "HiFi", lol... never mind road noise.

Re:Insert RIAA comment here

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

Radio is that thing owned by "Clear Channel" wherein they play the same shit over and over. Like one of those songs? great, because you'll be able to hear it at the exact same time on the (name your music preference here) station in whatever city you live in, because, Guess What? they fired most of the local DJ's years ago. Most of what you hear on Clear Channel owned stations is syndicated (particularly the morning stuff.

Don't want to hear a car ad in your new car (why the fuck do stations even run these when most people only listen in their cars?), Tough shit! They own the competition too, so if you flip channels, you'll hear the same ad, or another just as worthless!

The above is why I don't even turn on the radio any more. I already own the music I want to listen to (legaly, don't split hairs over licensing, I have the CDs, I'll use them as I see fit as long as I'm not passing them around). I listen to THAT on my MP3 jukebox, or in the CD player.

Why the hell would I want to listen to random crap and then listen to advertisements that don't interest me to pay for it? To experience new music? No, I'm not interested in the crap-du-jour that Clear Channel is selling. I get new music recommendations from friends whos opinions I give a shit about. Or sometimes from the cute girl at the counter at the music store (when I go in there looking for a DVD).

More of the same in "high def?"

No fucking thank you.

Re:What's the catch?

[IncohereD]

The American digital broadcast standard is in-band, in other words it occupies roughly the same bandwidth as the concurrent analogue FM it simulcasts. To fit a digital signal within one FM space allocation requires intense lossy data compression. The analogue FM doesn't undergo data compression (dynamic compression is an entirely different beast.) There's your catch. Digital in this case is less effecient.

FM signals have 150 kHz to work with. MP3s can be decoded in real-time, and sound pretty clear to the majority of people at 128 kbps. And if you're getting less than one bit per Hz of bandwidth, your coding scheme (or transmitter, or receiver) isn't very good. And was possibly designed in the 1960s.

I realize the digital signal has to co-exist with the analog signal in the same bandwidth, but there's clever ways of doing that sort of thing.

Consider of what a modern cellphone is capable of with MILLIWATTS of transmission power. Now picture being able to transmit your signal in the hundreds or thousands of Watts and use your imagination.