Update on HD
January 21, 2020Seems many of you in Pittsburgh have HD radios in your cars or homes. It also seems that you enjoy it. There are two things I want to clarify based on your responses.
WPGP (1250) is NOT broadcasting in HD on AM. According to Scott Fybush, that was the case back in the Radio Disney days, but Salem Broadcasting turned it off upon purchase and the switch to “The Answer”.
100.7-3 is the old WAMO 100 (660 Wilkinsburg) format. Now here’s the trick behind this. When WAMO returned to 660 several years ago, it was assigned an FX (the abbreviation for “FM Translator”) at 100.1 which, at the time, was on the KDKA-TV tower. It moved over to Hays where 96.1 and 1250 have their transmitters.
About a year ago, WAMO was assigned another FX at 107.3 and created a new format to put on 660. So, here’s the catch, an AM signal is allowed to have more than one translator. But each one has to serve a different contour within the main signal. So, 100.1 and 107.3 likely share a large percentage of the same contour. Therefore, what had been on 660 vacated the AM frequency and the new format came on. Meanwhile, FX signals can also retransmit HD-2 channels and a deal was struck for the “main signal” to be WBZZ-HD3 and 100.1 continues to serve as the translator while 660 is on 107.3.
When we were first talking about HD radio, a question came out on how to present the “new” signals. Some suggested a “new” band (AM/FM/HD) and others thought if they just tacked the new signals onto the existing ones (like they did) it would work. How many of us have gotten calls from listeners wondering why their radio goes crazy (when the HD signal drops). We had a great HD2 format on the air in L.A. – but it would drop out in certain places in the market. Older HD radios would just revert back to the main channel which confused listeners who didn’t “get it”. Newer radios just go silent and display something like “no HD signal”. Does anyone listen? Some do. Many don’t (unless they’re on a translator available on non-HD radios). We’ve had the chance to engage listeners in the new “products” and in every step it seems we did it – wrong. FM got big when AM/FM radios became commonplace. UHF TV became relatable when “all channel” tuners when into production. Will HD ever catch on? Not as long as the “HD” channels have a 10% footprint compared to their “main” channels. The setting to hear the HD channels in my car is off the main page. If I have that setting “off” – I wouldn’t know that there are HD channels. There is so much more that could be done- but it would require the receiver folks and the broadcasting folks to get on the same page. Right now broadcasting seems to be overshadowed by the efforts of the digital providers to get a space on the dashboard. In this day and age we NEED radio champions to make our product easier to understand and more compelling to use. (Younger media users find “call letters” and “frequency” retention more difficult to understand than website addresses, according to Larry Rosin. https://www.allaccess.com/net-news/archive/story/193005/teens-and-their-parents-share-views-on-radio-in-ed When you were getting interested in radio, were you connected with Kilohertz? Megahertz? Call Letters? Neither, it seems, are they.
Well, functionally, tuning an AM/FM radio can be easier than going to a website address, nothing to boot and as simple as on switch band selector switch and frequency knob. Some radios are just on-off and tune, ‘beyond easy’ indeed.
A way to explain the option of radio to a younger person might be to explain that the frequency display is like the ‘browser’ and the frequency, like 107.3, is the station’s ‘address’ on the radio, just like all websites have their space on the net.
It’s like with a streaming server, I’ve explained the idea of port numbers being like frequencies on a radio dial, an idea a friend came up with, but it helps explain in a clear way why a net broadcaster gets a certain exclusive port number to be used in all of their links.
Boomer
Not arguing the simplicity of using a radio, Boomer. The research from Rosin states:
“ROSIN noted during his talk that while adults think of listening to AM/FM radio as’beyond easy,’ teens can actually find the process of remembering a station’s frequency and then having to tune it in confusing.”
That’s Rosin’s research not mine. If a respondent says it’s tough for them, it’s tough. It also may point out that it’s not important for them to know how to tune a radio. Let’s face it, radio isn’t really doing a lot to relate to younger people. Nothing new. Many programmers were told to “forget the teens” and go for an older audience. Much of the music (and podcast programming) available online is a lot more graphic and not suitable for public broadcasts. Top 40 radio gets edited music, but since it’s available online in it’s uncensored form-and readily accessible, the convenience of radio escapes them. I wish I had the answers. Lee Abrams on a podcast this week predicted that broadcasting will be: “…a big pie split up between Satellite, streaming and whatever technology comes along. Unless they go through some radical transformation with their programming, they (radio) are going to be a pretty small part of the pie.” Content is king in the entertainment world as much today as it was in the 50’s. If it’s really good, people will figure it out and consume it. Content creators are more prevalent than ever these days -and if radio can offer then a great outlet for their material-the medium won’t fade away.
so….they can’t remember 107.3, but they can remember http://www.streamyourfavoritemusic.com/downloads ?
(shoulder shrug) – it’s what Larry Rosin says. . truth of the matter is if it’s important to them they’ll remember it.
That’s right, I can’t hear any HD AM stations in the area, but Disney on 1250 was doing it on and off.
I’m also getting 107.3 The Beat reasonably well now in Greentree, where I could barely get it in the past. They’ve had a construction permit to move 107.3 closer into downtown for a while now, according to Radio-Locator, so they must have gotten it done. I’ve always gotten a good signal from 660 AM, The Beat’s parent station.
I’ve been generally disappointed in the direction that HD radio has been going so far. I was ready to go, and bought two HD home radios, a Directed and a Sony. People pushing the idea of HD radio said FM stations could get two more stations and would use them to pioneer new formats and develop new programming and real alternatives, like FM in the early days, while AM was still king.
I haven’t heard any new voices, DJs or experimental programming on HD, and most stations are running automation, and more now are repeating other stations. The first HD I heard was DVE’s blues channel years ago, and the sound quality actually was really good.
On the technical side, it was promised that AM was going to sound like FM in HD, and FM was to sound like listening to a CD, but yet I’m still hearing watery and thin sound, except for the mentioned blues channel, that was getting closer to CD.
Another issue is car listening to HD, and you hit a spot with a low signal, it will skip a few times and the speakers go silent, which can sound odd, dead silence over having the static when an FM signal fades. I found that off-putting, and it happened regularly, probably because of Pittsburgh’s mountains.
I think stations should work on the technical issues, make HD sound better and hold the signal, and improve programming have, people actually at stations locally and experimenting with new audio art, give college students a palette to paint with on an HD subchannel, there must be people out there who want their own shows.
Boomer
Great comments, Boomer. This is one reason “HD” radio hasn’t really caught on. The HD in reality stands for “Hybrid Digital” – not “High Definition”. Probably one of the first mistakes they made in the rollout. In reality the HD signal uses the analog frequency, but it seems like the digital signal resides in the ‘sidebands’. WDVE HD 1, 2 and whatever is actually somewhere near 102.3 (or 102.4) and 102.6 (or 102.7). If you can still find an HD AM station you’ll hear the HD “hash” one spot above and one spot below its actual frequency. (KDKA’s HD signal -when it’s on resides on 1010 and 1030). Pretty much the same for FM. I may have the actual bandwidth wrong but the principle is there. The power level of the HD transmitter is much lower than the actual power of the analog signal. Some say a 50,000 watt station will have an HD signal which transmits at 5,000 watts. You’ll still catch the main signal, but the HD signal will be gone. There are good points about the FM digital signals..they can sound better than the analog signal. It takes aligning the signals – because the digital transformation adds delay to the signal. The analog signal will have to be delayed by an equal amount. It was a real problem at first but great engineers have figured that out. It’s noise free as well. You may hear more high frequencies, and you may hear more robust low frequencies. But if the source material is lousy, it will be enhanced by the digital signal. On AM, you may be disappointed. It sounds so artificial you may think there’s something wrong with your radio. The bit rate is so low that it’s worse than most MP3 files. You’ll most likely get a better sounding signal on your cell phone or ipad. Satellite radio quality is disappointing also. The possibility of great sounding audio on satellite exists, but to get all of the signals uploaded (and downloaded) on Sirius/XM they have to compress the crap out of it. FM radio has it all over satellite. Example? “Smoke On The Water” by Deep Purple. There’s a high-hat signal at the beginning that on a well processed FM signal will punch through. On Satellite it will probably sound more like someone turned the “treble” way down. Some of the Sirius sports channels even make AM analog radio sound good. It’s a shame. With the big focus these days on 5G and the auctioning of radio frequencies, the possibility of fixing or enhancing “digital” radio the way it could be done is pretty small. Full power signals, unaffected analog signals and those new formats you’re wondering about are pretty far down the road. I programmed an FM HD signal once-and the boss told me that spending more than 20 minutes in scheduling a week’s worth of music was a waste of time. It’s an after-thought and for the most part poorly planned and haphazardly executed. There are some good channels but you’ll find more of the same on HD that you find on analog. There are a few specialty channels but with certain companies cutting back their staff, they’re also probably cutting back their research and development into new reasons for you to tune into HD2, HD3 or HD4 if it exists. And you’ll find that most HD channels are available online. College students have their palette whenever they want it through online broadcasts and podcasts. That media is much easier to find on digital devices. The technical improvements in HD radio – in reality aren’t necessary these days. You’ll probably agree that many of the MAIN radio station channels need improvement. Many media companies are more focused on keeping their shareholders happy.
Good information for everyone, Dave, it seems like many people don\’t understand what HD radio really is. I think by the time HD came out, many people had bypassed it and went straight to the computer and mp3 without bothering to find out what HD had to offer.
I used to hear the hash sound to the sides of 1250 Radio Disney when the HD was on, and low level hiss on the channel too sometimes. When tuned to the side of FM stations with HD, a whine is heard, about a 350 hertz tone. I\’ve heard that difference in delay between the main and HD audio, and parts of words will repeat.
The quality does seem to vary a lot with HD subchannels. I was just listening to the oldies station in town, and their HD2 sounded watery, like an old cassette. Something\’s going on there, because they only had HD2 running, so it should be clean, with more bandwidth available.
Yeah, satellite causes ear cruelty, the XM side has a long history of being pretty lo-fi, but these days Sirius channels aren\’t far behind. Some channels get lots of bandwidth like Howard 100 and the Grateful Dead channel, those are closer to analog quality than others. I\’ve heard sibilances that sound odd, sounding more like a \’swish\’ than an \’S\’ sound.
I agree, I haven\’t heard so many kinds of distortion in analog FM radio as I do today. Some of it is ear maturity over time, and overprocessed recordings, low bit feeds, the noise from Nielsen encoding for ratings. Our ears tend to get used to it and normalize the perceived quality, but if you compare a good recording on CD to the same song on the radio, the difference is vast in nearly every judgement you could make about the sound quality!
Boomer