Still no comparison

[Chad Hauris]

Originally Posted by compucat

I cringe when I hear commercials advertising digital "HD" radio. They have already screwed up TV by going digital. If they mess with radio and make all my radios sets obsolete I'll really be mad. I agree with the earlier post. Make it backward compatible or limit it to a special band of frequencies and leave the current system in place. Sometimes good enough is good enough.

HD (digital) radio in the U.S.A. is compatible with analog, as the digital and analog are broadcast simultaneously. The digital is broadcast on a subcarrier or sideband of the signal, both on AM and FM. The only degradation of the analog signal occurs on AM, where the analog channel is restricted to 5 Khz audio and more interference can be generated to weak adjacent frequency signals from the digital signal.

I have not heard either digital AM or FM to tell how it sounds...however it does not seem to be catching on as I think few receivers are available.

It does allow for different programming on the digital channels and public stations have been using the digital multi-channels to offer such things as continuous classical music and news streams.

[ChrisW6ATV]

Originally Posted by Chad Hauris

I have not heard either digital AM or FM to tell how it sounds...however it does not seem to be catching on as I think few receivers are available.

Despite (surprise!) the complaints about bit rates and interference, etc., HD Radio sounds surprisingly good, even at 48 kb/s as used on the stations with two music channels. Yes, it does indeed sound better than analog FM. The bit rates used on HD Radio are not comparable to MP3 bit rates, any more than you would compare the gas mileage of a hybrid car to a 1994 Mercury sedan when both are traveling at 60 miles per hour.

Even AM HD Radio can sound pretty good with its 32 kb/s bit rate, but it can sound pretty bad too. It all depends on how the radio station has its equipment set up.