[BC] RAIN report: HD Radio s Creative Thinking

[DANA PUOPOLO]

AAC plus is one of he better ones. Indeed, I listen to it every day (via XM).
That said, I still hear artifacts all the time. So does my wife.  I'm a 51
year old man who's HF hearing I'm sure has declined over the years. Younger
men (and women) likely hear them even worse.
Unless I actually READ the tests (and their results), I assume notning about
them. By the way, I can pick out BR reduced audio that's under 256K  when
compared with the original source with near 100% accuracy using headphones I
know (Grados).
I recall reading years ago that Bell Labs (at least I think it was them) was
trying to determine the optimum bandwioth to use for sound reproduction (this
was in the 1930's). They set uo a "high quality)"  (for the time) audio system
and ran essentially double blind tests of different audio bandwidths. They
were surprised to find that people overwhelmingly preferred narrow bandwiths!
This ran contrary to what they thought people would like.

Finally they realized why: The audio reproduction equipment was flawed, even
though it was the best available. So, they built a stage with an orchestra.
The orchestra sat behind an acoustically transparent curtain.Between the
orchestra and the curtain was a set of louvers that could be opened or closed
without the audience knowing which position they were in. When closed, the
louvers attenuated all highs over 5 kHz.
NOW they discovered the audience overwhelmingly preferred the full audio
bandwith over the narrow band audio. Had these scientists not been the
visionalies we now know them to be, we might have been STUCK with inferior
reproduced audio for generations.

Quite frankly, FM stations could make 'near digital' sound tomorrow by turning
down their audio processing a few notches. The fact that they do  not want to
will ultimately kill them!  Listeners have choices now that simply didn't
exist  years ago, and they are goig to these alternatives in bunches. HD radio
will not change this. Besides, how many stations take theiHD channel and put
audio on it with a 5 db dynamic range? The majority, I'll wager. Why HAVE a
near High Fi medium if you're going to trash it out of the box?  Remember, no
listener can undo the changes  (damage?)  caused by audio processing. Analog
FM has a 50 db dynamic range, give or take. 40 db of this is wasted by the
average FM station.
HD radio has an 80 db dynamic range.  70 db of this is wasted by the average
HD station.  Why bother with HD if you're going to trash it so?

I'm not hardly going to visit the dueling codec arguement now; that's a whole
topic upon itself. Let's just say that I'm sure the coding used by Starguide 
duels with HD's coding to some degree (unless they happen to be identical).
Let's also say that the MP2, MP3 and/or WMA coding used by the various HD
based audio storage systems  every station uses these days also duels with HD
(I know that CC uses MP2 with Prophet) does as well.

-D

------ Original Message ------
Received: Sat, 15 Oct 2005 02:21:28 AM PDT
From: Robert Orban <rorban at earthlink.net>
To: broadcast at radiolists.net
Subject: Re: [BC] RAIN report: HD Radio s Creative Thinking

At 09:18 PM 10/14/2005, you wrote:
>From: DANA PUOPOLO <dpuopolo at usa.net>
>Subject: Re: [BC] RAIN report: HD Radio s Creative Thinking
>To: Broadcast Radio Mailing List <broadcast at radiolists.net>
>Message-ID: <041JJoej66912S09.1129350957 at cmsweb09.cms.usa.net>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
>I have heard AAC plus, and even at 96K can clearly hear its artifacts.
>I would wager that most women can (clearly) hear them too. But after all,
>women only represent 55-60% of the audience, so why do they matter?
>When you remove 95+ % of anything, it's not going to sound nearly as good as
>the original.
>
>So my comparison IS valid!

While you are of course entitled to your preference, you seem to be 
unusually sensitive to SBR's artifacts, at least according to the 
double-blind listening tests made by Coding Technologies, not to mention 
3GPP2 (3rd Generation Partnership Project 2), ISMA (Internet Streaming 
Media Alliance), DVB (Digital Video Broadcasting), the DVD Forum, Digital 
Radio Mondiale, and 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project), all of which 
have standardized on aacPlusV1 or aacPlusV2 and/or accepted the aacPlus 
codec as part of their system specifications. I am suspect all of the 
listening panels included women, as these are all serious organizations and 
did not make their choices frivolously.

Bob Orban 



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