[BC] The Ibiquity system just won't cut it

[Dana Puopolo]

If this HD system is so technically deficient that car radios are in analog
half the time, then what's the point? Throw it on the scrap heap where it
belongs, and BUILD ONE THAT WORKS!!  We're supposed to be moving FORWARD here,
not backwards! Both AM and FM have worked in cars fairly well since day one.
NOW the system we hope will REPLACE them won't?

That makes zero sense to me...

-D

------ Original Message ------
Received: Thu, 21 Dec 2006 02:23:35 AM EST
From: Robert Orban <rorban at earthlink.net>

At 10:03 PM 12/20/2006, Dana Puopolo wrote:
 >Bob,
 >
 >
 >The notion that someone should take a medium that has perhaps 80 db of
dynamic
 >range and compress and limit it until is runs within a couple db of the
 >CRUSHED main channel is preposterous! Why bother HAVING all that range if
 >you're not going to take some advantage of it?  The one GOOD thing I've
heard
 >from FM HD is the lack of noise. To me at least, peak limting (and clipping)
 >does the most damage to audio of anything.

You missed my point. At least in mobile reception, there will be areas
where a significant amount of crossfading occurs between the analog FM and
HD1 digital streams. If the volume drops 10 dB each time the radio
crossfades from analog to digital, this will be a HUGE irritant -- far
worse than excessive compression or peak limiting. Indeed, I believe that
this would cause 95%+ of the audience to tune out after it happened a few
times.

If a station wants to broadcast a wide dynamic range signal, they might as
well do it on a stream. And even if they do, they need to process for
source-to-source consistency. Schulke's Beautiful Music formats maintained