[BC] IBOC AM Quality

[James Kuzman]

The new night-time AM IBOC decision notwithstanding...

I have to take a bit of issue with those who say that AM IBOC audio quality 
isn't substantially better than the analog.

Is it FM quality?  No, even though the promos we hear daily tell us it is; 
does it bring new life to music on the AM band?  Absolutely.  I realize that 
most AM stations have been resigned to carry sports, news, and talk where 
the benefits of improved audio would be negligible, but for music - the 
audio quality is significantly better.

It takes some work, mind you, to make it sound decent... it's not perfect... 
some material sounds "like satellite," as someone pointed out - referring 
I'm guessing to the encoding and compression artifacts (data, not audio); 
and it does reveal bad source material very quickly.

All of that being said, however, if you feed quality audio in, and process 
carefully - by which I mean keeping the sound open, not dense, and being 
careful about how you handle the high bands - AM IBOC can sound quite nice.

Jim Kuzman
WDYZ AM 990, Orlando

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