[BC] AM and FM IBOC Quality...

[Burt I. Weiner]

The biggest issue I believe will be in it "robustness".  The listener 
wants to turn it on and have it be there.  So far, my experience 
listening to IBOC in the home and in the car is that it is not there 
all the time.

One of our local stations recently switched format from classical to 
country, but retained the classical on their FM's HD2 and on their 
sister AM.  In listening to it on FM, and the receiver is line of 
site to the transmitter through a large glass window, it's really 
annoying when the receiver switches from classical to country.  Will 
it get better once the analog is dropped and it's strictly 
digital?  Who knows.  I have my suspicions.

Listening to the classical on AM using a G.E. Super Radio, it's not 
bad at all.  Actually, the AM is audibly easier to listen to than the 
FM HD2.  That's the opinion of a listener - me.  With present 
technology the HD2 will never be "CD or FM main channel quality just 
because of what's allotted to it in bandwidth.

Nighttime AM IBOC is going to be very interesting indeed.

Burt


At 10:00 PM 3/22/2007, you wrote:
>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

Burt I. Weiner Associates
Broadcast Technical Services
Glendale, California  U.S.A.
biwa at earthlink.net
K6OQK