[BC] IBOC "secrets" and my opinions.

[Steve Newman]

Well put. As for the upgrading of plants? Well, in many ways that's a cop. I 
believe you said one could upgrade a site without the extra expense of a 
piece(s) of equipment one doesn't need. Doesn't cut it with me. Well, the 
White Elephant is in the room and he doesn't like lemonade plus there's no 
sugar in the kitchen anyway. :) Let the games begin.

Steve

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <WFIFeng at aol.com>
To: <broadcast at radiolists.net>
Sent: Saturday, March 24, 2007 5:51 AM
Subject: Re: [BC] IBOC "secrets" and my opinions.



> This is *exactly* how I felt, as well! I started off thinking that this 
> was
> going to be an excellent system, just as you described, above. I was 
> gung-ho
> and hopeful. "If it's Digital, it HAS to be better!" Uh-huh. Then reality 
> set
> in... stations started firing the thing up on the air. 500 watts (average 
> power
> )
> of "white noise" makes for an extremely effective jammer! Weren't the 
> Soviets
> doing exactly that in the Cold War era, with megawatt transmitters on
> shortwave? Those things littered the dial, from end-to-end, with their 
> constant
>
> "grinding gears" sound.
>
> Now we have IBUZ making the AM dial sound like a nest of angry, metallic
> hornets on speed. We have Pattern Bandwidth issues. Nonlinearities. Severe
> interference to 1'st-adjacents. The pending 24 hour operation, and the 
> dramatic
> IX
> effects *that* is going to unleash upon local stations many miles away 
> from the
>
> jammers. We have ~ 800 million receivers that need to be replaced. We 
> still
> only have expensive, power-hungry HD radios, with no sign of 
> battery-friendly
> portables even on the radar! The laundry list is long.
>
> The positives are few & far between. So far, the only ones of note are 
> that
> stations who have invested the major finances and labor into doing this, 
> have
> made significant upgrades to aging Plant. Two thumbs-up for that... but 
> they
> could have spent a whole lot less *just* upgrading old Plant... and 
> wouldn't
> have caused so many problems by activating the hash generators.
>
> The other benefit is to the insignificantly tiny number of Radio 
> Aficionados
> with functional HD radios, who live within the city-grade contours of (a)
> powerhouse AM station(s) and can get reliable/listenable HD signal(s).
>
> The scale can't even stand up, the imbalance is so great.
>
> Willie...