[BC] IBOC "secrets" and my opinions.

[Kevin Tekel]

Frank Foti wrote:
> Before the slash-n-bash comments appear from the HD Radio 'haters'
> exclaiming that it creates bitter/sour sound, let's give consideration
> that there are plenty of folks out there working to optimize the
> performance of the system.

But where were you 20 years ago?  There was no such spirit of cooperation
among engineers in trying to improve Motorola's C-Quam AM Stereo; instead,
everyone just wanted to either dump it in favor of a better sytsem, or to
dump it entirely and forget about AM Stereo altogether.

Basically, I have been amazed by the willingness of radio engineers today
to accept the fatal flaws of IBOC, especially on AM, when in comparison,
the trivial shortcomings of the various AM Stereo systems were considered
great enough to warrant complete abandonment of the system.

For example, 20 years ago we complained about "platform motion" on skywave
AM Stereo signals -- even though the problem was eliminated by blending
the audio to mono, and thus didn't affect anyone with a conventional mono
receiver.  Now, we have IBOC which kills skywave totally, and the dominant
opinion is that skywave doesn't matter anymore, and that the few small
benefits of IBOC are worth ruining skywave for *all* listeners, not just
those with IBOC receivers.

Then there's the whole "loss of coverage area" argument.  AM Stereo was
hated because of shady allegations that it could degrade reception for
listeners far outside of a station's protected contour, or deep within the
nulls of a directional pattern.  Now with IBOC, we seem willing to forget
about anyone outside the NIF contour, and sideband nonlinearities caused
by directional arrays are basically ignored as well, even though they
often cause audible annoyances even for listeners with a strong local
signal.

So, either we have been drinking too much transmitter-site tap water, or
Leonard Kahn is getting his death wish...




 
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