[BC] IBOC "secrets" and my opinions.

[Mike Erickson]

To be fair Kevin, there were many great engineers who spent countless hours
making AM stations sound great in AM stereo.  You have the airchecks.  The
public didn't care, it wasn't promoted right and the FCC dragged its feet.
Here, we're getting the same nonsense.  Poor promotion,. the FCC hasn't set
a standard and the average American has no clue.  Again, FM has the upper
hand, AM gets shafted.  Guess what?  They didn't care then, they won't care
now, when there is even MORE choice for content.

=Mike Erickson=


On 3/25/07, Kevin Tekel <amstereoexp at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> 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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-- 
=Mike Erickson=
W1WHN