Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their analog tuners

Whitehall

You have concisely summed everything I was going to say in Part 2 of my post to Nat. If the analog broadcaster can give the radio listening world a high quality audio signal with 200KHz why do the IBOC folks need 400KHz? Exactly as you stated, they are going to carve up that 400 KHz into as many "stations" as they can parse. The more "stations", the more revenue. And when the little guys can't buy the equipment to broadcast digital, all those overlapping interference problems will go away.

I had linked to this article in another thread. Here's another gem of a quote from it.

It’s Digital!” i.e., better audio quality? To the industry (and any consumer who does their homework) HD Radio is positioned as “Pure Digital. Clear Radio.” The pitch, in other words, is that this is technologically better radio. Where’s the evidence that audio quality is a meaningful benefit, that “bad audio” is one of Radio’s audience problems? Most people don’t have a problem with the audio quality of their radios. The vast majority of your audience is not comprised of audiophiles. In fact, your listeners are less likely to be discriminating musicologists and more likely to be tone deaf.

In other words, we can carve the 400 KHz up and the stupid American public is so tone deaf they won't know the difference.

These guys have the balls don't they? I do hope we can collectively castrate them.
 
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One thing that has not been mentioned here as yet is the limitations of digital broadcasting signal wise. With analog FM (or TV AM for that matter) a signal degrades slowly over distance. Note that when the FM station is distant, you can hear it but often with what I call 'birdies' - the sort of thing that Bob Carver's assymetric detector was designed to cope with -and does so surprisingly well. The digital signal because it is only ones and zeroes does not degrade slowly over distance, but very abruptly -it may be fine a mile from your home but impossible to hear at your house. This is not even discussing the MPEG algorithm for digitizing the sound or the games it plays with your ears. Shades of the first days of solid state receivers when everyone praised the solid state 'sound' - then after an hours listening and the resulting fatigue they discovered what was meant by crossover distortion. After several contracts some years back consulting on the HDTV (MPEG2) coming standards I dug into this quite deeply, still have a copy of the standard around here somewhere.

On a closing note, as an old telephone type here is what 64 (56kbps data) PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) gets you. First the voiceband is filtered to a signal between 300 and 3,500Hz, then it is digitized. With ISDN a new algorithm, 64kbit/s ADPCM was proposed that was to be 150 to 7,000 Hz wide - wow!

Rob
 
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Yamaha B-2 said:
Bob - I'm disappointed. Tim was kind enough to put me onto the ST-J75 :thmbsp: about two years ago and the first one I got was such a good sounding tuner I picked up a few others. :D Anyway, the disappoint comes from the fact that you don't seem to have the TIC tuner list memorized, which I had simply assumed. :sigh: The ST-J75 is definitely not digital, other than its tuning mechanism. Believe it was born in '79. And, Tim and I share the same high regard for the Sony PS-X7 TT/TA.

Just my attempt at identifying Tim. :D Didn't realize he was here.
i have never heard a sony st-j75. folk i trust say it's a fantastic sounding tuna (another bargain-basement marvel?), if not quite as nice as the wery best.

according to tic, it was released in 1981, & according to leonard feldman's review in the april 1981 issue of audio magazine, (yust after its release), it is definitely a digitally synthesized tuner. fwiw...

http://fmtunerinfo.com/ST-J75review.pdf

doug s.
 
Bob, I like the way you think. I hate the idea of so-called HD-radio. It's something we didn't need and something we didn't ask for as consumers.

But neither was HDTV. It's being forced upon us by government kowtowing to business interests. HDTV was started solely because Uncle Sam threatened to take away unused UHF television channels and auction them off for cash, but said the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) could KEEP their precious spectrum if they came up for a use for it. HDTV was their response, and Washington relented.

I fear that HD-radio will happen in the same way. Writing to Senators or Representatives or the FCC won't help. The timetable's already set, in my opinion. Do I like it? Hell, no! But since we as people who enjoy audio on older gear are a tiny minority of the population, we quite simply don't count.

Sure, write letters. Boycott digital gear. Preach the truth that digital radio truly sucks. But don't expect efforts such as these to hold back what's already been given a green light. At the most there'll be a delay, just as there was with the hard switchover to HDTV. But it's coming. Sooner or later, digital radio will be all there is.

I'm not looking forward to it, either.

Tom
 
Tom you're absolutely correct about digital coming sooner or later. But the real question is what kind of digital system? For FM will it be Ibiquites IBOC HD? I certainly hope not because it is going to screw up what is left of FM radio as we know it. I really don't understand some of the detailed technical posts here and on the yahoo site about IBOC. BUT I do know analog stations currently have 200KHz of bandwidth to work with. With this they give us a high quality audio signal. IBOC digital stations will have 400 KHz. That alone means 50 potential FM stations in any one particular geographic area will have to go away. Now the IBOC folks may divide up their allotted 400KHz and bring a lot of stations back, but they won't have the bandwidth to broadcast high quality signals will they? Another thing is, I have been a long time observer of how the U.S. government and special interests really work. I know that Ibiquity and the MSBM of that ilk don't really have interests of the American public at heart. And they have lobbied and bribed the Congress to do their bidding. That makes me mad. If digital broadcasting is a done deal then the only thing I can do is not support Ibiquity IBOC economically. If enough people are informed and do the same thing we can defeat IBOC. IF we have to have digital then let it be digital in another form (maybe DRM) AND with provisions that the public's interest (even audiophiles) is protected.
 
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See my previous post about digital transmission. HDTV has been officially decreed for 2009. Of course they will offer all us fogeys set top boxes to convert our obsolete TVs to digital. What they conveniently neglected to tell anyone is that yout current antenna will not work with HDTV, and even if you get a new one you may well be too far from the transmitters to get reception. This forces you into the clutches of the cable pirates and their total lack of competition by government decree.

Of course you can always conclude that Newton Minnow was an optimist and that TV is not a vast wasteland, but simply an open sewer and then buy lots of DVDs.

Or you can conclude that the current bunch in Congress are so deep into the pockets of the K street gang and vote the whole lot into oblivion in the next November fiasco.

Rob
 
bob adams said:
So when were you going to send me that ST-J75 you promised me several weeks ago? I'll do the math on the TX-1000 for you. :D
The math on the TX-1000 is that I'll swap you three ST-J75 tuners for one TX-1000 tuner. How's that for some good math? :yes: Or, how about two ST-J75s and one CT-1010?
 
merrylander said:
What they conveniently neglected to tell anyone is that yout current antenna will not work with HDTV...
Waitttttttttt a second, Rob. If the frequencies used for HDTV are in the present VHF and UHF television bands, why would any current antenna not work? When I bought my present outdoor antenna, it was specifically mentioned that it was indeed HDTV ready. What makes a current antenna unsuitable for HDTV reception?? I'm assuming that as long as polarization and frequency range are the same as they are at present, there's no problem. This would also I assume be the rule for HD-radio on the present FM band.
Tom
 
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Well for what it is worth I have an amplified Terk in my garage attic and they also sell a version specifically for HDTV, is it truth or marketing? Regardless that still does not answer the distance problem.

Rob
 
Okay, agreed. I'm thinking that sharp cutoff instead of gradual fringe fading is gonna pi$$ off a lot of people like me who rely on it now with analog TV and FM, and I'm also thinking it's more marketing than truth, personally, about current vs. HDTV-specific antennas... although I have seen some pretty weird-looking designs for indoor set-top HDTV antennas over the past couple of years...
Tom
 
Has this been addressed yet: What of digital content control on HD radio? More control over what you can and can't grab off the air for future listening elsewhere. If that's a capability of the technology, it's just one less benefit for consumers. But then again, it's not really about us, is it?

Likely lousy sound and likely less opportunity to record for use later. And you get to buy a new radio to enjoy those 'benefits'...oh joy.

I had Sirius for a year in the car and just let the subscription lapse. Poor sound quality was only part of it. I noticed that the zillion music channels still seemed to have relatively limited playlists. Lots of repetition -- I can get that for free over the airwaves.

I'll stick with my newly rebuilt tuners as long as I can: Marantz 2130, Sansui TU-9900, Heath AJ-12, Pioneer TX-9500II and Sumo Charlie.
 
Current Example of Market Research Being Manipulated

Vinyl Rules! said:
Good question I'll answer with two observations:

[snip]

Observation 2: There are two types of Market Research (a) Research that is actually valid and reports what was actually learned; and (b) Research that is structured in such a way to provide data that the originator of the Research wants to see. I've worked for Fortune 50 companies in Marketing and prefer to do (a), but have been forced to do (b) a few times. Which kind of research do you think Ibiquity did to develop the marketing analysis and sales material they used in their pitches to Clear Channel and Infinity? :cool:
Just a follow-up to this previous post I made in this thread:

Check out:

Gartner: Research Misrepresented in Oracle Ad

The Gartner Group's ombudsman has slapped Oracle on the
wrist, saying that the database giant misused Gartner research
data in an ad in The Wall Street Journal.
http://ct.enews.eweek.com/rd/cts?d=186-2992-19-91-124544-347814-0-0-0-1

This yet another example of how large companies will manipulate and mis-represent market research to communicate a sales message rather than the actual data from the research. Sad to say, many companies engage in this despicable practice.

Any one want to guess if Ibiquity did this, too? :cool:
 
This has been a fascinating, if not a bit disheartening, thread. I'm still holding out hope for the future of FM broadcasting. Here's why:

- consumer acceptance - the question of who is going to buy the digital FM equipment is unanswered. Frankly, given that this technology and product are no where near full deployment, and Sirrius and others are gaining a substantial foothold, I'm wondering if IBOC will be to late to the market to make any impact.

- cost of entry - think about it, who really goes out of their way to buy an AM/FM radio anymore. You can buy an HT receiver with an AM/FM tuner built in, but you sure didn't buy it for the tuner. Car audio, same thing. Boom boxes, same thing. Why, then, does anyone think a consumer would pay a premium to buy something that they can already get for free - perception of sound quality not withstanding?

There are probably other reasons as well, that are more emotion than economics or physics. Like others, I'm holding on to my tunas for the foreseeable future.
 
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