High definition FM broadcast's ?

My favorite pbs station now has a digital broadcast alongside the analog one. It has created a significant amount of noise unless I switch my tuner to narrow which of course reduces the quality.

This station has broadcast high quality broadcasts that have kept me entertained for years but the noise makes it unlistenable.

There's also a problem with the engineers understanding how to broadcast with the digital signal and keep the noise down. I believe that's the case here in Portland as I know others with the same complaint. The manager at the station is receptive but the engineering department doesn't care to discuss it and are actually rude to myself and others.

The fact that users will have to also buy new radios will also be a problem as the average joe is happy with what he has.

As stated above the stations will use that one HD channel to broadcast a few low quality channels so they can make more money. Heavily compressed mp3 sound will definitely be a step down.

That commerical FM station near me is actually also broadcasting in digital. While I do not have a digital tuner I find that the analog sound quality has improved. Might be just all the new equipment they installed.

Pretty funny..
The thread ask about music on PBS.
I comment there is no longer music on my PBS station (they cancelled it all last summer), just news mostly of a political nature (Washington DC, figures).
Then someone makes a political comment by saying that I did.

I missed the live broadcast on WETA, but they no longer care about the music listener. They are more interested in going up against Rush Limbaugh on the taxpayer's tab. I also miss the live Boston Symphony broadcasts when I lived in that area.

For your sake Bignerd100 all I'll say is I said Democrat. You took that to mean Liberal. Thank you for confirming that the Democrat party is controlled by the left. I am actually a former Democrat who is now non-affiliated. There is no place for moderates like me there. While I will never ever be a Republican I find more and more that I have to mostly vote for Republicans by default.

Gentleman, please keep up the brisk and lively discussion on Fm radio. I'm having my HH scott tuner modded with very good results. Just can't seem yet to beat analog tube Fm performance even though the engineering is nearing 50 years old. Now that's amazing even the new 6,000.00 tuners will get crushed by my HH scott tuner. It's not even close! Keep on bringn it on. Now granted that a much different story with the cd's now a days. SACD/looser! Best wishes and thanks for the great input, Joe

I read in a reasent stereophile mag that in "most" FM radio stations the content is stored on a hard drive and played back from the hard drives. Unless it's live I don't think you will able to get the high quility analog experence that you once got from FM. You may as well go XM becuse its all digitized anyway.

Mark

I contacted a local radio station (San Francisco Bay Area) and received the comments below from their Chief Engineer:

“As far as "HD Radio" goes, we are not on with it now. We are scheduled to begin next year, probably in the summer. Our audio quality really won't be any better with it in my personal opinion. It will be heavily compressed and there will only be an improvement in the signal to noise ratio if the digital signal works well in your receiving location. As far as FM goes, the existing analog signal won't be degraded much, though some published studies indicate that the overall analog receivers signal to noise ratio is degraded, the "new digital" channel (or channels) is a very low bit rate of something like 96kb. The codec that the system uses, which is not upgradeable has some issues, though reports I have heard state that it's "quite listenable".

On FM channels that "multicast" (add more channels), it all is the divided up 96kb, so the overall quality degrades as you add more channels. I am not really sold on all of this at this point in time. We will see what the market thinks of it, and we will do the finest installation possible, to give the new system the best chance of success, our listeners deserve that”.

Based on comments received so far, it sound like HD radio is not living up to the marketing hype. It may be too early to adopt this technology and I just hope that it gets better over time. I am no longer looking at HD radio.

Let's keep it to audio related comments please.
Some of us liberals are a little more than fed up with the current state of affairs.
If you don't like Public Radio don't worry, it won't be arround in it's current form for very long. The current administration has been bussy tinkering.

My PBS station dropped almost all music except the saturday opera broadcast. They play all news and information programs (aka democrat party political propaganda).

Good news is there is a local commercial classical station that moved its broadcast point from a tower 40+ miles away to a tower less than 15 miles away from me.

I could be wrong but I think that HDRadio is not in fact going to give us the greatest resolution the technology is cappable of. Digital radio broadcasts will be less prone to inteferance because you will either have the signal or not. It will allow for greater bandwidth but this will (just like HDTV broadcasts) be divided into multiple channels of content (three broadcasts using the bandwidth given for one broadcast) and surround sound of sorts (further dividing the available bandwidth).

No more listening to that faint NPR station through the static until you have driven out of the state.