"Mark Roberts" wrote in message
...
David Eduardo had written:

| We bought a dozen or so average consumer radios, from a walkman to a
boom
| box to a clock radio, and whatever is in between. On every one, the
music in
| analog sounds as good as it did before, and switching the IBOC on and
off
| produced during several days of testing no significant differences on
| average radios.

Has anyone thought to test on car radios? It's my observation that
the average car radio on AM has more sensitivity and (sometimes) wider
bandwidth than the average home unit. That, to me, would seem to be
the acid test.

All of us tested our own car radios, which, with two exceptions, are anoalog
only. We noticed no difference. I probably had the acid test in my hands, as
I had created the format and know the music to the point I can hear it
without a radio. I noted no difference in any car radio, ranging from a
$39.95 cheapie in a van to a $3,000 Bose system.

Most of the stuff you can get in a Target or Mall-Wart for home
use is pretty junky.

But nearly 75% of all listening is in the home or office, not the car.

A Zenith Circle-of-Sound clock radio from the
1970s will run circles around anything for home use today.
(I miss Zenith in a curious kind of way.) The best recent unit that
I have is a Cambridge Sound Works Model 88 from 2001. It seems fully
NSRC compliant. The two music stations on AM that I could stand to
listen to for extended periods, KFRC (oldies) and KMZT (classical)
sound reasonably good -- not quite FM, but better than almost any
AM. It's a little weak as far as sensitivity goes, though.

I had a McKay-Dymek in the 70's and 80's and it was the radio that I used to
do an initial set-up of audio chains. However, even then we did the same
thing as today: purchase of radios typical of those used for 90% of
listening. And adjustments were made to optimize the sound for the last 10
years or so of consumer gear.

| The only thing that IBOC requires is a narrower analog bandwidth. The
| processing stays the same, and most radios sound identical as they have
| limited bandwidth to begin with.

But then there is the interference. Electrical interference on AM is
bad enough as it is.

The interference to other stations takes place in areas where those other
stations do not have listeners. the minor inconvenience of not being able to
DX 1010 and 1030 in LA is nothing compared with the gain of eventual broad
acceptance of digital AM.