In article
,
Rfburns wrote:

On Jun 6, 7:35 am, "David Eduardo" wrote:
"Rfburns" wrote in message

...
A friend let me borrow his Sony XDR-S3HD radio before he sells it on
eBay to try and recoup some of his money. Trying it out I kept
wondering * what¹s so compelling about this? I could detect virtually
no difference in audio quality between FM analog and FM ³HD².

On a larger radio, there is a definite improvement in audio, but one of the
big advantages is the near total absence of multipath in vehicles in motion.

What was even more irritating was that the analog and
digital signals were out of sync by about 5 seconds. So much for a
smooth transition. No CD Quality here boys.

The delay is supposed to be synchronized by the station. Obviously, the
station did not do this right, which is not HD's fault. All stations I have
heard transition seamlessly.

The real shocker was how power hungry the radio must be * and this is
just a tabletop clock radio * nothing fancy. It comes with a MASSIVE
external power transformer ³brick² that you could use as an anchor for
a boat.

The available second generation receivers, overall, suck.

To be honest it's hard to imagine the next generation radios consuming
significantly less power. Things just don't work that way. Also, the
radio has a headphone output which I used to drive a very high quality
amplifier and I still couldn't hear much of a difference. In fact,
the high frequencies sounded cleaner in FM analog mode.
The radio seemed to get confused at times when it attempted to switch
and went silent which required a power on reset to get out of it. Not
too cool.

Actually it is the only real improvement you can expect from the 2nd
generation radios is a reduction in the power requirements. Don't
believe the BS about the current crop of receivers being 2nd generation.
Of course for the 2nd generation radios to be produced requires that the
IC's specifically designed to be used in IBOC receivers be fabricated.
The earliest that will happen is this summer.

Let's be honest Eduardo if thats possible for you, it's just not going
to sell and will take years to be successful and I don't think the
public even cares. It's just the radio insiders that seem to be going
crazy over it.

It is not possible for Eduardo to be honest.

--
Telamon
Ventura, California