On Aug 27, 12:38 pm, Bart Bailey wrote:

Orban's Opti-Mod I think it's called, and station personnel that can't
seem to resist adjusting them for maximum smoke.

Processors were always set "hot" way before IBOC came on the scene,
and I never heard station audio clip and distort the way it does now
on the analog side of AM HD. Reducing the available bandwith for
analog to +/- 5 khz to shoehorn the digital portion sure hasn't helped
either.

The whole idea with HD is that you have to back off on the processing
a bit. You can't overdrive digital the way you can with analog and
have it come out sounding good. It's like slightly overdriving a
recording on cassette tape vs. Minidisc. If you try it with Minidisc,
you hit a brick wall and everything above that starts sounding like so
much mush.

Stephanie Weil
New York City, USA