"David Eduardo" wrote in message
. com...

"dxAce" wrote in message
...

Fractured? WBBM's IBOC (QRM) signal renders 790 unlistenable here.

Most likely the 790 signal is not supposed to cover your area with a
listenable (and thus protected) signal. If you are referring to the 790 in
Saginaw, it is not protected to Grand Rapids.

That's reality, no matter which way you decide to slice, dice, or spin
it.

Yep, radio is moving on. You aren't.

That's where you're wrong. We are moving on. But not to your QRM generating
three channel wide garbage that it takes a $300 radio to hear at all (and
that's only if you have a large antenna or are within sight of the towers).
We're moving on to Ogg-Vorbis, mp3, etc., where we can provide our own
selections of music for hours on end, and without your 15 minutes plus of
commercials per hour, and without paying $13 a month for a sketchy satellite
signal. Radio is dying, it's commiting slow suicide. Sad to see it
happening, when I was growing up, radio served it's audience.. now it only
serves itself, and does a **** poor job of even that.

On Tue, 21 Mar 2006 19:47:28 GMT, D Peter Maus
wrote:


Except for the DVD players, all my TV/Video gear. With the exception
of the XM receiver, the Fanfare tuners, and my studio gear, all my audio
hardware. The microwave is an AMANA commercial unit that I bought in
'86. The radio in my office is Proton 300 I bought in the early 90's
and my clock radio is a Proton 320 from '88.

You don't want to know about what's in my radio room.

Quite a bit of the electronics in my house is 12+ and counting. And
of the people I know, I'm the radical one whose stuff is 'all new.'


Except for my radios and speakers, I buy new CE stuff about every 3
years. The state of the art is usually an order of magnitude advanced
by that time.

On Tue, 21 Mar 2006 20:23:33 GMT, Telamon
wrote:

In article ,
"Frank Dresser" wrote:


The situation would be much better if the band was split up between
analog and digital.

Digital audio broadcasting or DAB is a technology for broadcasting
audio programming in digital form that was designed in the late 1980s.
The original objectives of converting to digital systems were to
enable higher fidelity, greater noise immunity, mobile services, and
new services, but sadly DAB now invariably offers audio quality that
is lower than that available on FM.

The acronym DAB is used both to identify the generic technology of
digital audio broadcasting, and specific technical standards,
particularly the Eureka 147 standard described below. Standardization
of DAB technology is promoted by the World DAB Forum, which represents
more than 30 countries but excluding the United States, which has
opted instead for a system called HD Radio.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_audio_broadcasting

"Brenda Ann" wrote in message
...

"David Eduardo" wrote in message
. com...

"dxAce" wrote in message
...

Fractured? WBBM's IBOC (QRM) signal renders 790 unlistenable here.

Most likely the 790 signal is not supposed to cover your area with a
listenable (and thus protected) signal. If you are referring to the 790
in Saginaw, it is not protected to Grand Rapids.

That's reality, no matter which way you decide to slice, dice, or spin
it.

Yep, radio is moving on. You aren't.

That's where you're wrong. We are moving on. But not to your QRM
generating three channel wide garbage that it takes a $300 radio to hear
at all (and that's only if you have a large antenna or are within sight of
the towers). We're moving on to Ogg-Vorbis, mp3, etc., where we can
provide our own selections of music for hours on end, and without your 15
minutes plus of commercials per hour, and without paying $13 a month for a
sketchy satellite signal. Radio is dying, it's commiting slow suicide. Sad
to see it happening, when I was growing up, radio served it's audience..
now it only serves itself, and does a **** poor job of even that.


Addendum:

As a former broadcast engineer myself, I would have been ashamed of creating
interference to another station, no matter whether it was in our supposed
'market' or not. In Portland, a LOT of people listen to stations outside
the market. Stations from Salem, Hillsboro, and even The Dalles are quite
popular and can (or at least COULD) be heard easily in most parts of town
(well, the station in The Dalles mainly in east and northeast areas). The
point really should not be whether a statistically large portion of a market
listens to rimshots or even DX, the point should be good engineering
practices. IBOC is not a good engineering practice.

"David" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 21 Mar 2006 21:41:49 GMT, "David Eduardo"
wrote:


"David" wrote in message
. ..
On Tue, 21 Mar 2006 15:44:16 GMT, "David Eduardo"
wrote:


Satellite has run commercials since its offset on the talk channels, and
XM
started with commercials on all music channels but took them off.
Neither
believes more than 5% of revenues will ever come from advertising.


Not true. XM has always had some commercial-free music channels.

Wrong. When the sytem launched, all music channels had 6 minutes of "ad
quota" which was not used because nobody wanted to advertise on satellite
int he first few years. Later, when Sirius made inroads and started
promoting commercial free music channels, XM killed the commercial
opportunities on their music channels to be equal to Sirius.

From the start, I was programming 5 of the music channels, and two years
and
a couple of months later the commercial avails were eliminated.

That's bogus. Ask Abrams.

That is who worked with. All music channels were to be commercial, 6' max,
at the offset. They changed in reaction to Sirius going non-commercial on
all music channels.

"Brenda Ann" wrote in message
...

"David Eduardo" wrote in message
. com...

"dxAce" wrote in message
...

Fractured? WBBM's IBOC (QRM) signal renders 790 unlistenable here.

Most likely the 790 signal is not supposed to cover your area with a
listenable (and thus protected) signal. If you are referring to the 790
in Saginaw, it is not protected to Grand Rapids.

That's reality, no matter which way you decide to slice, dice, or spin
it.

Yep, radio is moving on. You aren't.

That's where you're wrong. We are moving on. But not to your QRM
generating three channel wide garbage that it takes a $300 radio to hear
at all (and that's only if you have a large antenna or are within sight of
the towers).

The receivers are getting cheaper and better. I have a newer Boston
Acoustics HD, and it gets all the HD2 channels inside a building that faces
away fromt he transmitters. By the time there is more content, there will be
many more recievers out, and the price point will move down. My first VHS
was $800. My first CD player was $1500. My first DVD player was over $300. A
year or so later, prices were down by more than half. Now you can get a DVD
player for $19 after a rebate.

We're moving on to Ogg-Vorbis, mp3, etc., where we can provide our own
selections of music for hours on end, and without your 15 minutes plus of
commercials per hour, and without paying $13 a month for a sketchy
satellite signal.

Actually, the big players, starting with Clear Channel, have 10 minute
commercial limits.

Radio is dying, it's commiting slow suicide.

Radio is changing, not dying. The cume is within 2% of what it was in the
late 60's. The usage by target demos, 18-54, is only off a few percent from
the levels of the 60's and 70's in Arbitron, and the levels of the 50's in
other surveys. Radio may be used less in the overall entertainment mix, but
it serves 95% of the people well, as it always has.

Sad to see it happening, when I was growing up, radio served it's
audience.. now it only serves itself, and does a **** poor job of even
that.

No evidence of that.

"David" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 21 Mar 2006 21:43:39 GMT, "David Eduardo"
wrote:



That is HD-1. All HD main channels repeat the analog channel with a delay
that fills a digital buffer for fallback. The HD-2 channels are as listed.
And they are on, for Emmis, Clear and CBS. There is no "agreement" with
CBS
and Clear as that would be collusion.


I was listening to Harry Shearer on KROQ with the 2 icon on my
Recepter HD glowing bright blue as I was typing that message. Same
program as the analog and HD1, delayed a few seconds longer than HD1.

Technical trouble? They have separate programming for HD-2.

On Tue, 21 Mar 2006 23:17:15 GMT, "David Eduardo"
wrote:


"David" wrote in message
.. .
On Tue, 21 Mar 2006 21:41:49 GMT, "David Eduardo"
wrote:


"David" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 21 Mar 2006 15:44:16 GMT, "David Eduardo"
wrote:


Satellite has run commercials since its offset on the talk channels, and
XM
started with commercials on all music channels but took them off.
Neither
believes more than 5% of revenues will ever come from advertising.


Not true. XM has always had some commercial-free music channels.

Wrong. When the sytem launched, all music channels had 6 minutes of "ad
quota" which was not used because nobody wanted to advertise on satellite
int he first few years. Later, when Sirius made inroads and started
promoting commercial free music channels, XM killed the commercial
opportunities on their music channels to be equal to Sirius.

From the start, I was programming 5 of the music channels, and two years
and
a couple of months later the commercial avails were eliminated.

That's bogus. Ask Abrams.

That is who worked with. All music channels were to be commercial, 6' max,
at the offset. They changed in reaction to Sirius going non-commercial on
all music channels.



''XM's programming lineup features 71 music channels, more than 30 of
them commercial-free; and 29 channels of sports, talk, children's and
entertainment including 13 premiere news channels covering the latest
national, world and financial developments like CNBC, CNN Headline
News, CNNfn, FOX News, ABC News & Talk, USA Today, Bloomberg, BBC
World Service, C-SPAN and its own XM News. People for the first time
will be able to receive on the radio the diverse selection of 24-hour
news sources that they're used to getting at home on cable and
DirecTV.''

http://www.xmradio.com/newsroom/scre...25_launch.html

On Tue, 21 Mar 2006 23:22:34 GMT, "David Eduardo"
wrote:


"David" wrote in message
.. .
On Tue, 21 Mar 2006 21:43:39 GMT, "David Eduardo"
wrote:



That is HD-1. All HD main channels repeat the analog channel with a delay
that fills a digital buffer for fallback. The HD-2 channels are as listed.
And they are on, for Emmis, Clear and CBS. There is no "agreement" with
CBS
and Clear as that would be collusion.


I was listening to Harry Shearer on KROQ with the 2 icon on my
Recepter HD glowing bright blue as I was typing that message. Same
program as the analog and HD1, delayed a few seconds longer than HD1.

Technical trouble? They have separate programming for HD-2.


Not ever that I've heard, and I check at least once a day.

D Peter Maus wrote:


And the final analogy would be that the elephant is only a tool.

No! The elephant is the audience. The sightless people use their
hands to examine the tail. Their hands are the tool; feeling the tail
only is their misuse of the tool.

The condition the tail and ply it with skin and hair treatments. All
the other blind people come over to feel the wonderful tail in envy.
But the elephant is dying -- it hasn't been fed.

Eventually the elephant dies and the blind caretakers will wonder what
happened. Likewise, eventually the house of cards that is radio today
will fall down, and all the "wise men" will wonder what the hell
happened.



You, like me, are one who is no longer being served. It happens. The
more desirable are younger, hipper, or less demanding in areas not
easily provided for. The emperor may be naked. But we, and a few like
us, are the only non nudists in the empire. The those who advise the
emperor only listen to the many who are also naked.

Some of those younger people will have ears, too, and they'll want to
listen to something besides hip-hop. When they hear live jazz, then
hear it on their "HD" radio, they will be disgusted.


And they were. Digital recordings by engineers recording with analog
mindsets. Too much equalization. Preemphasis. Compression.

Only some of them. I can think of notorious examples off the top of
my head.

But the pain was hearing the unfiltered aliasing above 22 kHz.
*Those* folks noticed.

Some CD's still suck. But
nothing sounds like those early discs.

So it will be with HD. If it lasts, it will evolve. Like the CD, it
will eventually be embraced as a fidelity medium.


No. I utterly disagree. Today I can hear the artifacts on a stream
from NPR. The technology isn't constrained by any format -- the
satellite service to feed the local stations is compressed, and they
chose to compress it too much, because whoever made that decision
couldn't tell or didn't care.

And *THAT* is how it will be with HD.

For the record, though, CD's were never intended to be high fidelity.

I disagree there, too. Wasn't the initial capacity of a CD set by the
head of Sony to correspond to the length of his favorite orchestral
piece?

Philips promoted them as mid-fi media. Of course Philips also intended
the cassetted to be a dictation only medium...so things don't always fly
as intended.

It wouldn't surprise me that Phillips and Sony were on different
pages, but that's too far a reach for me to believe. I remember how
everyone was talking about DAD's as they were called initially.
"We're gonna blow away metal tape," gloated one. With reason -- they
did. But all the publicity they sought was about the medium -- 100dB
dynamic range, infrasonic to 22 kHz, flat response.



This time, one won't need a golden ear to hear the artifacts. I
cringe on what comes out of my car radio from NPR when they have a
feed filled with artifacts. When you can hear it over the road noise
on a car radio... that's an accomplishment.


It's one of the reasons I listen to less radio, these days.



It won't just sound bad, it will be painful to listen to.


And it will improve.


Not enough. Receiver designers will struggle to deal with the limited
amount of information present in the heavily compressed,
low-sample-rate streams. They will make it sound better, but DAC/ADC
technology for sound reproduction is mature now. You can't recreate
the analog signal if the information isn't in the digital stream.



I don't care for it. But then, I don't do much listening, anymore,
either.


Bottom line. No matter what the advertisers are willing to pay,
there's no return if there are no listeners.


Reality: listeners lost will be replaced. Every assault to radio over
the last 75 years has resulted in a revolution of sorts. With new
listeners being replaced by the old.

You and I will be replaced.

We already have been.


By iPods and MP3 players. By software on a computer and 24/96 sound
cards. People will only flock to the radio after a disaster that
leaves them without internet service.


That I disagree with. The growth of podcasts, satellite radio, etc.,
will fill the void. For the longest time, I felt that radio would
endure, because of the low amount of infrastructure to keep it going.
I didn't count on the sheer stupidity of people behind radio.


We're not in disagreement here. There will be options to Radio. There
ARE options to Radio. My point was that for those who choose Radio,
there will be little option but to embrace HD. And those who choose
Radio will embrace it.


As to the sheer stupidity...I can tell you from my 4 decades + of
experience on the inside...that hasn't changed. It's always been stupid
on the inside.


That's true, but there was always someone to break the model. When
DJs were forced to use boring playlists after the Payola scandal,
Wolfman Jack did just fine with his border blaster clear up to L.A.
He also made a ton of money doing so.

Today... well, the model may not be broken. We'll see what the
classical and jazz stations do.



We're simply witnessing the death of radio.

Obituaries may be premature.


Time will tell. This message will last in archives that long, so
people like Edwardo can point and laugh in 10 years after radio grows
under his mercenary hand.

But my money is riding against it.


I'd hedge that bet, if I were you.


I've stated my position and have staked it out. See Brenda-Ann's post
in this thread for another dissenting opinion.

--
Eric F. Richards,
"It's the Din of iBiquity." -- Frank Dresser