[BC] Can we now have a serious discussion about audio quality??

[Rich Wood]

------ At 05:55 PM 12/23/2005, VideoPaul at aol.com wrote: -------

>This is all well and good, but I do not think that the end of analog 
>broadcasting is nearly as close at hand as Ibiquity thinks it is, 
>and NO ONE has addressed the fact that IBOC as currently presented 
>has unacceptably LOW audio quality.  The MPEG-like artifacts are 
>everywhere in the high end.  Multicasting means taking data away 
>form the main channel and making it sound even worse.

The general consensus is that analog will go away in 12 to 20 years. 
Most retailers peg the top price point of a receiver at about $250. 
At the moment they're in excess of $500 and there are no portable 
devices available. Analog will be with us for a very long time.

>There are a couple of schemes out there for a digital subcarrier 
>that rides the main analog signal and isn't 20dB down, and doesn't 
>have the audio problems that the IBOC does.  But, they don't allow 
>for multicasting and don't allow a lot of room to SELL DATA so they 
>are likely to get fought tooth and nail.

The HD Dominion is of the opinion secondaries are the salvation of 
terrestrial radio. There are so many obstacles in the way of this 
"not ready for prime time" technology that the audible artifacts will 
be the least of our problems. One of the most amazing parts of this 
system is how the manufacturer has snookered engineers into accepting 
technology they know is flawed. Or, at the very least, management has 
been snookered and directed otherwise competent and proud engineers 
into accepting something that further compromises their signals.

>Before we go too far down this road, is it unreasonable to ask for 
>better data and coverage out to our protected contours?  More to the 
>point, we as terrestrial broadcasters can offer something that the 
>satellite boys cannot:  DECENT UNCOMPRESSED AUDIO!  XM and Sirius 
>will always have to hyper-compress their audio data.  Do we care 
>about our listeners so little that we are willing to subject them to 
>artifact filled music with that "springy" sound in the high 
>end??  We beg them to not go to satellite or iPods and then give 
>them worse audio to listen to.

Quality audio isn't an important part of this equation. Audio, in 
general, has been dumbed down so much that new listeners actually 
find 128KBPS MP3 acceptable.

>I then asked the real land mine question:  If there might be any way 
>for some poor, misguided broadcaster whose understanding of the 
>industry were so hopelessly out of whack that he wanted to actually 
>deliver BETTER audio to his audience would be able to dedicate more 
>than the 96k of audio that Ibiquity felt was adequate.  The entire 
>room heard the answer:  No, that was not being worked on in any way.

I had the use of an IBUZ receiver for a couple of months. I drove a 
radius of about 100 miles. That includes one major and three medium 
markets. While the receiver was excellent in analog mode, digital 
left me fatigued. I found myself staying with analog for much longer 
periods. I'm sure that would be the case of your employees who 
listened and found digital to be inferior to analog. It sounds to me 
as though they were average listeners, not golden eared audiophiles. 
It's interesting that average listeners would reject the sound so quickly.

Rich


Rich Wood
Rich Wood Multimedia
Phone: 413-303-9084
FAX: 413-480-0010