[BC] HD Radio Article

[Mark Humphrey]

On 2/26/06, Davis, Steve - SVP <SteveDavis at clearchannel.com> wrote:

>
> No, iBiquity sets no constraints on the quality of stations' Internet
> feeds.  However Internet feed quality can be variable and depending on
> traffic etc. you might experience drops or buffering latency.  Perhaps
> the author of the article experienced this.


Steve,

Thanks for clarifying this.  As Bob Orban and Goran suggested, a lot of
these problems could be avoided if you offered a choice of codecs better
than Windows Media.  I've listened to several of your streams and they all
have that phony, swishy, polystyrene plastic high end that seems to be
inherent in WM.  And it appears the sample rate is only 22 kHz, so we're
missing out on the extended frequency response that's touted as a primary
advantage of HD Radio.

Could iBiquity be talked into developing a Windows or Mac OS "player" based
on their codec?  I'm thinking of a simple-to-install download like Winamp,
with "skin" showing the front panel of an HD car radio.  The buttons could
even be preset to your local stations!   This would only increase the
bandwidth to  48 kbps and would give the listener a true replica of the
audio quality they can expect with a "hardware" digital radio, along with
ability to display PAD (the other major feature)

If not, aacPlus would certainly be an improvement, without requiring a big
increase in Internet bandwidth.

Regards,
Mark