[BC] HD Radio Article

[Davis, Steve - SVP]

> Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2006 21:44:13 -0500
> From: "Mark Humphrey" <mark3xy at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [BC] HD Radio Article
> To: "Broadcasters' Mailing List" <broadcast at radiolists.net>
> Message-ID:
> 	<74b029b80602261844s375b3329wbbca1c8cceabdd55 at mail.gmail.com>
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> 
> 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
>

Mark,

I like your idea!  I don't know if iBiquity could/would distribute their
codec or a version of it for streaming but I'll make that suggestion.
As for Clear Channel's HD2 Internet streams, they are mostly 32 kHz
sample rate due to the bandwidth charges.  There is a concern that using
non-standard codecs would make the streams less accessible -- we'd like
to make this very simple, "point and click" so folks can easily listen
to/sample our new format offerings, hopefully to whet their appetite for
some of the new content they can experience via HD Radio.  I'm reading a
lot of posters here saying aacPlus would be a viable alternative though,
so we'll take a look at that.  Problem is we don't want to use anything
that requires a download, since that's one more step for the potential
listener to take, that could dissuade them from sampling the content.  

Thanks,

Steve