[BC] From NAB Propaganda

[Mark Humphrey]

On 7/24/06, Scott Cason <scott at lagrange-com.com> wrote:
>
> Seriously, I have three clients running IBOC in Louisville (until we had to
> shut them down until the HVAC gets fixed), I could not tell a difference
> between the analog and digital when they blended.

Just curious, Scott... are they transmitting a single HD program or
are they multicasting?

Here in the Philadelphia market, I do hear a subtle improvement on the
digital audio of the FM stations offering only a main HD program (for
example, WXPN and WRNB), but the subjective HD-1 quality of the
"multicasters" just doesn't seem to beat good old FM stereo, unless
the analog reception is severely degraded by multipath or co-channel
interference.

Under certain conditions, the narrowband codec artifacts are quite
apparent.  I heard a noisy classical concert recording last weekend on
the main channel of WRTI, which also transmits an HD-2.  The
background hiss/ambient noise had an annoying "watery" quality in
digital which made it stand out, but this cleared up when the receiver
was switched to analog.  It's unfortunate that we must sacrifice
quality of the main program to make room for the so-called "killer
app".

Mark