KXTR on FM again ... sorta

If you're like me -- and surveys show you probably aren't -- you've been trying to figure out if this HD Radio thing is for real or not.

I've got an HDR receiver in my car. I got it because my old one went and while I was in Best Buy I saw I could get an Insignia house-brand car stereo with an HDR tuner for "only" 40 bucks extra. I got it. Hey, somebody has to write about it!

Long story short, I love it. The HD sound is somewhere between FM and CD quality, very nice, and it allows multicasting, which Entercom Radio has really taken advantage of in Kansas City and other markets where it owns stations. Case in point, KXTR.

The classical music station, as we all remember, was mismanaged by the previous owners, who couldn't seem to figure out how to sell a 4.0 share to advertisers, so Entercom took it off the FM band and stuck it on AM (albeit at a relatively quiet end of the dial, 1660 KHz) and gave the frequency over to the Buzz, which promptly rang up a 2.0 share, which Entercom then sold to advertisers. I'm won't say that's one reason why Entercom stock is trading at $1.30 a share ... but that's because right now my own company is trading at the Kresge-store price of 88 cents.

Anyway, for all the things we like to point out that Entercom did wrong over the years, with KXTR-AM it has really, truly, tried to do right. Patrick Neas, a fixture at the station for a quarter century, remains as its one-man band, hosting the morning show, partnering with public television, attaching the brand to concerts around the area, and so on. A year ago, management told Patrick to program an all-local format for KXTR to replace the syndicated feed it had been piping in for a decade. The station is first-rate, certainly the best thing on the AM dial.

And now, it's on the FM dial, too -- if you've got HD Radio.

To get you up to speed: When you tune to an HD Radio station with an HDR receiver, you count to three and by then it should have detected the digital signal transmitting on the same frequency. At that point you can push the HD button on your radio -- assuming you weren't an early adopter of HDR -- and survey the other channels, if there are any, or enjoy the enhanced sound of your current station. Entercom puts a second channel on its five FM properties: hence, if you tune in 98.9 The Rock, you get a live-concerts station on HD2; at 106.5 The Wolf, HD2 gives you The City, the very same smooth-jazz format that was pushed aside for country; at 96.5 there's a comedy channel last time I checked the HD2 signal there.

But my two favorites are at 99.7 The Boulevard, where The Delta, an all-blues station on its HD2 signal, mixes old and new music into a tasty gumbo - I'll keep it on for days at a time (then again, I only have a 10-minute commute). And at 98.1 KUDL, the HD2 channel was Overture, an all-classical format programmed by none other than Patrick Neas. However, Neas told me a few months ago that Kansas City was the only Entercom market using Overture. So I wasn't shocked when recently, Entercom dropped Overture and just began simulcasting KXTR on 98.1-HD2.

Dave Alpert, Entercom's GM in the KC market, told me today that he "just thought it was time to move the 'real station' over to the HD channel." I agree. Let's face it, KXTR can use all the help it can get!

Finally, as to the future of HDR, I'm still in wait-and-see mode. I was initially suspicious, you may recall, about HD Radio. But I do like the way it's being used to extend the unique brand of KXTR, and to keep slightly less than mass-market formats like smooth and blues on the radio.

On the other hand, my friends at Prometheus Radio Project, which advocates for low-power FM stations -- and can I just say low-power FM is the biggest failing of the last three FCC chairmanships going back to the Clinton administration? -- have put out this advisory that they are opposed to power boosts for HD Radio because, irony of ironies, tests have shown they cause massive interference. I love this because (as the 14 people reading this because they have Google Alerts set to "LPFM" already know) the broadcast industry has been able to forestall the growth of low-power FM. How have they done this? By claiming it will interfere with standard broadcasts! In fact, reports and studies are out there proving that the industry lobbyists are overstating the harm, but in the meantime HDR -- which hasn't cleared the interference hurdle yet -- is asking for a free pass.

I guess we'll see if money talks ... although, how much money can you have when your stock is trading at a buck and change a share? (I know, I know.)

At any rate, HDR isn't going to be the salvation of terrestrial radio. But I have to say, it's interesting watching this death struggle going on between HDR and satellite radio. XM and Sirius are merged, sort of like Romeo and Juliet. Or Siamese twins joined at the skull. Satellite radio may not make it. This analyst is betting it won't, and probably isn't alone in that view. If it goes, what will happen to the HDR market? Especially when people learn they can get an HDR chip in their next car stereo for less than three months of Sirius?

Comments

[Greg]

"Now on HD Radio: Subscriptions, Pay Per Hear, and More"

"A new 'conditional broadcasting' feature for HD Radio called RadioGuard, from NDS, will allow owners of compatible HD radios to pay for premium content via a subscription, a one-time charge, or as part of a sponsored deal... They're primarily looking at home and car use right now because it's hard to design a device like this to consume so little power that it can be carried away from a power source."

http://blog.wired.com/music/2007/04/now_on_hd_radio.html

BTW - HD Radio may not be free for long, and who in their right-mind would pay for these clever reworks of the main analog channels.

[Greg]

"I got an HD radio for Christmas"

1. Not used to a radio taking 5-7 seconds to 'boot' when you turn it on.
2. HD2/HD3 channels take 5+ seconds to 'Link' whenever you change channels. Doesn't really encourage channel surfing.
3. The radio runs very hot; I've heard those Ibiquity chips suck power and that's why you're not seeing a walkman HD radio yet. (And that's also why you'll probably never see HD radio in a cell phone).
4. In Bernal Heights (where I live), I can only pick up 15 HD2 channels.
5. Public radio, such as KQED, KCSM, KALW all have no HD2.
6. I'm not really impressed with any of the current HD2 formats here in San Francisco. There is a lot of hiphop, but don't you think most of the audience for that's going to just be downloading MP3 'mixtapes' to their iPods?
7. I'm not impressed with the HD2 audio quality; and when more stations add a HD3 that means the main channel will sound the same as the HD2/3 channels - 32kb streams. They sound good for 32kb but there are some strange artifacts that crop up from time to time.

http://tinyurl.com/9jzukw

Your experience certainly is not typical....hmmmmmm

[JimBo]

Why is the car industry so far behind in offering HD Radio? I've looked at a couple of new cars recently -- a Toyota Tacoma pickup, and the Nissan GT-R supercar -- and both have 6 CD changers, one (the Nissan) has an ipod link and an internal drive that can store several hundred songs -- but neither come with an option to get an HD radio in the vehicle? Don't know about the domestics, but didn't those forward-looking Japanese companies see HD radio coming? Don't really want to shell out the bucks their charging for their radios and have them obsolete when you get your tags!

[Mark Roberts]

A group of somewhat disparate thoughts follows.

Sound quality is more than channel bitrate, though bitrate certainly puts a ceiling on the quality that is available. Processing is important, too. Since you (Greg) are in San Francisco, listen to KFOG's HD-2 channel to hear how it should NOT be done. (Actually, listen to any audio from KFOG, be it analog or digital, to hear how it should NOT be processed.) Densely modulated audio with low dynamic range, typical of most FM stations, will get torn up by the compression algorithm, which expects quiet passages to be able to compress and discard bits effectively. When it doesn't get those passages, you get instead what some people call the "swirling toilet bowl" effect. Broadcasters are just learning how to process for digital signals, and they have some very bad habits to unlearn.

(@Greg: If you want to hear it done right, try KCSM-FM out of San Mateo. The digital signal sounds better than the analog signal because the digital channel's processing doesn't have to account for the crude form of noise reduction present on every analog FM signal.)

Satellite radio does better in this regard, though the quality there can be lacking, too.

It's also my experience that individual sensitivity to digital artifacts varies a LOT. Some people can hear it even with a 160 kbps bit rate; others can listen to 64 kbps undisturbed. You mileage will vary.

As for radios - I'll be persuaded that HD has a future when it comes on a chip that can run off batteries. We're nowhere near that point yet. Radio at best is an accessory now. Few other than radio geeks buy a radio for the sake of buying a radio. It had better be convenient and not require too much trouble. Especially in the home, HD is still kind of fussy.

As for programming - It'll have to be more than a computer in a corner being reprogrammed occasionally. I've heard some HD-2 channels with dead air for up to half a day at a time. This is in major-market San Francisco. If HD is to mean anything, it will have to offer programming people will listen to. The KXTR simulcast that Aaron refers to is probably one of the better uses of an HD side channel, though it's amazed me that KXTR has hung on in some form for even this long. Even in my days in KC, it seemed as though KXTR was run on a shoestring, noble though the attempt was.

@Greg - back to running hot: the Sony tuner has been considered notorious for this. I have a Sangean HDT-1X, which gets warm but not hot to the touch. I don't believe the Sangean will pick up HD-3 channels, though.

The Sangean (and the Sony) are interesting FM tuners from another perspective, being among the first consumer FM tuners to use digital signal processing to get the kind of reception, even on analog signals, that you used to have to buy a $5000 tuner to get.

[Dale]

HD on AM is a greater improvement in sound than HD on FM IMHO. Listening to St. Louis KMOX at dusk in HD sounds better than any AM station in Kansas City except 1190AM which is HD.

[I totally agree--kinda pitiful that only Radio Disney invests in HD on the AM band--on the other hand, Entercom is right to kick KXTR over to FM for its HD which is qualitatively better than AM HD.--AB]

[Susan]

So what's 99.7 playing on HD now that they turned into "Kiss FM" ?