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I decided to get a cheap HD Radio to play with and although there aren’t many stations to try out here, I must say the sound quality actually seems worse at least on the one station I’ve tried so far. They have so much processing in the signal chain that it pumps like crazy with a lot of audible distortion. Before the HD signal kicks in it actually sounds pretty decent, but once it goes to HD, the over the top processing kicks in and things get ugly. Is there any technical reason to use such radically different and inferior levels of processing on the HD Radio signal?
I see some of the big companies like Orban and Omnia offer separate HD Radio boxes but wonder if there’s really that much difference in the demands of the two other than extended frequency response?
Stuart
Hi Stuart!
There are some differences. HD Radio uses a very low bitrate, low quality codec, and as such it’s extremely sensitive to clipping distortion caused by traditional clippers. Many stations just pipe the output of their analog processor into the HD radio encoder, with disastrous results. In my humble professional opinion, HD radio was a real bad idea, at least the way it has been implemented. 🙁
///Leif
Leif is right and also there is this common misconception that HD radio stands for "High Definition" which gives rise to an assumption that the audio quality on HD radio will be superior the FM, which is quite often not the case at all.
HD in this case actually stands for "Hybrid Digital" Radio and the bitrates used can often be very low, especially on AM. In either case though (FM or AM), a conventional FM processor is not a good fit for a low (or even medium) bitrate stream.
Many processors made by leading manufacturers nowadays offer a separate output for HD radio broadcasts and webcasts (much like the L/R output in BBP) and these most imortantly do not go through the aggressive clippers which FM broadcasts need to go through to be suitable for FM broadcast. Often completely different settings can be applied to the HD stream from the FM as the requirements and constraints are totally different between the two formats.[quote author=”Leif”]Well, you know, HD radio is CD quality!
That is, Seedy quality 🙂.
///Leif[/quote]
LOL @Leif, I have never heard an HD radio broadcast myself as here in the UK we are on the Eureka DAB system, which is also very poor as its generally 128K Layer 2. There also does not seem to be any momentum towards moving over to DAB+ which might give us some hope of decent quality but will more than likely just end up being bandwidth squeezed, like the current system.
FM still leads the way for sound quality.the best the HD configuration gets is two channels at 32kbps, HE-AAC or PS-AAC profile encodings, at 44.1kHz Stereo. and i’m not sure how many of the encoders are using the latest PS-AAC codec from Coding Technologies, or PS-AAC at all.
and all the other channel/data configurations compromise the audio quality even more.
High Definition it is most certainly not. 😉
aacPlus is not part of the HD standard. HD radio is the Lucent PAC codec with SBR licensed from coding technologies.
///Leif
I just had the opportunity to ‘program’ a HD2 channel for about 2 weeks until the regular programming was ready. It was Christmas music, but along the lines of Transiberian Orchestra and Manheim Steamroller. I wound up using the demo of Breakaway and Winamp to play the music. What I was unable to do was to balance loudness with peak control. I think that there is a need for a HD version of Breakaway that has a variable high pass (14-20k) and some ‘bit rate reduction conditioning’ among other things.
This particular HD2 signal is just satisify FCC rules. There is virtually no audio processing on it — and they do not care what it sounds like. If I could take an old computer and a retired Digigram/Antex/ASI and process the HD for a few bucks, I’m sure that others would follow.
Any thoughts? I’m willing to use this HD channel as a test. Management won’t care. There are only 9 HD radios in our market and we own 8 of them.
All Breakaway Pro products have adjustable low-pass filter!
I recommend Breakaway Live for HD Radio.
Best,
///LeifSeems like I tried installing Live but it would not do something …. don’t remember exactly. Does Live have pipelines? I think Winamp would not play to it.
I will be running Broadcaster on a 250 watt translator later this week. I have a question about it but will post in a new thread.
AE did great on my 2 weeks of ‘testing’.
Breakaway Live absolutely has pipelines — in fact is has three of them 🙂.
However, the pro products do not alter the system settings automatically, so you’ll have to either set the Pipeline as the Windows default sound device, or set Winamp to output specifically to the pipeline you want to use.
Best regards,
///LeifI found your product because I synchronize my holiday lights to music and I used my ole’ Orban 8100 as my processor (real time) and I just kept thinking that it needs something, I tried SS 3.1 (to much delay) so I found your Breakaway Live downloaded it played with the settings in 5 minutes was very impressed with the quality and the low latency and I reconfigured the settings for my little 1mW FM Modulator and I have to say, very pleased.
So now the reason I am posting this in this thread, I am the Chief Engineer for 2 radio stations and I been doing the HD (Highly Distorted) radio since 2005 I have tried many Processors/Limiters/Gating/Controllers and whatever else I had sitting on the shelf in my office, then I thought about how I net stream at my house using Sound Solutions 3.1 and since the basic principles are the same for HD as it is for internet streaming I gave it a shot. I was happy with the results, this is back in 2005 mind you.
Now lets move forward to New Years Eve 2009 I will install your product Breakaway Live on my HD-3 Monday and I want to play around with it. since it will be in demo-mode I will get your product shout-outs mixed in the audio, which is fine, you get free advertising for a few hours
I do use a Orban Optimod 8500 so my HD-1 is cleaner than the analog and its bitrate is 48kbps
My HD-2 is at 48kbps (SS 3.1 is the processor)
I have a custom setting on the SS 3.1 and I do believe I have the best sounding HD in town,
HD-3 is at 24kbps (SS 3.1)if I can achieve what I think I can with your Breakaway Live, you will have a new customer and I will erase SS 3.1 from my computers for my HD stations, which is a total of 4, the company that I work for owns 2 FM’s and both are HD 1,2 & 3
thanks
PaulBreakaway blows away Sound Solution v2 which blows away Sound Solution v1.3 (which is what you meant)… I can attest to that having made great presets for all of them and pushing their limits.
The advantage Breakaway has over Sound Solution v2 even… is the ability to have much more consistency without having to sound like you’re slamming the bejesus out of the audio. The best I could get with SS2 was indeed pretty good, but no comparison to the maturity and clarity of Breakaway.
As far as your LPFM at home, you might check out the consumer (or do we call it pro-sumer?) Breakaway Audio Enhancer, because it has an "FM Mode" that’s especially designed for LPFM transmitters that only have un-emphasized L/R inputs. I forget where Leif put it (maybe he can enlighten us) but there’s somewhere a description of how to calibrate the "FM Mode" in BAE to sort of pre-compensate for the effect your LPFM’s pre-emph/limit/stereo-gen/etc will have on the signal, and you can end up getting a decently competitive signal out of it on air. Nothing major market, but certainly better than just running un-pre-compensated into the L/R inputs.
I stand…or sit corrected it is SS v1.3, been a while since I even looked at the program,
I have noticed that my Breakaway Live Trial is locking/freezing up on me every few hours, is this because of demo mode? BTW the sound of my light show never sounded better and everything is in real time. very nice
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