What is HD FM?

[Mr Peabody]

When I heard one of our local stations say something about broadcasting in HD I thought they were making a joke but now I heard another station say they were going HD so this must be a real thing. What is it and what is it's advantage over traditional FM? Really I can't hear much difference between the one station that is HD and the others that aren't.

[daviethek]

I took a fairly long car trip a couple of weeks ago and got to hear a couple of HD stations on the way. I noticed an improvement in clarity with what seems like a bit more true 2 channel sound. Not quite "CD in the car" quality but for me a noticeable improvement. Except for the commercials of course. I wonder if this is really an improvement in the broadcast clarity or some kind of processing trick designed to make it sound better like noise cancellation for cars.

[luvs2jam60]

HD FM is a new format for broadcasting local radio channels in high-res. Because of the differences in broadcasting that type of signal verses old stanndard FM, radio stations will be able (down the line of course) to broadcast a couple variations of their station on one simultaneous frequency, and also broadcast other data simultaneously, such as song title, artst, etc, as well as possibly local news, weather, and so on; however, the only drawback is that you need a receiver capable of receiving HDFM. I believe one just came out recently for home use, but you can get a number of aftermarket decks capable of decoding FM HD. I'm not sure, but I don't think any factory decks support the HD FM decoder just yet.

If you want some more info, I believe there was a thread a while back about this topic. If you can't find it, I'm sure googling it will come up with something.

[luvs2jam60]

Here's some more info for ya:

http://www.wbgo.org/ontheair/HD.asp

[Woochifer]

That's because you need a separate HD Radio tuner to hear a radio broadcast in HD audio. About 700 stations have begun HD radio broadcasts, but the hardware has only begun trickling into the market, and for now at least, it has only made its way into pricier components. Aside from a purported improvement in sound quality, HD Radio will also allow stations to multicast up to five different audio feeds on a single frequency. But, you won't hear any of these advantages or improvements with a regular FM tuner -- you would need a HD Radio tuner, and as I mentioned, not a lot of them are available at this time. This topic was discussed earlier, link below.

High Definition FM. What's the story with that?

[Mr Peabody]

This is radios way of competing with satelite radio. But unfortunately they don't get it, myself and I think many others, are tired of being force fed bad music or the same song over and over. I believe consumers are willing to pay for better variety and exposure to new artists. Satelite also goes coast to coast opposed to local pockets. I guess any improvement is a good thing though.

HD radio will give title & artist info as well. Crutchfield has some auto headunits with HD capability and some companies are coming out with table radios for big bucks. I hope the prices will go down in time, I'm sure they will eventually. A HD walkman may not be a bad thing.

[Mr Peabody]

You know, I wonder why HD radio isn't getting much buzz? Is it just too soon or what? This is the first time I remember having to look for a product and research it's existence.

[Woochifer]

This is radios way of competing with satelite radio. But unfortunately they don't get it, myself and I think many others, are tired of being force fed bad music or the same song over and over. I believe consumers are willing to pay for better variety and exposure to new artists. Satelite also goes coast to coast opposed to local pockets. I guess any improvement is a good thing though.

HD radio will give title & artist info as well. Crutchfield has some auto headunits with HD capability and some companies are coming out with table radios for big bucks. I hope the prices will go down in time, I'm sure they will eventually. A HD walkman may not be a bad thing.

The technology and FCC blessing for HD radio has apparently been ongoing for a few years now. It's only caught on recently with the corporate radio conglomerates like Clear Channel and Infinity because the audience for satellite radio has exploded in the last couple of years. The multicasting capability of HD radio can potentially expand the radio playlists. The blanding down of radio playlists has accelerated as the value of the radio stations has gone through the roof. Hard to be adventurous with the music when corporate beancounters only care about the bottomline, yet the less than compelling offerings on the radio dial have helped to shrink the audience even as the ad revenue continued to rise. Satellite represents a threat to the value of the radio stations themselves, so obviously the prospect of HD radio multicasting is an opportunity to maintain the value of their terrestrial broadcasting investment.