AM DIGITAL STEREO? THE FUTURE OR FLASH IN THE PAN?

[josh]

  There are presently, many great opportunities to buy AM Radio Stations in major markets at relatively, little cost.

       If AM Digital (IBIQUITY) Stereo pan outs, these stations will be great buys but if it doesn't new AM buyers will be stuck with mono stations whose future will be only news talk and foreign language.

        My question to you, "Do you believe AM has a bright future in Digital Stereo?"

[TomT]

No.

IBOC is not stereo.

IBUZ just generates noise.

[frankberry]

In my opinion, AM IBOC hash is very annoying.  It's clearly audible ... even on my car radio.
Go away AM IBOC.

[Peter Q. George (K1XRB)]

  There are presently, many great opportunities to buy AM Radio Stations in major markets at relatively, little cost.

       If AM Digital (IBIQUITY) Stereo pan outs, these stations will be great buys but if it doesn't new AM buyers will be stuck with mono stations whose future will be only news talk and foreign language.

        My question to you, "Do you believe AM has a bright future in Digital Stereo?"

In a word.... NO.  I-BUZZ is decimating whats left of the AM broadcast band.  The annoying hiss and broadband interference by these noise-makers is just another nail in the AM coffin.  It's a shame, really, as AM can do so much more than it is doing right now.  Up until 1979,  AM had the unique capability of solid skywave reception.  For sports fans, it was a delight hearing games from other markets.  When the "clears" were "broken" down, it was the first salvo.  Putting new stations on the former clears and extending the daytimers was the second mistake. Indecision on a universal AM Stereo standard with so many delays added yet another issue for AM.  Next, NRSC with limitation of 10 kHz bandwidth began the insult of AM's high fidelity possibilities.  Finally, IBOC.  Flattened out bandwidth to 4,000 Hz frequency response on all IBOC stations (hardly better than a POTS line) and the annoying "digital" hiss splattering 2 to 3 channels down on both sidebands.  Now....is this "progress" or what?  You tell me.   

[OKCRadioGuy]

I whole-hardly agree.  If they are allowing IBOC buzzing  all up and down the adjacents then they should at least let us pull the nrsc filters.  Analog splatter never caused the hash this IBOC junk does. 

[Radio Boogie]

IBOC on AM should NEVER have progressed beyond the initial testing phase. It should have been clearly evident that it was significantly flawed very early on. Evidently, the FCC is more interested in whether Iniquity makes money than whether AM loses listeners by the thousands. Even with an HD receiver, AM HD sounds like bad MP3 files.

Had the FCC even one person who can use a soldering iron, they would shitcan AM IBOC and push the receiver manufacturers to make better AM radios with AMAX and C-QUAM installed in them. C-QUAM may not be perfect, but I'd rather suffer through a little "platform motion" than listen to "HD" analog (with the fidelity of a walkie talkie) or swishy HD Digital. And you practicaly have to be able to hear a station on your toaster in order to lock on it's HD signal.

[TomT]

Platform motion was an artifact of certain type of AM stereo detector IC. Most notably those used in early Sony AM stereo radios.  Later generation chips did not suffer from this ailment.

AM stereo worked quite well, very listenable sound. Unfortunately it is not FM; a reasonably clean FM signal would beat it any day, and few AM stations have good enough nighttime coverage to compete with even a Class A FM signal coverage. 

FM IBOC, on the other hand, serves no purpose whatsoever. There is not enough bandwidth to provide a digital signal that will be better quality than the main channel analog signal.  In most markets there are already too many signals for the viable formats available.