Will analog radio go dark in 2015?

[landtuna]

"Long Lines" as in the old TV network lines or POTS long distance?

POTS LD

[Savage]

A well-preserved phonograph record will still play perfectly 100 years from today.  Records may accumulate scratches, dirt and fingerprints, but they still work.  CDs and DVDs darken with age.  When the laser beam can no longer focus on the dots buried beneath the surface as the disc dulls with age - it simply stops working.  Period.

We're making some unhappy discoveries about all-digital TV - as in, it either works or it doesn't.  For those relying on OTA television during storms and emergencies, we're finding the digital system is nowhere near as robust as old analog NTSC.  If there is enough electromagnetic disturbance, the system simply stops working, where analog was still detectable and watchable, albeit with streaks and snow.

Look at what happens to AM-HD in thunderstorms.  Most receivers would simply mute, even in all-digital mode.  That's a "communications service?"  What good is it if it craps out when it's needed most?

[KB1OKL]

Here's an example of something that went digital that is much superior to its analog replacement: CDs and DVDs.
Records and tapes have noise and can be easily destroyed, and tapes have a short life. A CD or DVD burned today will outlive your children.

I buy LP's whenever possible for home use, only buy CD's for my car, why? Because my turntable sounds better and more realistic than any CD I've ever heard, the conversion from LP to CD was a corporate sham and as Tom has written another way to screw us the consumers out of more money. CD's are more durable and have some advantages over LP's but clearer and more realistic sound is not one of them.

[Savage]

Sooo.... is digital invariably "much superior" to analog in every application?  I would argue, no.  It all depends on the stated need and the expectations of the end user in the marketplace.  I will point something out here at which many posters here will scoff in all likelihood: sales of vinyl LPs are exploding.  One figure I saw showed that "records" have quadruped in sales annually for several years now, and if you talk to high-end audio retailers, you'll discover that turntables are one of the hottest items - and I'm not talking about the USB conversion players to dub records into your computer, either.  And which demographic is buying all these records and record players?  The under-30 crowd, not seniors.

Am I arguing for the "death of everything digital" and a return to vinyl LPs?  Of course not.  But this obsession with converting every human invention to digital is just crazy.  It should only happen if there is a compelling need to make the change - as in, "not change for the sake of change."

BTW - with respect to everyone here - this thread is, to my eyes, "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin."  If you go back to the original link at the first post, the answer to the question posited by the thread is an obvious "no."  Again: the linked article is about radio in the UK, not the US, and even in Britain the answer appears - at least for the forseeable future - to be NO, "analog radio will NOT go dark in 2015." 

[Tom Wells]

I have no problem with proven results. In other boards here, I've raved about Breakaway Broadcast Processor, a purely digital solution to
sound processing.  It is stunning, I can't say enough good about it, and I'm a "hardware" kinda guy.

I'm not anti-digital.  I think technologies should be used where and when they are appropriate.
Digital sound processing should have turned toward solving AM noise problems years ago.
50/60 hz noise w/overtones can be modeled into software, and cancellation introduced when detected.
Impulse noise can be deleted, and pre/post sound zipped in to fill the gap.
And of course, you could always bypass such processing when an electrical storm might make it sound worse, with continuous glitching....

When something works, works well, AND reliably, I don't care whether it's analog or digital.
DNR was an incredible analog noise reduction system for hiss that required no encoding, worked in real time.
I still hear lots of hiss in radio airchains... what the heck?

It's no accident that there's a whole new selection of triode-tube microphones on the market.

I don't think radio will go dark for a long time.

[TheBigA]

NO, "analog radio will NOT go dark in 2015." 

I think you're right, and I think the reason is that the government, which owns the airwaves, is too busy over-licensing the spectrum to allow it to go dark.  They were almost giddy last week over pulling protection for third adjacents in order to allow more LPFMs.  It's found money for them.  If the big profit-making companies pull out of the industry (which they've threatened to do), the government will simply license their frequencies to individuals.  As long as they don't have to pay for it, they don't care.

They also show absolutely no interest in doing what a lot of other countries have done, which is convert analog radio to digital (as they did with TV).  In fact I suspect the experience of converting TV was so traumatic to the government that they don't ever want to repeat the experience.   

But I think the train has left the station as far as the future of audio services, and there won't be growth on the analog area.  The next battleground is going to be over who controls the internet: ISPs or the government.  The feds did quite a bit of sabre rattling, and if they prevent the telecoms from charging more for higher speeds and more bandwidth, while also moving ahead to make low cost, high speed internet a personal right, they could force the telecoms out of the service business.

[Lee Rust]

Digital radio is fine as long as the entire signal path is known, predictable and stable. Fiber optic, wired, line-of-sight etc.

Analog is best for those situations where a constantly changing 'who-knows-what' lies between the transmitter and the receiver. Rain, mountains, buildings, airplanes, horizons etc.

With digital transmission, major signal disruptions result in a total loss of program, despite the best receiver error-correction schemes.

With analog, error correction occurs in the brain of the listener or viewer rather than in the receiver, so there's a lot of computing power available to compensate for static, interference and fading. Even when the signal is totally lost or garbled, there's always 'imagination' to fill in the blanks.

Digital radio works in the real world only if there are multiple line-of-sight signal paths dynamically available to the transmitter/receiver system, as with cellular phones. Even so, dropped calls are common.

I think broadcast radio is best served by remaining basically analog. The marketplace may not agree, of course.

Besides, by 2015 we may have more important things to worry about than whether radio should be digital or analog.

[audioguy]

Out where I live in SW Michigan, there are basically NO local stations on AM. All reception is from "out-of-town" stations, so for those that like to bash on "DXers", please keep that in mind. Since the HD radio deBOCle, the AM radio dial is a sea of noise at night, and there are basically only two stations that are listenable: 650 and 740 AM. The rest are trashed.

FM still works, but reception is marginal inside the house. And in the car, you can't listen to a station very long before someone else's IBOC sidebands start to cause dropouts.

If radio were completely digital, then most of the stations on my radio dial would just vanish instead of having a little noise in the background. Since the conversion to digital TV, none of the TV stations come in reliably. You never know if you're going to be able to watch a program or not. With analog, we might have a little noise or static on the picture, but at least we got a signal. With DTV, you certainly cannot expect to watch TV for weather bulletins during thunderstorms. Reception is completely unavailable during periods of lightning activity.

I am by no means against digital technology, but the digital broadcast technology we have available today simply doesn't cut it in the real world, especially in rural areas.

[Play Freebird]

Digital radio works in the real world only if there are multiple line-of-sight signal paths dynamically available to the transmitter/receiver system, as with cellular phones. Even so, dropped calls are common.

Lee hit it right on the head -- and this is why most other parts of the world have chosen a COFDM-based system for digital radio and TV, with distributed transmitters serving each market in a "single frequency" network.  The US does have one such network, Qualcomm's "MediaFLO" system on former TV Channel 55 to serve mobile devices -- and reportedly, it works very well.

Due to terrain obstructions (or just a large land area) it's often a problem to cover an entire Arbitron market or ADI with a single transmitter.   But with multiple well-placed transmitters, mountains and ridges can be illuminated from both sides and building penetration in high density commercial areas can be enhanced.   An all-COFDM system would make this task much easier than with hybrid IBOC, because of the difficulty in synchronizing analog FM "boosters" across a wide area.

 

[Lee Rust]

I can imagine a future for the current FM band wherein groups of co-owned transmitters throughout a particular market would be joined together into a single digital radio data network that was distributed across multiple frequencies.

Each transmitter would broadcast a portion of a composite data stream. The aggregated digital bandwidth could be combined by a very broad-band receiver into a single high-capacity data stream. Error-correction data could be distributed throughout the composite signal so that the temporary loss of reception of one or more of the individual carriers could be accommodated.

This could be done as a single-frequency system too, but only if we completely abandoned the long established analog-based frequency allocations.

Either way, the result might be a localized, terrestrial version of the Sirus/XM broadcast model. Video or data services could also be incorporated.

Needless to say, our dear old analog broadcast system would have to be deliberately run down, dismantled or destroyed for this kind of technology to be realized. The VHF real-estate would certainly be a lot more valuable if it were 'shovel-ready' and didn't have all those old-fashioned 'radio stations' cluttering the landscape.

Perhaps that process of creative destruction is already well underway. If so, is it inadvertent or deliberate?