HD Radio

[gonefishie]

Does anyone have one and is it as good as the commercials say? Is it worth it to replace my perfectly good OEM radio/cd player in the truck?

 

[windsors03cobra]

Re: HD Radio

No its junk and maybe worse than AM Stereo.
I have a home set and while I like the set it sometimes will cease broadcasting for a second or 2 while it checks the frequency for HD, it seems this glitch is new as I have had this Sony XDR-S3HD set for about 2 years probably and it has not always done that.
What it has done its whole life is fade in and out of HD which causes a very noticeable difference in sound quality and tone and it kind of gets annoying. HD radio like HD Broadcast TV is all or nothing so when that signal slightly fades the tuner dumps out, atleast with radio there is analog to fall back on but the flipping of the sound quality is particularly annoying.
I got this set because I wanted to try HD radio and I wanted a nice table set which I have that new glitch is a bad madening tho, no real way to turn the "HD" off on this set.

It gets a couple two-tree HD stations out of Milwaukee and Chicago but the sidebands almost are not worth listening to anyway so whats the purpose ?
HDead

 

[gonefishie]

Re: HD Radio

I checked out the listing of HD stations in Indy and like you said, not worth listening. Idea scrapped.

 

[arks]

Re: HD Radio

I have satellite radio but my brother-in-law has HD. He likes it a lot and from what I've heard on his radio, the sound is very much like XM/Siruis. I can't comment about HD's content because all I've listened to is music.

I considered getting an HD-ready unit but I like satellite (lifetime subscription- no monthy fee) and don't think HD's any better.
One BIG advantage of satellite- it's nationwide, so you can listen to your favorite stations from coast-to-coast.

 

[slia67]

Re: HD Radio

Alot if it depends on your proximity to the radio stations. If you are too far away you won't pick up the additional HD channels and like windsor said you go back and forth between analog and HD which is very annoying.

Some of the HD channels in our area are good but some are just a waste of airwaves. If you listen to AM, the difference is night and day. It also seems to me that once the secondary channels came on board they have to run more commercials on the analog station to make up for the additional channels being commercial free.

My suggestion would be to find someone in your area that already has an HD tuner and give it a listen.

Hope this helps.

 

[pmat1]

Re: HD Radio

I have a HD Radio headunit in my car, i LOVE HD radio, it sounds much better then ordinary FM. Where i live, alot of stations multicast, which means there is like 99.9 1,2, and 3. 1 is the regular fm station in hd, 2 is all music, no commercials, and 3 is for commercials so there are none on 2. The difference isnt as great as regular tv vs hdtv, but it sounds much much better. After hearing my HD radio, the rest of my family had me put one in their car.

 

[windsors03cobra]

Re: HD Radio

As a listener to AM radio I gotta agree that the difference between old static infused and generally noisy stations sound clear as a bell like FM, but with my proximity to those 50,000 watt blowtorches (close as heck) the station sounds goods for 2 minutes and the HD drops out.

Most (Midwest) stations have all but abandoned HD radio so it's all analog here now and not back and forth. Entercom is still broadcasting some HD out of Milwaukee.