Whew! That’s some installation. But your instructions were very precise, and it worked for me. Thanks for your efforts. It seems to require a strong signal, as the digital side bands are transmitted with a fraction of the power of the analog FM. Do you know if anyone has developed software to decode AM HD radio? Thanks again.
Thanks for the comment, WRKL! I'm pinning this so other viewers can reference. Yes, since the RTL-SDR isn't the most sensitive receiver and the HD signals are relatively weak, I've found you need a fairly strong signal for it to work. A proper FM antenna with element(s) extended to 3+ feet helps. I used fully extended rabbit ears in this demonstration. Also, I've found that slower computers struggle to run the software and decode HD radio without choppiness. It looks like a newer version of nrsc5 by theori-io on GitHub supports AM HD with a command line option: github.com/theori-io/nrsc5 . I tried following the instructions for Windows installation but ran into some errors (about par for the course for anything from GitHub). You might have some more luck installing it on Linux. I don't have any AM HD stations in my area anyways, so I can't verify it works. Please let me know whether you are successful in decoding AM HD with this!
@@DoubleALabs There was an AM station out of Chicago, WSCR (670 The Score) that was broadcasting in the HD hybrid format last year, but I didn't have an up converter attatched to my RTL-SDR V3 dongle at the time. Now that I have an upconverter I found out that 670 The Score turned off their HD radio broadcast and left the AM signal as the only option. Shame, but at least their programs are simulcast on 104.3 Jams HD2. If AM and FM stations switch to an all digital system, hopefully they will broadcast with more than 300-650 watts or however much power is being used in a particular city.
@@fairyball3929 Oh, it just dawned on me that you probably wouldn't be able to decode an HD AM signal without an up converter because the RTL-SDR only does IQ sampling above 24 MHz! Is that right?
@@DoubleALabs Right, last year I had to use the direct sampling mode which means I couldn't use the RTL-SDR's built-in amplifier. I ordered a chinese made Up-Converter on Amazon last month (Jan. 23, 2022) and it fixed the problem, but i was a little too late to catch the HD radio signals on the MW band.
From one Pittsburgher to another...thank you! You finally provided clear directions on how to make this work, and I appreciate it very much. It's amazing at how many HD stations are in our area!
Yes, indeed there are many HDs here!! Glad this video helped you out! I love that most of the subchannels have almost no commercials. I think 92.9 HD3 and HD4 air only about one minute of PSAs each hour! And the automated weather readings on those, which just consist of a temperature, are hilarious.
I did use them for a newer video I just uploaded! I think for this one I wanted to focus on some stations with more subchannels, like 92.9 and 96.9. Thanks! Also, from what I understand you would need an upconverter in addition to the RTL-SDR to tune HD radio on AM, because the RTL-SDR only does direct sampling below 28 MHz and you need quadrature (I-Q) sampling to demodulate the OFDM/QAM HD Radio uses. It's also too bad it doesn't seem like anyone in Pittsburgh is using HD on AM anymore (at least I haven't found it in my car).
One quick note... MinGW is not actually required to get this working. From my experience, this works perfectly well with just the `nrsc5-gui` application and the `libpthread...` DLL (not sure why this wasn't already packaged with the compiled release) saved into the unzipped program folder (same directory as where `nrsc5-gui.exe` is located). I'm not sure that the .NET 5.0 SDK is either; I didn't install it.
@@DoubleALabs Yep, same here! Your video made me realize what was missing from the GitHub release. As downloaded, the "play" button would spawn the nrsc5 CLI program, but it would immediately crash. This could be repeated ad infinitum, as the GUI didn't crash. Not sure how much you know about programming, but the libpthread DLL is a critical library for Linux-style programs to manage multithreading and (in this case most importantly) makes calling other programs easier.
What is not clear (to me anyway) is if SDR# (or any other tuner software) is running while decoding. I get that all the work to install SDR# installs the drivers. It appears MINGW runs independently from any tuner software as long as the driver for RTL-SDR is there.
@@DoubleALabs I looked at many “how to get started with RTL-SDR” and the absolute common component is Zadig. Seems to be the only way to get windows to recognize it as a receiver. That takes care of the hardware connection. Next is a common, or specific, dll that the software wants. Finally the software app itself. (SDR#, HDSDR, and/or MINGW) Thanks for the time to demonstrate!
Are you sure it's a sample? I'm in Pittsburgh, PA and those are the highways around Pittsburgh. When I tried this in another city (Harrisburg, PA), I got a map of roads around there.
@@DoubleALabs it is a sample, i tried it with WQEL in Ohio and it's a map of Pittsburgh, i tried my own HD radio station that is transmitted very low powered and same thing
Can this digitally record and save the stream that is playing then you can play it back like a wav or MP3? So if there's a song that you like that's playing you can record it and play it back later?
nothing happens when i click play (no radio stations pop up or play), and whenever SDR# is open the terminal opens, then crashes, then reopens, in a loop….
@@sovietfirestorm9086-archived- It's possible you aren't close enough to any stations broadcasting in HD. You can use radio-locator.com to determine which stations are nearby and broadcasting in digital. Enter your location, check the signal strength needles, and use the "i" icon next to each callsign to check digital status. Also, only one program can access the RTL-SDR at a time, which would explain the terminal crashing and reopening on a loop.
It's not really that bad once you know how to do it. What was a lot of work was figuring this all out in the first place. The GitHub page doesn't really explain how to get it working in Windows, so I had to hunt down tidbits of information on forum sites and try a bunch of different things before getting it to work.
@@NickFarrow So you are getting no sound in NRSC-5 GUI... does it display the station name or anything? And what BER are you seeing in the bottom right corner?
Weird, I did not needed to do all that, I just downloaded NRSC5, then NRSC5 asked for a missing .dll, I downloaded that .dll and nothing more. However SDRSharp just provide the Zadig and Zadig the driver for the USB Device to work. HD Radio quality suck anyway and the signal needs to be stronger than the analog to work. Really bad technology.
Whew! That’s some installation. But your instructions were very precise, and it worked for me. Thanks for your efforts. It seems to require a strong signal, as the digital side bands are transmitted with a fraction of the power of the analog FM.
Do you know if anyone has developed software to decode AM HD radio?
Thanks again.
Thanks for the comment, WRKL! I'm pinning this so other viewers can reference.
Yes, since the RTL-SDR isn't the most sensitive receiver and the HD signals are relatively weak, I've found you need a fairly strong signal for it to work. A proper FM antenna with element(s) extended to 3+ feet helps. I used fully extended rabbit ears in this demonstration. Also, I've found that slower computers struggle to run the software and decode HD radio without choppiness.
It looks like a newer version of nrsc5 by theori-io on GitHub supports AM HD with a command line option: github.com/theori-io/nrsc5 . I tried following the instructions for Windows installation but ran into some errors (about par for the course for anything from GitHub). You might have some more luck installing it on Linux. I don't have any AM HD stations in my area anyways, so I can't verify it works. Please let me know whether you are successful in decoding AM HD with this!
@@DoubleALabs There was an AM station out of Chicago, WSCR (670 The Score) that was broadcasting in the HD hybrid format last year, but I didn't have an up converter attatched to my RTL-SDR V3 dongle at the time. Now that I have an upconverter I found out that 670 The Score turned off their HD radio broadcast and left the AM signal as the only option. Shame, but at least their programs are simulcast on 104.3 Jams HD2. If AM and FM stations switch to an all digital system, hopefully they will broadcast with more than 300-650 watts or however much power is being used in a particular city.
@@fairyball3929 Oh, it just dawned on me that you probably wouldn't be able to decode an HD AM signal without an up converter because the RTL-SDR only does IQ sampling above 24 MHz! Is that right?
@@DoubleALabs Right, last year I had to use the direct sampling mode which means I couldn't use the RTL-SDR's built-in amplifier. I ordered a chinese made Up-Converter on Amazon last month (Jan. 23, 2022) and it fixed the problem, but i was a little too late to catch the HD radio signals on the MW band.
@@fairyball3929 Mind posting a link to the up-converter you bought?
From one Pittsburgher to another...thank you! You finally provided clear directions on how to make this work, and I appreciate it very much. It's amazing at how many HD stations are in our area!
Yes, indeed there are many HDs here!! Glad this video helped you out!
I love that most of the subchannels have almost no commercials. I think 92.9 HD3 and HD4 air only about one minute of PSAs each hour! And the automated weather readings on those, which just consist of a temperature, are hilarious.
So cool. I installed it and it works following your instructions. Great stuff!
You could have used 93.7 The Fan KDKA-FM for your test signal since they don't have any music. Great tutorial btw. I hope we get an AM version soon.
I did use them for a newer video I just uploaded! I think for this one I wanted to focus on some stations with more subchannels, like 92.9 and 96.9. Thanks!
Also, from what I understand you would need an upconverter in addition to the RTL-SDR to tune HD radio on AM, because the RTL-SDR only does direct sampling below 28 MHz and you need quadrature (I-Q) sampling to demodulate the OFDM/QAM HD Radio uses. It's also too bad it doesn't seem like anyone in Pittsburgh is using HD on AM anymore (at least I haven't found it in my car).
@@DoubleALabs none of the Pittsburgh Stations have HD Radio on AM. The only one with HD Radio of any kind is KDKA-AM (through 93.7 HD2).
Worked. Thanks for the thorough explanation!
One quick note... MinGW is not actually required to get this working.
From my experience, this works perfectly well with just the `nrsc5-gui` application and the `libpthread...` DLL (not sure why this wasn't already packaged with the compiled release) saved into the unzipped program folder (same directory as where `nrsc5-gui.exe` is located). I'm not sure that the .NET 5.0 SDK is either; I didn't install it.
@@neilbalch Thanks for the tips. It has been a while since I used this software, but I remember it being a pain to get working.
@@DoubleALabs Yep, same here! Your video made me realize what was missing from the GitHub release. As downloaded, the "play" button would spawn the nrsc5 CLI program, but it would immediately crash. This could be repeated ad infinitum, as the GUI didn't crash.
Not sure how much you know about programming, but the libpthread DLL is a critical library for Linux-style programs to manage multithreading and (in this case most importantly) makes calling other programs easier.
Excellent but I'm really wanting a plug in version for sdr shsrp then you can connect to the airspy server and find HD radio stations remotely
wow my local station KCMX had 3 hd channels on it all with different good music
Cool! It seems like many of the subchannels have almost no commercials, which is nice.
Now let's see if they can come out with one that decodes HD digital AM stations.
How can we do this in Linux using Gqrx?
What is not clear (to me anyway) is if SDR# (or any other tuner software) is running while decoding. I get that all the work to install SDR# installs the drivers. It appears MINGW runs independently from any tuner software as long as the driver for RTL-SDR is there.
Yeah, I haven't examined it thoroughly, but I do think all you really need is the driver, not the entire Airspy SDR# software package.
@@DoubleALabs I looked at many “how to get started with RTL-SDR” and the absolute common component is Zadig. Seems to be the only way to get windows to recognize it as a receiver. That takes care of the hardware connection.
Next is a common, or specific, dll that the software wants.
Finally the software app itself. (SDR#, HDSDR, and/or MINGW)
Thanks for the time to demonstrate!
the traffic map is a sample picture mine looks the same
Are you sure it's a sample? I'm in Pittsburgh, PA and those are the highways around Pittsburgh. When I tried this in another city (Harrisburg, PA), I got a map of roads around there.
@@DoubleALabs it is a sample, i tried it with WQEL in Ohio and it's a map of Pittsburgh, i tried my own HD radio station that is transmitted very low powered and same thing
seems to not want to work for me, just flashes the terminal and the window remains blank
Can this digitally record and save the stream that is playing then you can play it back like a wav or MP3? So if there's a song that you like that's playing you can record it and play it back later?
nothing happens when i click play (no radio stations pop up or play), and whenever SDR# is open the terminal opens, then crashes, then reopens, in a loop….
@@sovietfirestorm9086-archived- It's possible you aren't close enough to any stations broadcasting in HD. You can use radio-locator.com to determine which stations are nearby and broadcasting in digital. Enter your location, check the signal strength needles, and use the "i" icon next to each callsign to check digital status.
Also, only one program can access the RTL-SDR at a time, which would explain the terminal crashing and reopening on a loop.
That's so much work just to get it to work
It's not really that bad once you know how to do it. What was a lot of work was figuring this all out in the first place. The GitHub page doesn't really explain how to get it working in Windows, so I had to hunt down tidbits of information on forum sites and try a bunch of different things before getting it to work.
@@DoubleALabs Tried everything you did but still no sound for my local stations :(
@@NickFarrow Huh! Mind disclosing what version of Windows you're running and what processor/specs your computer has?
I was able to use airspy and get FM stations. So your instructions for the drivers work :)
@@NickFarrow So you are getting no sound in NRSC-5 GUI... does it display the station name or anything? And what BER are you seeing in the bottom right corner?
Weird, I did not needed to do all that, I just downloaded NRSC5, then NRSC5 asked for a missing .dll, I downloaded that .dll and nothing more. However SDRSharp just provide the Zadig and Zadig the driver for the USB Device to work.
HD Radio quality suck anyway and the signal needs to be stronger than the analog to work. Really bad technology.