That looks to use the same HD module as the Accurian table top HD radios sold around 2006. It even has the same blue dot matrix LCD display. I guess manufacturers just integrated the prebuilt modules into their designs without modifying the on screen interface much.
I'm seeing lots of pins on the tuner board. I'm curious if one or some of them have digital audio data coming through on them. Maybe probe them with a scope? I will have to try to find one of these radios.
I have a model that is similar to this, but every time I try to listen to it, the radio goes completely out and "loses" the signal, than I would have to turn it off, than back on again, it would still randomly go out whenever I have it on and I would have to keep turning it off and on over and over again. I'm surprised this thing doesn't even have a power supply (which was my original guess). Either way, I think it's got some technical issues. Bad solder joints, ribbon cable, or capacitors perhaps?
Dave, Thanks for going over all the features of your radio. It was very informative. I've got almost the same radio. Mine is the HDT-1X. I'm not sure what the "X" means, but it looks just like yours. My radio has a remote control (RC-P7) which is very handy. I live in the Los Angeles area so there is a lot of HD radio to listen to. Regards, Tom
Thanks Dave for that information. Today I did a little research and understand the "X" version also has a dimmable view screen as well. For what that's worth. :-) I use an old rabbit ears TV antenna for FM reception which works pretty well.
Well hello there from Coplay Pennsylvania. You're describing the Sangean HDT1 and I'm wondering if this is any better than the HDR18. I'm receiving a Philadelphia FM station but would like to receive this station in HD. I will appreciate any information you can provide to me.
I bought the HDR 16 and 18. I have issues decoding RDS on the 16, and hope to have better FM Reception since I’m 75 miles from the FM HD Stations with the 18. I wonder if either secretly decode AM Stereo?
Besides HD, and DRM there are at least 4 separate and I believe incompatible systems for AM Stereo. The most common form of AM stereo broadcast is called C-QUAM. It’s actually just about like the HD signal just not digital. Kahn Hazeltine works the sidebands and Magnavox had a system closely resembling C-QUAM with some important differences. Motorola had another system as well. It was left to the market to see which system would sell best but that proved to be part of it’s demise. A lot of people were confused about this and other are surprised when I tell them that AM Stereo even exists (or existed). A lot of people look at you funny and still tell you that AM can’t even broadcast in stereo. Research should be done by trained experts and not by statistics in a marketing campaign. I actually had an AM stereo from Sony. It had all 4 systems.
Not sure if you can receive these Everett, WA stations in Vancouver, but both KRKO (1380) and KKXA (1520) broadcast in HD. Might be worth a try at night.
Bummer. You'll probably need just the right DX conditions. There are a couple of other Seattle AM stations you can try .... KFNQ 1090, KKDZ 1250, KUOW 1340. But none of them are particularly high power, either.
i really want a HD Radio :) to come to UK we have DAB, it okay but HD looks awesome and spec sounds breaktaking!, i love USA For having lots of cool stations in stunning Audio
I have a digital tuner. But, stations in my area have dropped digital audio transmissions. I could be wrong, but I think there is no digital stations at all in West Virginia.
The ones I were getting from Charleston have stopped. So has the station in my area. I live too far away from Huntington and Morgantown to get good reception from those areas.
There is some confusion there. The "HD" in hd television is "High Definitiin" whereas the "HD" in hd radio actually stands for "Hybrid Digital". The Hybrid meaning that the signal is composed of both the analog (for conventional receivers) and digital for (digital "HD" receivers) components riding on the same carrier. I actually had a situation on an hd receiver where i had a low power analog only station that was pretty weak in my location about 30 miles from me on 96.9 mhz and yet a full power station from jacksonville, fl about 100 miles or so from my location it was locking on to the digital from the jacksonville station so it would sound as though the jacksonville station was taking over the low power station even though when it was still in analog mode (before locking on to the digital signal) it would play the audio from the low power station although a bit static-ie.
The HD in HD radio actually doesn’t stand for anything. It is a registered tm. of Ibiquity. By now Ibiquity is probably a part of some other company. The same dilemma takes stage when you see another set of letters: CBS. At one time this was the Columbia Broadcasting System. Nowadays I have looked this up and found it just stands for CBS, Inc. Go figure...
Yes for sure. Capacitors don't heat up in linear designs like they do in switching supplies and this last longer. Likely the main reason they didn't use a switcing supply in this was for interference reasons. Switching supplies are noisy and this could interfere with the reception of AM.
Here in my location there are no am stations broadcasting in hd however i have "attempted" to catch a few out of new york and chicago while listening to am dx at night. The "HD" indicator would flash indicating an hd signal was there but due to propagagion conditions the signal just wasn't stable enough for it to lock on. And then of course if the signal faded out to much the "HD" would stop flashing altogether. And this was during the winter months when conditions are supposed fo be a little more favorable for dx. Namely wbbm am 780 from chicago and wcbs 880 from new york.
No hd am here either. I need to put a big antenna on it and see what I can get. All the local am stations are carried as sub channels on fm HD stations.
It does receive AM stereo, however it's a little flakey with part 15 transmitters. I've had to lower input voltage to under 12volts and lower the audio level inputs for it to decode CQuam. I'm wondering since the part 15 transmitters are loosely based on the Magnavox system if that has something to do with it.
Interesting, will have to lower the input voltage and see what happens. The part 15 transmitter works with all my other AMStereo radios that are based on the motorola CQUAM system, however the magnavox and motorola systems were very similar.
All the HD radios I have, Rhapsody, Coby, Accurian, Directed Electronics and the Sangean all have similar traits. Another thing, if you tune into a normal commercial CQuam station, the signal needs to fairly strong. I know what you're saying about the actual CQuam radios. They decode with no issues.
I've got the HDT-1X and it's interesting to see the differences in the firmware between the two. What's sad is that the stations in your market do the same poor job with RDS and HD-radio text ... and they wonder why they struggle.
All the FM stations I listen to have RDS data. Unfortunately the main station I listen to CFOX is not broadcasting in digital. Most of the other ones are though, but the number 1 rock station in the market is analog only.
@@12voltvids Do they all have the correct PTY for their format? It's a problem here and basically makes it useless for anyone searching by genre (not that there are even a lot of people that know you can do that - but then if it never works right ...).
I never liked HD on AM, to me they sounded like a low bitrate MP3, at least the stations around here did. I had an Insignia I got on "Black Friday" from Best Buy about a decade ago, gave it away not too long after I got it though. I would like to find a component tuner like yours. I hear the Sangean HDT-1X has C-Quam, BUT I have also read in various places that the HDT-1 has C-Quam as well...but I see you confirmed it does not. Thanks for the video.
HD radio when transmitted on an FM analog channel uses the spectrum that used to be occupied by RDA data, and the SCA subcarrier channels. These are sub-carriers that are multiplexed into the antenna feed and transmitted along with the analog carrier. On HD radio the first carrier is the digital content of the main analog channel, and there can be 3 additional sub carriers, or channels that carry additional content, usually the AM station audio of the same station. Here for example Corus owns 101.1 CFMI CKNW, and AM730 the traffic station. They are all on the digital feed. Rogers owns CJAX, CKWX and Sportsnet 650. They are on the 96.9 sub channels, and Bell owns CHQM 103.5, as well as the team 1040 sports and Bloomberg 1410. They are on the 103.5 subchannel, and all in stereo, and superrior sound quality to the AM stations. I lieten to news and talk radio a lot so this tuner will be spending a fair bit of time on these sub channels.
I scored an Insignia unit a couple of years ago and I came across a guide of someone replacing the op-amp chip. Helped with the analog sound quality. I tried the digital outs on my unit and it sounded better with the analog connections. I like it but even in a large market like Los Angeles, some stations have to have the antenna adjusted to get the HD signal.
I have the Auvio version of this tuner. There are only 5 stations transmitting in HD in my area. I bought a omni directional areal I hope will get some more channels to come in. I'm only 62 miles from the Memphis Tennessee transmitters but HD signals seem to be very weak.
Tony King Here in the Vancouver bc area. 96.9 has 3 digital channels. The main. Audio, news 1130 and sports net 650. 101.1 has main audio, cknw 98 and traffic 730. 103.5 has main audio, team 1040 sports and Bloomberg financial radio which is also 1410 am. 107.7 has main audio and a punjabi radio station.
So they transmit in MP3 format like an mp3 file? If yes then I wonder if one of these radios could be modded to dump the MP3 stream data to an MP3 file on a USB drive or SD card. Maybe probe some of the pins. Would love to see a close up of the tuner board.
Rob Madden me too but weak signal picked up in car HD but not at home receiver 🤬used antenna that came with radio need a antenna that picks up weak signals weather messes up signal at times!
In the UK there is a lot of criticism of dab due to the low bit rate of some of the stations, and some purists prefer fm, I can't tell the difference on my car radio, and would rather have dab any day, as fm round hear is crap with constant multi path distortion! I rarely get break up or loss of signal on dab. Not to mention the bigger choice of stations, so I wonder how you can say your system sounds better than fm if they are transmitting at mp3 format? Thanks for all your videos
Been watching yur videos for among time , in UK we do use dab (I prefer listening to stations on MW with my vintage Roberts/Hacker radios) It's such a shame UA-cam restricts what can be heard on channels like your that obviously are a million miles away from wanting to give out copy righted music , just be good to be able to play a bit to check signal strength differences between stations ....
AM HD is OFDM, not "phase modulated like CQUAM"....The analog is limited to 5kHz and the OFDM carriers are +/- the carrier....CQUAM is phase modulated QUAM on the carrier with the L-R and L+R as well....and the L+R of course normally AM mods the transmitter...C is Compatible QUAM....true QUAM would have nigh distortion in AM radios with an normal envelope (diode) detector and the audio is good to 10kHz b/w.
Not a fan of digital broadcast. Had 25 analog channels with my outdoor tower antenna (Barrie, Buffalo, Toronto, Kitchener, Woodstock, London, Detroit, Erie & Cleveland). With digital TV Lucky to pull in Toronto and Kitchener... Woodstock on a good day. Hope digital radio doesn't suck as much! Though living on a boarder town it might be ok since the US has the money to implement that stuff faster. Just another way to charge for services I guess.
Digital TV range dropped because they switched from high power analog signals in the VHF spectrum to much lower power signals in the UHF spectrum. HD radio uses the same carrier that the analog signal uses, so if you get good capture of the analog signal the HD digital signal should be just fine.
so it relies on a station with an fm frequency to carry another station, so not quite as easy as DAB is, which has a lot of channels now they have freed it up from the analogue tv bands which used that frequency before in the UK. downside is, they keep talking about selling off the old FM frequencies, but that will kil about 50 million radios,dab being in a rush used a terrible codec, the european DAB+ is better all around.
It's hardly surprising they don't support AM stereo, a format that is all but dead outside Canada. "New content"? Really? I don't know about the situation over there but I've owned a DAB tuner for over 15 years now, and I wasn't exactly an early adopter either.
I really enjoy your videos. I have to point out that unit completely missed 101.9 CITR and 101.7 CHLY form Nanaimo Which can be a real challenge . My Sansui TU X301i (a entry level model) can receive both, with a simple T dipole stretched out inside. I admit though depending on weather CHLY some days is a No Go, but most nights it is listenable. Also in Vancouver call it Killarney area.
I'm a good 50km out from citr out at ubc and down at sea level. I can't get it on any radios out this was. I was able to pick up the pirate station when it was on but I haven't heard that one is about a year now.
If you are ever in the UK, look me up, I'll give you a demonstration of DAB radio from a good Arcam tuner going into my Sony DTC-60ES DAT machine as a DAC, then the TA-E80ES pre amp/TA-N80ES amps and Yamaha NS-1000M. I'll buy you dinner if you don't vomit because of the audio quality. It is utter garbage. HD Radio sounds like a good system from what I can tell from watching your video.
Sure I did. At about the 13 minute mark I open the unit up and you can clearly see that there are audio outputs, a coax input for FM antenna and terminals for the AM antenna. Big empty box.
We have DAB digital radio in the UK, I personally think the quality is crap. Our government want to kill off FM in favour of DAB! I have a high end Sony DAB/FM tuner & can confirm FM sound quality is way better than DAB. Many of us in the UK do not want to be forced into losing FM in favour of low quality DAB, your system seems a better quality option.
DAB was tried here in Canada, and you are right the sound is crap. Sounds like XM satellite radio, which is also crap. DAB was scrapped in favor of iBiquity's in-band on-channel (IBOC) digital radio system, trade mark HD radio. HD has nothing to do with "High definition" as some people thought. It stands for Hybrid Digital. An add on to the existing analog system, and a superior way to do it. The sound quality of the main sub channel on FM is much better than the analog FM. As soon as it kicks in, the music just pops, and you forget that you are listening to radio. Dynamic range goes way up, and the compressed "kick" of the analog channel is gone, and music sounds like it is supposed to. Here the -2 and -3 channels are all the AM radio feeds, which won't have the same bandwidth as the main channel, but they still sound far superior to AM radio. Unlike the experiment with AM stereo a few years back where the FCC in the states dropped the ball and tried to get the market to decide which format would survive, and none did, HD radio is a standard in the US and Canada, that all stations have to use, therefore guaranteeing that this standard will survive, as will the analog main channel as it is required to be there to carry the sub carriers. The reason that analog in some countries is going away is because the government wants to auction the radio spectrum, and DAB uses a totally different spectrum so they can reuse the AM and FM bands. HD radio uses the same frequencies, so there is no spectrum to gain, it just rides along in the background, and gives the listeners more options. There is talk that subscription channels will also be appearing, using HD radio. So for example an in store music cast, or music service just like the old analog SCA analog channels from back in the 80's
DAB, at least in the UK, is pretty crap and a spectrum hog. The format's nearly 30 years old now and uses MP2 (NOT MP3) for the audio encoding which means to get any decent stereo output you need a bare minimum of 128kb/s for a station. for stereo broadcasts 160 or 192 is the norm meaning you can get maybe 4 stereo stations on one multiplex and maybe a couple mono ones. There's also DAB+ which uses AAC3 encoding and is the norm in many European countries but, in the UK at least, there's only one national Mux supporting DAB+ and that's only available to about 60% of the country. Even then, a lot of stations only transmit in 64 or 80k mono as the transmission fees charged by Arqiva who own the infrastructure is astronomical. It's definitely a case of quantity over quality. Also doesn't help that most non BBC stations are owned by massive radio groups who whilst meant to provide "Local" stations network 90% of the time with the exception of breakfast and drive, and even then they're now conglomerating breakfast and drive into larger coverage areas so save on studio/personnel cost. So our local station that covered the big town and outlying areas then expanded to cover the whole county merging 2 stations together. Now their breakfast and drive is region-wide giving us "local" travel news from the other end of East Anglia which can be a 2 hour drive away. Totally pointless. Instead of spending all this money on whizzy new technologies , they should be investing in the output. It's that bad here now that I can drive from my house to my employer's HQ and at multiple points of my journey I hear at least 5 stations from "Heart" on the FM band all playing the same thing. It's a waste of bandwidth. Then given the fact I can't get a signal in tunnels etc. on either AM, FM or DAB, but my phone works - I can actually listen to Internet radio more consistently for my 2-3 hour trip than I can our own home-grown output. That has to be wrong.
It is a radio. Not connected to internet. That up address is the one that the transmitter is pulling from the studio. I suspect the HD transmitter you the mountain is pulling the radio station stream or, the hd transmitter is the active server and that is the IP it uses to broadcast over the bet because all these radio stations are online now too. Anyway this is a radio receiver. It doesn't "talk back" it's a dumb receiver. Many stations are now going hd only so your FM receiver won't get them even though they are right there.
Thanks for this video!
That looks to use the same HD module as the Accurian table top HD radios sold around 2006. It even has the same blue dot matrix LCD display.
I guess manufacturers just integrated the prebuilt modules into their designs without modifying the on screen interface much.
I'm seeing lots of pins on the tuner board. I'm curious if one or some of them have digital audio data coming through on them. Maybe probe them with a scope?
I will have to try to find one of these radios.
How does this radio compare to the Sony F1 HD ?
I've been kinda looking for a HD radio tuner that is it's own unit like that one i'll have to look more into this unit
I just scored a $7 Sony ST-JX401 tuner from goodwill it seems to work decent with a small short wire
I have a model that is similar to this, but every time I try to listen to it, the radio goes completely out and "loses" the signal, than I would have to turn it off, than back on again, it would still randomly go out whenever I have it on and I would have to keep turning it off and on over and over again. I'm surprised this thing doesn't even have a power supply (which was my original guess). Either way, I think it's got some technical issues. Bad solder joints, ribbon cable, or capacitors perhaps?
Does the HD Radio/digital radio spec support lossless codecs or just MP3?
Dave,
Thanks for going over all the features of your radio. It was very informative. I've got almost the same radio. Mine is the HDT-1X. I'm not sure what the "X" means, but it looks just like yours. My radio has a remote control (RC-P7) which is very handy. I live in the Los Angeles area so there is a lot of HD radio to listen to.
Regards, Tom
THOMMGB
If I am not mistaken the 1x has a toslink optical out and is rumoured to decode am stereo
Thanks Dave for that information. Today I did a little research and understand the "X" version also has a dimmable view screen as well. For what that's worth. :-) I use an old rabbit ears TV antenna for FM reception which works pretty well.
I wish someone would post a set up video for the Sangean HDT-20.
Well hello there from Coplay Pennsylvania. You're describing the Sangean HDT1 and I'm wondering if this is any better than the HDR18. I'm receiving a Philadelphia FM station but would like to receive this station in HD. I will appreciate any information you can provide to me.
What bit rate do they transmit with? I hope it is 192kbps or more because mp3 sounds disgusting with anything below 192kbps...
6:01 that looked like it was going along with the lyrics not just the channel info
I bought the HDR 16 and 18. I have issues decoding RDS on the 16, and hope to have better FM Reception since I’m 75 miles from the FM HD Stations with the 18. I wonder if either secretly decode AM Stereo?
Really? My 16 works well on rds, my teac hd-1 however often does
I'm glad to know about AM Stereo. I know some models have the capability.
I can barely get 97.9 WSIX FM HD, 75 miles away.
Besides HD, and DRM there are at least 4 separate and I believe incompatible systems for AM Stereo. The most common form of AM stereo broadcast is called C-QUAM. It’s actually just about like the HD signal just not digital. Kahn Hazeltine works the sidebands and Magnavox had a system closely resembling C-QUAM with some important differences. Motorola had another system as well. It was left to the market to see which system would sell best but that proved to be part of it’s demise. A lot of people were confused about this and other are surprised when I tell them that AM Stereo even exists (or existed). A lot of people look at you funny and still tell you that AM can’t even broadcast in stereo. Research should be done by trained experts and not by statistics in a marketing campaign. I actually had an AM stereo from Sony. It had all 4 systems.
Not sure if you can receive these Everett, WA stations in Vancouver, but both KRKO (1380) and KKXA (1520) broadcast in HD. Might be worth a try at night.
I tried. I can pick up the analog signal faintly, but no digital.
Bummer. You'll probably need just the right DX conditions. There are a couple of other Seattle AM stations you can try .... KFNQ 1090, KKDZ 1250, KUOW 1340. But none of them are particularly high power, either.
i really want a HD Radio :) to come to UK we have DAB, it okay but HD looks awesome and spec sounds breaktaking!, i love USA For having lots of cool stations in stunning Audio
Gotta love that big long message from 92.9 FM.
I have a digital tuner. But, stations in my area have dropped digital audio transmissions. I could be wrong, but I think there is no digital stations at all in West Virginia.
The ones I were getting from Charleston have stopped. So has the station in my area. I live too far away from Huntington and Morgantown to get good reception from those areas.
There is some confusion there. The "HD" in hd television is "High Definitiin" whereas the "HD" in hd radio actually stands for "Hybrid Digital". The Hybrid meaning that the signal is composed of both the analog (for conventional receivers) and digital for (digital "HD" receivers) components riding on the same carrier. I actually had a situation on an hd receiver where i had a low power analog only station that was pretty weak in my location about 30 miles from me on 96.9 mhz and yet a full power station from jacksonville, fl about 100 miles or so from my location it was locking on to the digital from the jacksonville station so it would sound as though the jacksonville station was taking over the low power station even though when it was still in analog mode (before locking on to the digital signal) it would play the audio from the low power station although a bit static-ie.
The HD in HD radio actually doesn’t stand for anything. It is a registered tm. of Ibiquity. By now Ibiquity is probably a part of some other company. The same dilemma takes stage when you see another set of letters: CBS. At one time this was the Columbia Broadcasting System. Nowadays I have looked this up and found it just stands for CBS, Inc. Go figure...
If it was practical to use linear psu in electronic devices, would they last longer?
Yes for sure. Capacitors don't heat up in linear designs like they do in switching supplies and this last longer. Likely the main reason they didn't use a switcing supply in this was for interference reasons. Switching supplies are noisy and this could interfere with the reception of AM.
Here in my location there are no am stations broadcasting in hd however i have "attempted" to catch a few out of new york and chicago while listening to am dx at night. The "HD" indicator would flash indicating an hd signal was there but due to propagagion conditions the signal just wasn't stable enough for it to lock on. And then of course if the signal faded out to much the "HD" would stop flashing altogether. And this was during the winter months when conditions are supposed fo be a little more favorable for dx. Namely wbbm am 780 from chicago and wcbs 880 from new york.
No hd am here either. I need to put a big antenna on it and see what I can get. All the local am stations are carried as sub channels on fm HD stations.
It does receive AM stereo, however it's a little flakey with part 15 transmitters. I've had to lower input voltage to under 12volts and lower the audio level inputs for it to decode CQuam. I'm wondering since the part 15 transmitters are loosely based on the Magnavox system if that has something to do with it.
Interesting, will have to lower the input voltage and see what happens. The part 15 transmitter works with all my other AMStereo radios that are based on the motorola CQUAM system, however the magnavox and motorola systems were very similar.
All the HD radios I have, Rhapsody, Coby, Accurian, Directed Electronics and the Sangean all have similar traits. Another thing, if you tune into a normal commercial CQuam station, the signal needs to fairly strong. I know what you're saying about the actual CQuam radios. They decode with no issues.
@@scotthigbee9687
Does it give any visual indication on the display that it is deciding am stereo?
@@12voltvids, No visual indicators. You'll need to listen closely for the transition. It's weird, but cool at the same time.
It takes anywhere between 30 to 45 seconds for it to transition.
I just bought that radio i get. Lot power noise. On it. Also tried my mcs am stereo and the noise flooris much better.
I've got the HDT-1X and it's interesting to see the differences in the firmware between the two. What's sad is that the stations in your market do the same poor job with RDS and HD-radio text ... and they wonder why they struggle.
All the FM stations I listen to have RDS data. Unfortunately the main station I listen to CFOX is not broadcasting in digital. Most of the other ones are though, but the number 1 rock station in the market is analog only.
@@12voltvids Do they all have the correct PTY for their format? It's a problem here and basically makes it useless for anyone searching by genre (not that there are even a lot of people that know you can do that - but then if it never works right ...).
I never liked HD on AM, to me they sounded like a low bitrate MP3, at least the stations around here did. I had an Insignia I got on "Black Friday" from Best Buy about a decade ago, gave it away not too long after I got it though. I would like to find a component tuner like yours. I hear the Sangean HDT-1X has C-Quam, BUT I have also read in various places that the HDT-1 has C-Quam as well...but I see you confirmed it does not. Thanks for the video.
I like HD radio, for in the car its excellent
Wow great radio sounds good too.
How do they send am on the sub channel ... what is the sub channel ? ...Nice project
HD radio when transmitted on an FM analog channel uses the spectrum that used to be occupied by RDA data, and the SCA subcarrier channels. These are sub-carriers that are multiplexed into the antenna feed and transmitted along with the analog carrier. On HD radio the first carrier is the digital content of the main analog channel, and there can be 3 additional sub carriers, or channels that carry additional content, usually the AM station audio of the same station. Here for example Corus owns 101.1 CFMI CKNW, and AM730 the traffic station. They are all on the digital feed. Rogers owns CJAX, CKWX and Sportsnet 650. They are on the 96.9 sub channels, and Bell owns CHQM 103.5, as well as the team 1040 sports and Bloomberg 1410. They are on the 103.5 subchannel, and all in stereo, and superrior sound quality to the AM stations. I lieten to news and talk radio a lot so this tuner will be spending a fair bit of time on these sub channels.
thank you so much for helping me !! you are a good guy ~
Does anyone know how I can pick up stations over 100 miles away
Go up a mountain. FM is line of sight.
@@12voltvids I’m not near a mountain
I scored an Insignia unit a couple of years ago and I came across a guide of someone replacing the op-amp chip. Helped with the analog sound quality. I tried the digital outs on my unit and it sounded better with the analog connections. I like it but even in a large market like Los Angeles, some stations have to have the antenna adjusted to get the HD signal.
Did you ever try out the outside antenna?
Yes I did. Pulls in a few more HD stations from the local transmitters. Still no AM digital though
I have the Auvio version of this tuner. There are only 5 stations transmitting in HD in my area. I bought a omni directional areal I hope will get some more channels to come in. I'm only 62 miles from the Memphis Tennessee transmitters but HD signals seem to be very weak.
Tony King
Here in the Vancouver bc area. 96.9 has 3 digital channels. The main. Audio, news 1130 and sports net 650. 101.1 has main audio, cknw 98 and traffic 730. 103.5 has main audio, team 1040 sports and Bloomberg financial radio which is also 1410 am. 107.7 has main audio and a punjabi radio station.
So they transmit in MP3 format like an mp3 file? If yes then I wonder if one of these radios could be modded to dump the MP3 stream data to an MP3 file on a USB drive or SD card. Maybe probe some of the pins. Would love to see a close up of the tuner board.
coondogtheman1234
The broadcaster can use various transport streams. Mp3 is one of them.
I own the sangean hdt-20 great radio/tuner.
Rob Madden
This one is pretty good. I got it for a good price and it will do the job.
Rob Madden me too but weak signal picked up in car HD but not at home receiver 🤬used antenna that came with radio need a antenna that picks up weak signals weather messes up signal at times!
In the UK there is a lot of criticism of dab due to the low bit rate of some of the stations, and some purists prefer fm, I can't tell the difference on my car radio, and would rather have dab any day, as fm round hear is crap with constant multi path distortion! I rarely get break up or loss of signal on dab. Not to mention the bigger choice of stations, so I wonder how you can say your system sounds better than fm if they are transmitting at mp3 format? Thanks for all your videos
It receives the am radio stations in stereo, just not on the am band!!!.... lol
Been watching yur videos for among time , in UK we do use dab (I prefer listening to stations on MW with my vintage Roberts/Hacker radios)
It's such a shame UA-cam restricts what can be heard on channels like your that obviously are a million miles away from wanting to give out copy righted music , just be good to be able to play a bit to check signal strength differences between stations ....
Shaun-Dawson
You can get away with 8 seconds before the copyright hammer gets swung.
AM HD is OFDM, not "phase modulated like CQUAM"....The analog is limited to 5kHz and the OFDM carriers are +/- the carrier....CQUAM is phase modulated QUAM on the carrier with the L-R and L+R as well....and the L+R of course normally AM mods the transmitter...C is Compatible QUAM....true QUAM would have nigh distortion in AM radios with an normal envelope (diode) detector and the audio is good to 10kHz b/w.
the “HD” (brand) actually doesn’t stand for “hybrid digital”, even though that’s what it is.
Actually it does
Not a fan of digital broadcast. Had 25 analog channels with my outdoor tower antenna (Barrie, Buffalo, Toronto, Kitchener, Woodstock, London, Detroit, Erie & Cleveland). With digital TV Lucky to pull in Toronto and Kitchener... Woodstock on a good day. Hope digital radio doesn't suck as much! Though living on a boarder town it might be ok since the US has the money to implement that stuff faster. Just another way to charge for services I guess.
Digital TV range dropped because they switched from high power analog signals in the VHF spectrum to much lower power signals in the UHF spectrum. HD radio uses the same carrier that the analog signal uses, so if you get good capture of the analog signal the HD digital signal should be just fine.
There is so much room in that tuner that you could fit in a decent amplifier, it looks possible do a mod like that. I love how simple this tuner is.
Yes it would be possible to put a small IC amp in there, but definitely not a class D.That would generate too much noise.
so it relies on a station with an fm frequency to carry another station, so not quite as easy as DAB is, which has a lot of channels now they have freed it up from the analogue tv bands which used that frequency before in the UK. downside is, they keep talking about selling off the old FM frequencies, but that will kil about 50 million radios,dab being in a rush used a terrible codec, the european DAB+ is better all around.
Jusb1066 we really should have the HD system here in the UK. Hopefully DAB+ will be the standard once all UK stations switch over from DAB
It's hardly surprising they don't support AM stereo, a format that is all but dead outside Canada.
"New content"? Really? I don't know about the situation over there but I've owned a DAB tuner for over 15 years now, and I wasn't exactly an early adopter either.
I have about 30+ digital stations on hd radio here
There is about a dozen here.
We have the old style of DAB here in the UK. It is so bad, we say DAB stands for "Dead And Buried"!
They tried Dan here. It died faster than Toshiba's HD DVD format.
News 1130 is great here. Mark Belling.
So the thing is a large and almost empty box.
It is a large empty box because it is a component tuner. It is made that size so that it fits on top or underneath your other stereo components.
I really enjoy your videos. I have to point out that unit completely missed 101.9 CITR and 101.7 CHLY form Nanaimo Which can be a real challenge . My Sansui TU X301i (a entry level model) can receive both, with a simple T dipole stretched out inside. I admit though depending on weather CHLY some days is a No Go, but most nights it is listenable. Also in Vancouver call it Killarney area.
I'm a good 50km out from citr out at ubc and down at sea level. I can't get it on any radios out this was. I was able to pick up the pirate station when it was on but I haven't heard that one is about a year now.
The clock will not keep accurate time on that tuner, infuriating that they couldn't sync the clock to the line voltage
What else is new
If you are ever in the UK, look me up, I'll give you a demonstration of DAB radio from a good Arcam tuner going into my Sony DTC-60ES DAT machine as a DAC, then the TA-E80ES pre amp/TA-N80ES amps and Yamaha NS-1000M.
I'll buy you dinner if you don't vomit because of the audio quality. It is utter garbage. HD Radio sounds like a good system from what I can tell from watching your video.
hah we have AM1410 here in the south Poconos
you like radio alot
your review disappoints me. you did not show the back of the unit.
It's got an am and FM antenna terminal and left and right RCA jacks for the audio.
Sure I did. At about the 13 minute mark I open the unit up and you can clearly see that there are audio outputs, a coax input for FM antenna and terminals for the AM antenna.
Big empty box.
We have DAB digital radio in the UK, I personally think the quality is crap. Our government want to kill off FM in favour of DAB!
I have a high end Sony DAB/FM tuner & can confirm FM sound quality is way better than DAB.
Many of us in the UK do not want to be forced into losing FM in favour of low quality DAB, your system seems a better quality option.
DAB was tried here in Canada, and you are right the sound is crap. Sounds like XM satellite radio, which is also crap. DAB was scrapped in favor of iBiquity's in-band on-channel (IBOC) digital radio system, trade mark HD radio.
HD has nothing to do with "High definition" as some people thought. It stands for Hybrid Digital. An add on to the existing analog system, and a superior way to do it. The sound quality of the main sub channel on FM is much better than the analog FM. As soon as it kicks in, the music just pops, and you forget that you are listening to radio. Dynamic range goes way up, and the compressed "kick" of the analog channel is gone, and music sounds like it is supposed to. Here the -2 and -3 channels are all the AM radio feeds, which won't have the same bandwidth as the main channel, but they still sound far superior to AM radio. Unlike the experiment with AM stereo a few years back where the FCC in the states dropped the ball and tried to get the market to decide which format would survive, and none did, HD radio is a standard in the US and Canada, that all stations have to use, therefore guaranteeing that this standard will survive, as will the analog main channel as it is required to be there to carry the sub carriers. The reason that analog in some countries is going away is because the government wants to auction the radio spectrum, and DAB uses a totally different spectrum so they can reuse the AM and FM bands. HD radio uses the same frequencies, so there is no spectrum to gain, it just rides along in the background, and gives the listeners
more options. There is talk that subscription channels will also be appearing,
using HD radio. So for example an in store music cast, or music service just like the old analog SCA analog channels from back in the 80's
DAB, at least in the UK, is pretty crap and a spectrum hog. The format's nearly 30 years old now and uses MP2 (NOT MP3) for the audio encoding which means to get any decent stereo output you need a bare minimum of 128kb/s for a station. for stereo broadcasts 160 or 192 is the norm meaning you can get maybe 4 stereo stations on one multiplex and maybe a couple mono ones. There's also DAB+ which uses AAC3 encoding and is the norm in many European countries but, in the UK at least, there's only one national Mux supporting DAB+ and that's only available to about 60% of the country. Even then, a lot of stations only transmit in 64 or 80k mono as the transmission fees charged by Arqiva who own the infrastructure is astronomical. It's definitely a case of quantity over quality. Also doesn't help that most non BBC stations are owned by massive radio groups who whilst meant to provide "Local" stations network 90% of the time with the exception of breakfast and drive, and even then they're now conglomerating breakfast and drive into larger coverage areas so save on studio/personnel cost. So our local station that covered the big town and outlying areas then expanded to cover the whole county merging 2 stations together. Now their breakfast and drive is region-wide giving us "local" travel news from the other end of East Anglia which can be a 2 hour drive away. Totally pointless. Instead of spending all this money on whizzy new technologies , they should be investing in the output. It's that bad here now that I can drive from my house to my employer's HQ and at multiple points of my journey I hear at least 5 stations from "Heart" on the FM band all playing the same thing. It's a waste of bandwidth. Then given the fact I can't get a signal in tunnels etc. on either AM, FM or DAB, but my phone works - I can actually listen to Internet radio more consistently for my 2-3 hour trip than I can our own home-grown output. That has to be wrong.
Highly proprietary - POS for $200US. The cost of manufacturing, about $29. The rest is sheer profit for DTS Inc.
A lot of wasted space in there
From a IP Address as shown, Ill stick with 1970's FM Tuner.
It is a radio. Not connected to internet. That up address is the one that the transmitter is pulling from the studio. I suspect the HD transmitter you the mountain is pulling the radio station stream or, the hd transmitter is the active server and that is the IP it uses to broadcast over the bet because all these radio stations are online now too. Anyway this is a radio receiver. It doesn't "talk back" it's a dumb receiver. Many stations are now going hd only so your FM receiver won't get them even though they are right there.