If hd is dead, then why... - Page 3

And sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't. While the timing for AM Stereo is arguable, the FCC tried the "marketplace" approach by letting five different systems duke it out. By the time we had a winner, music on AM was gone. Granted, it was going already, but...

Meanwhile, you have companies like Phillips. Nobody questions the royalties CD makers paid to them and Sony. Took it all for granted.

So, there are two sides to the coin.

Right now, automakers are including the technology simply because it's "digital" and digital is "cool." Plus, it future proofs today's cars should HD take off ..and, if HD fails, most consumers probably won't notice. The channels will simply disappear. It's not as if there's a big "XM" button that'd be useless. There's not much of a downside for them. Sure, broadcasters and Ibiquity have been lobbying for this. But - and I get my info straight from the ivory towers - keeping the playing field even is what in-car entertainment is all about. You don't want to be the car maker that doesn't have something, be it bluetooth, Pandora, satellite or HDRadio. Which is why they're putting ALL of that in. iPod docks included. And they're paying licensing fees for just about ALL of it.

You should consider adding a separate HD Radio tuner to your car system. I have a few Visteon HD Zoom units, and a clone of that model with the Directed brand name as well. They often show up on Ebay, brand new, for $50 or less. They perform very well, and include RDS for analog FM too.

well said

nice. I'll take a look around for one.

I was seriously considering getting the sony HD tuner...http://www.amazon.com/Sony-XDRF1HD-HD-Radio-Tuner/dp/B00168Q248

Now it seems to be gone. I know someone who has HD in their car, and I think it's nice.

If it says Sony on it and it goes in a car, avoid it like the plague. My little chain of high end car stereo shops dropped Sony because of their incredibly high failure rates, lack of build quality, and difficulty in getting parts as a factory authorized repair center. They are awful. The only good car stereo gear they ever made was the old Mobile ES line that disappeared back around the turn of the century.

I'm not that much fonder of their home gear, to be honest.. haha

I purchased my Sony HD Tuner for $99 and now their $600? Wow. That's not garbage, that's collector's item! By the way the XDRF1HD is to connect to your stereo or home theater and is considered to be the best FM tuner since the glory days of Marantz, McIntosh, and Sequerra.

Considered by whom? I just read the owner reviews on that Amazon link, and the one and two star reviews are very enlightening in regards to that omodel's shortcomings and reliability.

It seems to be the way to move going forward... I wanted to get the sony just to set it up and see all the additional stations offered. I live in a suburb of Chicago and the number of additional stations is impressive...

http://www.hdradio.com/stations/Illinois-IL/Chicago-15

That being said the reviews I have read on some tuners like the Sangean hdt-1x or Onkyo 4555 seem to show that there are issues with the functionality of the units... I guess for now I will stick with my NAD c426...it is great on good old analogue radio...
Edited by unbridled_id - 6/11/12 at 7:20am

OK, those issues are:

• It runs hot. It has an old-fashioned linear power supply that doesn't interfere with AM reception. So don't cover it up.
• It turns into a backlit clock when you turn it off.
• There is no knob or keypad to enter a frequency. You must hold buttons down to tune it when stations change their frequencies.
• There is no optical SPDIF output, only RCA connectors which sound bad because they aren't gold plated. [?]
• And of course HD Radio sucks, it doesn't work and is a nothing more than a scam while analog FM delivers CD-quality audio.

I've been using the XDR-F1HD since it came out. It's the best analog or digital FM receiver I've ever owned. It's analog quality is very comparable to 48 kbps HD Radio audio. There is practically no hiss and it's incredible sensitive. Unfortunately it's just as susceptible to multipath as any other analog receiver so where I am most of the HD Radio stations are far more listenable than their analog signals.

Nice to hear... I wonder if Sony is updating this model...

I bought one at Fry's, I think a few years back for $99. Then sold it a year ago on eBay for $200+ (regular auction - started at $1, increments of $1). I just wanted to make half back. I was surprised it sold for 2X+.

I thought there was one other issue with it getting warm and eventually blowing the (cheap) capacitors. The Slingbox has similar issues. I may just be thinking about the Slingbox here but I was pretty sure that the Sony HD Radio had the same issue.

Not a big deal to fix in that you just pull the old ones off the board and solder new (better) ones down but it was still an issue.

I think you have to block the vents to fry the capacitors. They're close to the sizzling-hot transformer. My XDR-F1HD has been on every second since the day I bought it years ago and it's still OK. I feel a warm breeze convecting out of the back.

This thing's fantastic analog reception has done more to set back HD Radio than any other receiver.

I wouldn't rely on Amazon comments as a basis for the quality of anything. HD Radio has enough people who irrationally dislike the technology and spend hours spreading their hate and in some cases it is hate. If you want a real review of the Sony radio, try this page: http://ham-radio.com/k6sti/xdr-f1hd.htm


The Sony is a terrific radio. I've had one since they came out. the Sangean HDT-1 & 1X are also good radios. I have a JVC HD head unit for the car and use a dual band 2 meter/440 antenna on my trunk. Reception of HD radio signals has improved with the power increase.

I wouldn't call it dead but some of the timing with the market place certainly has put a number of industries on the skids for the time being (video games being another).

First and foremost is people can bypass radio by listening to music. They can download and burn to cd as mp3 or just plug in their ipod if they listen in a car
There's plenty of podcasts of material that you cannot get on radio and since it is exempt from FCC it is hard to really offer it without some censorship
I have seen some shows that were uncensored online or on xm (opie and anthony did this for awhile) but clean on the radio

Secondly is that the era of big bands is kinda over. What I mean by this is that they'll never be another band as big as the Beatles, Michael Jackson or heck even Back Street Boys
Music is now in small clubs and because of the decline in music sales bands are going on tour more and more. Sometimes there's surprises but there isn't anything that BIG
coming down the pipeline.

Third is that not all places have good reception, even with analog. I have a hd portable from best buy that I can't really listen to in the gym. I have a mp3 player with a radio (not bad but not hd)
can't hear anything in that either so I just play mp3's. I've worked in offices and warehouses and few could ever get reception even in using a steel door as an antenna. FM sounded like AM
AM sounded like static. In the warehouse they now have internet access so that helped and in the office it was streaming radio

I will admit that there have been some adjustments of the market just on the analog in that the hd can piggyback. Talk is going more to FM and sports easily is going to FM.
If this FM is better on the HD (scores on screen with sports etc) then it can do better. In addition Classical sounds much better on the hd than analog.

Recently in boston "oldies 103.3" was made into a hd2 station..earlier nearly two years ago wbcn was put on a hd2. So if there's no new content I guess if you take
the older popular content and put it on hd2's that might force consumers to buy in.

I really liked wbos hd2 radio you format although they did shift the anchors from saying that much on air. wbcn hd3 is nice as there are some live anchors.

Of course given the economy it is a bit harder to tell someone to shell out even $50 to listen to something they've already heard.

media sales (CD, tape, 8-track, MD, LP, MP3, whatever) was never the major money-maker for artists. It's always been the tour circuit that brings in the lion's share of the profits.

The mechanical royalties that artists get from music sales is so low, many of them are glad to just break even making a record. The artists bear all costs to produce the recording (the big "advance" that newly signed artists brag about is nothing more than a loan -- they're now in debt). Many bands are forced to tour just to get themselves out of debt.

One example: "Low End Theory" by the rap band A Tribe Called Quest sold an impressive 500,000 units in 1991 and reached 45 on Billboard's album charts. The band did a public break down of all their costs of the record to show their fans how rich they weren't. After they spit the profits of this hit album between the three members, they each got a little over $30,000!

I'm not surprised byhow slow the music industry goes now. Who wants in on this? A single can sit at the number one position for weeks and weeks. Songs that used to get airplay for three months now stay in daily rotation for over a year. Once a song gets heavy rotation (like Nicki Minaj's "Starships" right now) I do everything I can to avoid it because I know I'll be hearing it every day for the next year at least.

Unlikely. Philips made the remarkable DSP-based chipset, and discontinued it for whatever reason (Ibiquity royalties are reputed to be rather stiff). Unless someone comes up with equal technology, Sony will have to start from scratch and apparently there isn't any financial incentive for them to put out any kind of tuner in the present market.

I think we'll be waiting quite a while for a revival of home tuners; perhaps HD radio will pick up popularity from the car audio market.

Amen, brother

You are right but I would also add that in a sense we have so many other venues of entertainment that it makes it harder to stand out. Outside of touring it can be hard to market a band without word of mouth. When was the last time you saw an ad for an album these days? Between analog radio, hd radio, sirius/xm, podcasts, pandora..heck audio books and regular albums it makes it hard to compete with audio content. The same can be said with video as if every channel could compete alone a la cart (they wouldn't).

At first I heard some bands argue that they wouldn't need their label The bare naked ladies (the band) doesn't use one anymore. They sell less albums but the margin is higher so they make about the same but without the middleman. But for bands to actually break in marketing isn't always a given. Having said that though there are some ways they can market together. Ther
http://bandcamp.com/ this is a site that tries to do that

If I want to I can buy the whole album for $5 or tracks alone for $1

Ironically when Bon Jovi was on CNBC a few weeks ago he made the argument that albums shouldn't be split up and that it is like a chapter of a book. I'd counter that but saying that any musician in the past 50 or so years also made singles (sometimes with B sides) as a cheaper way to get the music.If everyone was forced to buy the whole album we'd waste time skipping over tracks and a fair amount of money.

With heavy rotation (and yes I know the song :-( ) sometimes content doesn't even have to be commercial. I have maybe six or so NPR affiliates within 100 miles of me (wbur (on am too), wgbh, wumb, wicn etc). NPR is nice and all but practically 98% of affiliates play the same content. I wish that there was maybe a greater push against the FCC to relax a bit more things here and there.

I think HD might have taken off if it was released a bit earlier and had more of a visual guide like a epg works with over the air hdtv. There is no real tv guide like "thing" for radio for the most part. Yes you can look up schedules at websites but to do that at each station is a bit taxing to say the least, especially if you are driving from one market to another. In the past year I've taken trips to VT and DC. In both cases I had no clue what station plays what or at what time. Obviously people traveling are not a huge demographic but for any newcomer it is a bit odd to have to turn the dial for the whole spectrum to see what is on the air.

I don't need an ad. I hear a song on the radio that I've never heard by a band I like so I figure they must have a new album out. Listening to college radio has cost me lots of money!

One thing HD Radio could have used is displaying the album a song is from. It doesn't take much research to figure that out on your own however.


There are lots of small bands selling songs independently and doing very well. It's surprising how much money they can make touring and selling their own CDs during shows since they get 100% of the profit. Small pressings don't cost that much. CD artwork is pretty easy to do these days. I think this has contributed to the fragmentation of the music market with a few acts getting huge sales (and dominating the charts for ridiculous amounts of time) while hundreds of smaller bands few people have heard of are selling small numbers of self-released recordings and doing quite well regardless.

Even now-bankrupt MC Hammer was making so much money from his own self-release that labels had to offer him a higher royalty to get him to sign for his first major-label record. He figured after all the costs, he would have had to sell nearly a million units to make what he was already making from his own record which seemed ridiculous at the time. Too bad he signed!

Listening to Internet Radio has been my main source for small/no-label artists and bands.. like Kesang Marstrand. I'd have never heard of her, had it not been for an Indie music station on shoutcast. Now I own all 3 of her CDs, two of which she signed. Great stuff out there, if you are willing to look/listen.
(If you're curious, check out her single "Lioness." IIt's the one that turned me on to her music.)

I've had three Onkyo receivers over the last 3 years and have had no problem whatsoever with heat. I've had that many because I'v up graded to a newer model three years in a row.

Reminds me of 3D haters.

I have no love for 3D because I find it to be a marketing ploy and a fad.. aside from being visually impaired myself, so I can't see 3D anyway.. have a small macular hole in my retina that prevents me from seeing anything that requires a stereoscopic view, so I just have no use for 3D, or for paying extra for the feature.. or replacing my entier movie library to get it.

Newer models do this, but I find that the data's not well-populated just yet. The HD Radio that came with my Impreza has 4 lines: Album, Song, Artist, and Genre... but about 85% of the time only Song and Artist show up.

I own an XDR-F1HD, which I bought new in 2008 for $49 ($99 - $50 rebate). A true marvel of engineering and a demonstration of what radio makers can accomplish today with DSP and such if they only focus their efforts on the tuner. Best investment I ever made

(Although it IS rather annoying having to connect it to a receiver / powered speakers)

Re: Haters

The HD Radio haters are really weird. I could understand if you had a bad experience or it wasn't what you thought, but there are those who have entire websites dedicated to the hatred of HD Radio. There's a poster in the Crutchfield forums that just goes on and on about it.

To me it's like hating some innocuous object. It doesn't really matter. Man, they sure get into it, though.

There are some valid complaints about HD Radio. Yes, I wish the whole standard wasn't encrypted as if the world will end if someone builds an HD Radio receiver in their basement but I don't believe it's some kind of conspiracy to destroy our beloved analog radio so the broadcasting industry could be dominated by cruel corporations. That already happened years ago.

Many of the technical complaints on the Amazon reviews are very detailed and completely mistaken. If reviewers were really hearing nothing but a blurry mess from HD Radio stations then they must have had some bad stations in their area at the time. When I got my first receiver HD Radio stations here sounded terrible (meaning difficult to listen to) and more sounded identical to analog FM. A few sounded great. I complained to the engineers and they admitted that they didn't quite have everything optimized yet. As years went by most of them figured out what sounded good and apparently some software updates improved the encoding. Now nearly all of them have bright sound and clearly sound better than their analog stations.

I think they're mostly afraid of change.

Nut! I haven't had much time to listen to the radio, but today tried to listen WODS-2...The Cove...and OH NO! It is gone. Apparently WODS, 103.3 is no more as is the soft love songs of WODS-2 (The Cove)....what a bummer!

Well, there is plenty of easy listening music on my Dish!