Tuesday, August 09, 2011

Signal to Noise ( My trouble with HD Radio)

HD radio is a bit of a broken promise. My thoughts after a couple months of driving and listening in South Silicon Valley.

I am not sure if the HD stations are in fact clearer. They seemed clear before on conventional radio. I really do not hear a marked improvemnt, though I have very bad ears and am not the best person to ask about audio.

Is the song information nice? Yes well really sort of. If you are like me you can identify most songs after just a few notes. At least on the radio stations you commonly listen too. If you listen to college radio they do not often provide this information.

Those hidden radio stations they talk about have mostly been a fail for me. If you do not have a solid signal the radio does not play anything, it just goes to buffering. This can be very annoying, but is worse than you thing. These sub stations have super weak signal strength and are constantly buffering. San Francisco stations are ok when driving in Mountain View but basically non existent in south san jose.

As for stations I really like the live 105 classic station. It's pretty much what I expected and is nice to hear the old live 105 back on the radio. The Bone HD 2 is the other station I listen to or try to listen to. They should call it Wolfmother radio as that is the only group I know. It seems to be quasi screamo crap 24/7. I could probably program a better station and one of the many internet radio stations certainly do.

My wish would be KFOX to give Greg Stone the HD2 station and have an all progressive rock station, but some people would call that hell im sure.

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