Ron Hardin wrote:

Frank Dresser wrote:
That spectrum is consistant with what I heard a few evenings ago around
720 kHz. WGN's engineer said it wasn't them, and I haven't noticed the
noise since then.

Has anyone heard the sidebands produced by IBOC? The best description I
can come up with is something like "digital white noise".

It's just a noise rush, but not white exactly. The giveaway is that it's on
only one sideband of the station you're trying to hear. If you hear it on the
LSB, the offending IBOC station is 10 kHz higher (not lower as you'd expect);
and if on USB, then 10 kHz lower.

So you need selectable sidebands to tell, or at least a BFO and notice whether
the noise pitch goes up as you tune up (in which case the IBOC station is higher)
or goes down (in which case the IBOC station is lower), starting from the
interfered-with station.
[...]


All of this destruction of the radio listening hobby -- and
destruction of _anyone's_ ability to listen to many of the more
distant or weaker stations he can now receive -- is because the
money-men of the media monopolies saw a new digital band as a threat
to their dominance. So they squelched it -- they hope -- with IBOC.

As I've said before, IBOC (In-Band On-Channel) digital -- AM or FM
-- is essentially a turkey, technically. It's inferior in almost
every way to a dedicated digital system in a dedicated digital band.

The main reason IBOC is promoted is because a new dedicated digital
band would level the playing field: the present 250-Watt AM
daytimer, once ensconced in the new band, would have just as clear
and clean a signal as the 50-Kw clear channel or the high-power FM
-- just as good fidelity, the same coverage, and 24-hour operation.
Just like your Web site is as clear and as easily accessible as
NBC's.

A dedicated digital band might also be scalable and allow many more
channels for the listener -- hundreds, thousands perhaps. Probably
enough to allow public access (in which anyone can be a broadcaster
for free or nearly free) on an even greater scale than does cable
television or Internet radio.

And that would mean more competition for the big-money men.

And it would mean that competition would now be purely on the basis
of programming, not the sheer signal superiority which the money-men
have paid for.

They want to preserve the _inferiority_ of their smaller
competitors. IBOC does that. They want to maintain the high economic
hurdle to becoming a broadcaster. IBOC does that.



With all good wishes,



--

Kevin Alfred Strom.

News: http://www.nationalvanguard.org/
The Works of R. P. Oliver: http://www.revilo-oliver.com
Personal site: http://www.kevin-strom.com