Every year we, your humble Radio Survivors, endeavor to help our readers find unique, interesting and appropriate gifts for the radio lovers in their lives (or for yourself).When you order using one of our links to Amazon, you also give a gift to Radio Survivor, helping us pay the bills and keep the site going. It doesn’t cost you a single cent more.

• Jennifer’s gift guide includes a hot calendar, radio jewelry, radio lit, along with some cool actual radios.
• This year Matthew suggests eight great history books about radio broadcasting, covering everything from the culture and history of public radio to sex and indecency in broadcasting.
• For my gift guide this year I recommend some really great headphones, an inexpensive USB audio interface to enhance your online listening as well as my desert island radio. I have owned or used every single one of these items, so they come mediageek approved.

eMmusic is an online music store that pretty much pioneered the sale of unprotected MP3 music tracks in the early 2000s. The site has gone through ownership and business model changes over the years, shifting from its original monthly all-you-can-download plan to a number-of-tracks a month, and finally to the current X dollars a month subscription now offered. Because the big labels were initially scared of freely-trade-able MP3s, most of eMusic’s offerings were indie until a few years ago when some of the majors started to sign up. Not coincidentally, that’s also when eMusic’s prices went up, too.

Perhaps to add some additional value to subscribers’ monthly fee that buys less music than it used to, eMusic debuted its own radio service back in August. The service has always had some editorial content to accompany its download selection, with features on particular genres, subgenres or artists, as well as articles that highlight labels or particular scenes. eMusic Radio attempts to dip into that same editorial well, offering niche stations that lean towards curatorial eclecticism.

Unlike Pandora or Spotify, eMusic’s Radio “programs” (they don’t call them stations) are not user-customized or generated. Ostensibly each program is more like a DJ set, picked by knowledgeable music experts, rather than a auto-generated stream of music based upon a seed band or song. Thus eMusic offers programs like 80s One Hit Wonders, Brooklyn’s Finest and Explore Blue Note Records.

I’ve been an eMusic subscriber on and off for the last decade since I received my first free download voucher with the purchase of a CD burner. Yet the current pricing model has led me to cancel my subscription at the end of this term. Over the last six weeks or so I’ve checked out eMusic Radio to see how it stacks up against a service like Pandora or Spotify, or as an alternative to other internet radio.

On the whole I have to say that I’ve found eMusic Radio to be quite underwhelming. While the idea of having multiple curated programs at my disposal, the reality is that I’ve found most of them come up short.

Yacht Rock

The first station I tried out was disappointing pretty much right from the start. I tuned in the Yacht Rock station in order to get a fix of some smooth late 70s sounds. As both a fan of the music of bands like Hall and Oates and Steely Dan, as well as the parody web series that inspired the genre name, I was hoping to groove out to smooth music.

The set started out promising enough with the Doobie Brothers lamenting about “What a Fool Believes,” but just three songs later the same song came up again. Now, it’s a good track, but that kind of rotation makes even Top 40 radio seem diverse by comparison. Perhaps I’m not as big a fan of Yacht Rock as I thought, but I had to hit the skip button more than I would like, often because the same artist, like Christopher Cross, came up way too often. Within only about 30 minutes of listening I’d run out of allotted skips (which are limited in a say similar to Pandora or last.fm, as required by the DMCA).

The next station I tested out was 80s One (or Two) Hit Wonders. This station had a more extensive selection of tracks and I experienced no artist or song repetition over the course of an hour enjoying the likes of T’Pau, Night Ranger and Nina.

When I listened to this program in another session a couple weeks later several of the same songs came up again, but in a different sequence. Wall of Voodo’s “Mexican Radio” and Slade’s “Run Runaway,” turned up early in both sessions. The leads me to believe that these programs aren’t carefully crafted and sequenced playlists so much as a collection of tracks that are served up at random. That approach isn’t necessarily bad, but for me I’m finding that the overall number of tracks isn’t sufficiently high to maintain my interest in any given program for more than an hour total.

While listening the player app stays at the bottom of your browser window, allowing you to continue to navigate around the eMusic site. This lets you check out the artists, songs and albums you’re hearing, downloading something if the mood strikes you. However, if you leave the eMusic site, the music stops. But since you can leave the player running in a tab while browsing another tab or window this hardly seems like much of a limitation.

One thing I found annoying is that songs slowly fade in and fade out, which often means you miss a song’s intro and ending. This isn’t part of a crossfade, which would be understandable. So I can’t figure out why eMusic has decided to implement these fades, except that maybe they’re trying to avoid abrupt segues brought on by songs that end all-of-a-sudden or fade into another song on their album.

Another annoying aspect is that eMusic often forces me to re-login every time I switch stations, which really slows down the listening experience and serves as a disincentive for using the service.

eMusic only promises their radio service to work as in-browser on desktop computers. However, I was able to play it with no problem on my Android smartphone which supports Flash. The Flash-deprived iPhone was unable to play.

On the whole I find eMusic Radio to be a promising idea that has yet to live up to that promise. If I think of each “program” as something worth listening to for a single one-hour session, then it’s worthwhile. But unlike a well-used Pandora station, there’s too much repetition and not enough variety to entice me to listen to an eMusic program more than once.

Now, eMusic is periodically adding new stations to the mix, but the rate seems to be sporadic. A few new programs were added this past week after relative silence the previous ten days or so.

Another drawback is that it doesn’t seem like any additional variety is added to programs that were released weeks or months ago. To me, this combines the worst of commercial radio with the limitations of services like Pandora. I can think of many specialty internet radio shows that focus on a genre or style that manage to put out very unique and unrepetitive shows 52 weeks a year. I think it would be great to listen to the Hipster Heavy Metal Parking Lot program and get some new stuff every week, but that’s not how eMusic’s version of radio works.

eMusic does explicitly mark its radio sevice as “beta,” which may indicate that they intend to continue refining the service… or kill it off altogether. Perhaps that’s a way to lower listeners’ expectations?

Unlimited listening to eMusic Radio is free for current subscribers. Non-subscribers can sign up for a 10-hour free trial. Given there are 62 programs right now, there’s definitely more than 10 hours of listening to be had.

As a perk for eMusic subscribers their radio service is nice, but not essential. It’s certainly not something that would motivate me to become or stay a subscriber all on its own. There’s plenty of better free internet radio to be had.

Searching Radio on RadioFlag

Amid all of the new tools for music discovery, there are many that get lumped in with online radio since they approximate a radio listening experience. Whether it’s algorithms or human DJs selecting the tunes, these customized playlists may feel like the radio of the 21st century to their users.

Since I still love old-fashioned broadcast radio, I am most drawn to the social media projects that facilitate listening to actual radio stations. Matthew’s covered the allure of the radio listening service TuneIn, which allows users to search for stations in a specific location or genre; and I’ve described my fascination with Soundtap, which has built a curated dial of underground listening options focused solely on college and community radio.

Another new project, RadioFlag, purports to be “the first live radio content search engine and listening social network,” according to its founder Tony Roman.  RadioFlag’s website and apps allow users to search and flag radio content. On the surface, the RadioFlag website feels like a Twitter feed about radio stations. Through these posts and conversations, one is able to access more details about specific stations.

RadioFlag initially launched with a mobile app in April, 2011 and introduced their most recent beta website in August, 2011. Roman explained that he was frustrated because he had trouble finding the radio content that he was looking for. To fulfill that need, he decided to build a search tool that works with actual radio stations. He said that many other online “radio” tools have little to do with radio. Roman explained, “Radio at its core  has a human element. It is live, interactive, unpredictable, informative, etc…  These other companies in my opinion serve their audience very well, but they are not radio. They are recorded music concepts and playlist services.”

RadioFlag broadcasted its launch over the college radio airwaves of KUCI at University of California, Irvine and is also showing its commitment to college radio through a partnership with College Radio Day. RadioFlag is the “official app” for College Radio Day and they are helping to promote it to their users. They are working together on a “Spirit of College Radio Award,” which registered stations will be eligible to win.

Although RadioFlag has an interest in and ties to college radio, its tools are open to all kinds of radio stations, even those of the commercial variety. Roman pointed out that,

“We believe that when most users log into RadioFlag for the first time, they will most likely search for and listen to their favorite station, which will probably be a mainstream commercial station. However since RadioFlag places all stations on equal footing, meaning on our FlagCasts users will see flags to content on many different stations…they will then be exposed to stations they would have never discovered before, and many of those stations will be smaller stations with small budgets, but offer amazing content, such as college radio. So our goal is to create new exposure for local, indie, community and college stations that otherwise may never reach this broad listening audience.”

On RadioFlag, visitors can access radio station streams through a search tool or by clicking on a station’s icon attached to users’ comments flagged with that particular station name. Some DJs have set up profiles with information about their programs and their posts get included in their radio station’s feed, helping to connect listeners to their shows.  The categories of “stations,” “users” and “interests” are highlighted on RadioFlag, whereas radio stations and radio shows are the stars of Soundtap (which limits its sphere to college and community radio).

Currently RadioFlag is full of college radio options, but that may change when more commercial stations sign up for the service. At that point, it will be interesting to see if college and community stations remain the focus of the site/apps or if larger, more popular stations will begin to dominate its news feeds and its list of trending stations. Stay tuned.

Spotify is an online streaming music service that has been available in parts of Europe since 2008. It differentiates itself from popular US music services like Pandora and last.fm by permitting users to actually select the specific artists and songs to hear, rather than only relying upon an algorithm to choose music similar to a particular artist, song or style. In that way Spotify is more like a big online jukebox or iTunes, also permitting users to create playlists which can be shared with other users.

American music lovers who’d heard about the service waited anxiously to experience the kind of instant music availability enjoyed by listeners in Sweden, France and the UK. It took nearly three years, but after long negotiations with the major record labels Spotify became available in the US on July 14.

At first blush it certainly looks like Spotify poses a significant threat to streaming music services like Pandora, last.fm or Slacker, as well as subscription services like Rhapsody which also let listeners choose specific artists, albums and songs. I managed to swing an invitation to try out the free version of Slacker right after in launched stateside. After taking it for a test drive I can say that Spotify indeed does give these other services a run for the money, but I’m not certain that Spotify is ready to top them all.

As a free service it’s too limited to become someone’s go to music source the way that many people rely on Pandora, last.fm or internet radio. And I’m not yet convinced that Spotify’s paid service is complete enough for a lot of listeners like myself. Furthermore, it’s not really a radio service, so much as a very big jukebox in the cloud. Certainly there’s a lot to recommend that idea, but it’s also difficult to live up to.

Continue on to read my full detailed review of Spotify and find out what’s great, and what’s not.

Will it scale?

Most importantly, Spotify isn’t ready to become #1 because the service isn’t ready to take on enough free users to match the scale of Pandora or last.fm. Right now a free account is only available by invitation, whereas a free account with Pandora or last.fm is open to anyone. I presume this is because Spotify wants to scale carefully, rather than deal with a deluge of millions of new users crashing their systems. In fact, while free Spotify accounts were available to anyone for a while in the UK, the service is presently still only available by invitation there as well.

Prior to its US launch Spotify had 10 million users worldwide, with about 9 million of them free, ad supported accounts. By comparison Pandora has 80 million users and last.fm has 40 million. By user count alone Spotify has a way to go to beat the big two.

The Spotify difference

If you’re lucky enough to score a free Spotify account the experience indeed is different than Pandora or last.fm in several significant ways. First, Spotify requires its own application to run on your computer, with versions available for Windows, MacOS and Linux. For many users hoping to listen to music at work or school, places where one might not have the permission to install an application, this will be a barrier to using Spotify right away.

Pandora and last.fm both work inside your web browser. Now, this doesn’t mean that these services are available everywhere. Some schools and employers restrict access to streaming audio and video services. But if you’re currently a Pandora or last.fm listener at work or school it’s possible you won’t be able to install the Spotify app to enjoy that service.

MacOS Spotify app

At the same time there are advantages to having an app for Spotify. The app itself is pretty intuitive to use, borrowing quite a bit from the iTunes experience. Anyone who has used that nearly-ubiquitous Apple app or other music management software should have no problems getting started with Spotify’s quickly. Also, by not working in a browser Spotify minimizes the changes of dragging down your system or crashing your browser. The app also integrates with your iTunes library, giving you access to these tracks and playlists, too.

It’s very easy to search for artists, songs and albums. Just type in your search terms and hit enter. You’ll receive your results nearly instantaneously. Double-click on a track and you can be listening just as quickly. Compared to the web interfaces of Pandora and last.fm, Spotify is downright speedy. I’ve certainly been frustrated with Pandora and, especially, last.fm taking a long time to load a station, or failing to load altogether, sometimes requiring multiple page reloads.

Building a playlist is as easy with Spotify as in iTunes. Just click “new playlist” then select and drag songs to that playlist. It really seems like having a nearly limitless iTunes library at your fingertips. However, while Spotify has some 15 million tracks, it is not truly limitless.

A deep, but not bottomless, catalog

Just like other services there are some artists who are notably absent. Search for the Beatles, AC/DC, Frank Zappa or even King Crimson and you’ll only come up with covers by other artists. Bands like The Who or Pink Floyd have only a couple albums or a smattering of tracks available from their deep catalogs. These gaps aren’t limited to major artists either. In searching across many different genres I found that many artists only have some of their albums represented, or in some cases just a few songs from certain albums. I tried to see if missing albums were all on the same record label, but found that wasn’t necessarily the case.

Complaining about the catalog gaps in Spotify feels a bit like looking gift horse in the mouth, at least when you’ve got a free account and not paying a dime for the access and convenience. I must admit it’s nice to easily check out artists, albums and songs I’ve been interested in hearing rather than making do with thirty second clips.

The ad experience

Of course, just like its competitors (including commercial radio), Spotify isn’t really free. That free account is paid for by advertising that displays in the Spotify app and plays during the music stream. I was jarred by the first few ads I heard because they were for artists and albums that had no relationship to the music I was listening to. I just heard a whole different song start playing, making me think I’d accidenally clicked something. The first one I heard had no voiceover either, just a song snippet accompanied by display ad in the Spotify app. But because I had Spotify in the background I didn’t realize it at first.

I’ve gotten more used to the Spotify ads, but still find them to be more jarring than the last.fm and Pandora ads. On balance, the ads on the latter two services sound more like ones you hear on radio or television than the ones on Spotify.

Spotify has its (listening) limits

Like Pandora, Spotify’s free account sets a limit to how many hours you can listen to in a month. However, Spotify only offers 10 hours while Pandora offers four times as much. Especially if you listen while you work on other things, those 10 hours can run out before you know it. Last.fm does not limit listening time at all, giving it an advantage over the other two services.

Spotify offers unlimited listening on a computer in its Unlimited plan for $4.99 a month. At $9.99 a month the Unlimited plan offers “enhanced” sound quality and mobile access (more about that below). Pandora’s limitless listening is less expensive at $36 a year. This plan also includes higher quality audio, no ads and a desktop application rather than a browser-based player. Alternatively, for just 99 cents a user can keep listening past the 40 hour limit for the rest of the month, but without any of the other subscription benefits. There is no paid last.fm service — it’s completely free.

You can go mobile, for a price

Mobile devices are an area where the free Spotify service doesn’t compete at all. The mobile app is only available as a paid service with the Premium account at $9.99 a month. With that subscription you also get unlimited listening, higher quality sound files and an offline mode that lets you cache playlists on your computer or mobile device so you can listen without internet access.

Both Pandora and last.fm have free mobile apps. Pandora’s free mobile listening limits vary depending on your device and mobile service. Its $36 annual subscription removes any limit. Again, last.fm doesn’t have any limits in mobile, either.

It’s good to share

Despite the paranoia of the recording industry, sharing has been an important aspect of experiencing recorded music for decades. While Pandora and last.fm allow you to share a station that you’ve assembled, it’s not like sharing a mix CD or mix tape, since you can’t pick all the songs and artists. Spotify, on the other, let’s you share a full playlist with other Spotify users.

I think this is Spotify’s killer feature, because it most closely emulates the experience of a mix tape, as easy to assemble as making an iTunes playlist. Certainly there are other ways to share a playlist of tunes online, but most require you to either just share the list of songs which the other person would have to assemble herself. Otherwise you have to upload the song files yourself, which is something that exists in a legal grey area, at least in the US.

Share a Spotify playlist

Every Spotify playlist has a big “share” button underneath the playlist name. Click it and you can send a link to facebook, twitter or Microsoft Messenger with one more click, or just copy and paste a URL that you can send in email or post to a blog. For an example, click here for a playlist of Weird Al Yankovic polka medleys I created.

I really saw the appeal of this feature when a few of my friends first started posting playlists to facebook. It really was like distributing a mixtape to all your friends simultaneously. Well, all of your friends who have Spotify accounts, at least.

And therein lies the limitation of Spotify’s sharing. Since not everyone who wants a Spotify account can have one yet, you really can’t send that playlist to everyone you know. Also, there will probably be songs you wish to include–such as anything by the Beatles–but aren’t available in Spotify’s catalog.

The Spotify experience: a little too limited, not quite radio

I have been a Pandora and last.fm listener for about two years. I don’t use either service every day, or even every week, but there are times when I want background music with a minimum of effort and a minimum of interruption. This is when they fit the bill. I’m not a Pandora subscriber, and have only run into its monthly limit a few times. In these few cases I’ve just switched over to last.fm, even if my stations are different due to each service’s unique algorithms and music libraries.

So far Spotify has become part of my mix of services. However, I use it differently, since I can create playlists of artists and tracks that I specifically want to hear, rather than the more randomized selection I can expect with Pandora or last.fm. In that way I’m likely to use Spotify more like I use my own iTunes library. Of course, I can choose to listen to Spotify’s artist radio and get a similar experience. But as a free user I’d rather not use up my 10 hours getting an experience similar to Pandora or last.fm which have a higher and no limit, respectively.

The big question, of course, is, would I buy a Spotify subscription? I can see the attraction of the service. Having that enormous library of music available on demand, online and off, is appealing. Yet, for someone like me, that library isn’t quite enormous enough. The missing artists, albums and songs are quite tolerable for a free service, but less so when I’m coughing up a monthly fee.

Frankly, if I’d wanted a paid music service I’d already be Rhapsody subscriber. That service costs the same as Spotify Premium, offers similar desktop and mobile features, and has been available in the US for much longer. However Rhapsody also has gaps in its catalog, missing artists like the Beatles and AC/DC which aren’t found on Spotify, either.

Is it radio?

Pandora and last.fm are most appealing to me because they are radio-like and free. If I want to control the playlist, I’ll build one from my library. I listen to Pandora and last.fm when I want to relinquish some of that control and maybe be surprised. But I’m not particularly ready to pay for the experience.

I will admit that Spotify’s free service is nice to use, but 10 hours is a pretty low limit. Based on that alone I think it will have a tough fight to unseat Pandora or last.fm from a lot of music lovers’ daily listening routine.

Spotify shows promise, but is not ready to be a mainstream service accessible to most internet users. It also doesn’t quite scratch that radio itch. A jukebox is not the same thing as a radio station. For me the radio music experience is marked by a combination of predictability and surprise. I know the genre of the stations or the specific show, but I don’t know what song will come next; often it will be something I’ve never heard before. Both Pandora and last.fm provide something much closer to that radio experience, combined with a level of control that lets you filter out sounds you don’t want to hear.

While Spotify has a radio option that resembles Pandora and last.fm, there isn’t much reason to use it compared to its unique playlist building feature. There are times when you want a jukebox, and for many of us our iTunes library is actually pretty satisfying, given that it contains only music I’ve selected and acquired. Spotify comes close, but not close enough for me.

There may be many music lovers ready to just rent their music through a paid Spotify account, provided their tastes don’t stray too far from Spotify’s catalog too often. However, I truly do not know how many. I do know I won’t be one.

World Series Cupcakes from Noe Valley Bakery. Fear the beard!

I can’t overstate the excitement in San Francisco this week as the Giants wrapped up their season by winning the World Series. As they headed into the playoffs, I started hearing more and more discussion about the relative merits of local commentators vs. national commentators.

Many people told me that they preferred listening to baseball games over local radio while watching them on TV with the audio muted. My husband described the challenges inherent in this due to the audio delay that exists over the television. While watching Game 1 of the World Series projected from a computer onto a screen, he and his pals listened to the game over local radio.

It was a surreal experience for them as they were across from AT&T Park, so could hear fan noise and home run-signaling fog horns when something exciting happened in the game, then they caught word on the radio, and finally saw it on TV. Despite these hiccups, sports fans like them plodded on, putting up with the strange experience of hearing things before seeing them.

Here are a few options for those looking to watch a live event on television (sporting events most readily come to mind) while listening to play-by-play on a local radio station.

SportSyncRadio has a built-in delay so that TV viewers can listen to a game over a local radio station while watching it on TV.

There’s also the RadioShark AM/FM Desktop Radio with Time-Shift Recording, which is an AM/FM radio that provides some of the same capabilities as a DVR, allowing you to record broadcasts for future listening. Because of this feature it lets you pause live radio and create your own customized delay.

Another way to create a delay in your radio audio is by hooking up your radio to your computer and using the free Radio Delay tool. For step-by-step instructions on how to do this, take a look at Bote’s Radio Nexus for details for both Mac and PC users.

My Home Team Radio is another portable device available to create an audio delay by hooking it up to your radio and a set of computer speakers as shown in this video below. If you’ve tested out any of these options, let us know what you think works best.

My Sony XDRF1-HD tuner in its habitat.

Primary HD Channels

First off I will address the question of sound quality and fidelity. iBiquity claims “drastically improved sound quality” for HD Radio over its analog counterpart. I do not agree with this claim. Tuning between the analog and primary HD channel for each station I could perceive slight differences in sound quality between them. The biggest difference is the loss of background noise and hiss in the HD channel. Now, this is a very subtle difference, primarily perceptible during quiet music passages (which are rare on commercial FM) and voice breaks. This leads to the perception that there’s a bit more dynamic range on the HD channel, but it requires fairly high listening volume to clearly detect.

While I welcome the lower noise floor of HD, I otherwise don’t perceive any other significant increase in fidelity. On nearly every station I listened to the primary HD channel sounded nearly identical to the analog FM. Much of commercial FM is overcompressed, and I found that if a station’s analog signal was so overprocessed, so was the primary HD channel.

Sometimes I would lose the HD signal–since it’s broadcast at a much lower power level than the analog signal–and I never noticed just by listening. I had to look at the tuner’s display to know for sure. The shift between the HD and analog signals is pretty smooth sounding on the Sony tuner. I can tell when it happens, but it’s quite unobtrusive. If I’m not paying close attention to the radio it can happen without me noticing.

All of the 19 HD FM stations I received are stations that come in reasonably well in analog in my apartment in the Rogers Park neighborhood on the far north side of Chicago. The Sony XDRF1 turns out to have very good analog FM performance, bringing in the analog FM signals of these stations better than any other radio in my house except my Tivoli Model One, which is another room. Of the 10 stations where I couldn’t tune in an HD signal, 8 of them don’t come in clearly in my house in analog, either. For two stations my tuner did not indicate there was an HD signal present. More details listening notes by station are at the end of this post.

Secondary HD Channels

The other big advantage touted for HD Radio are the additional subchannels a station can have. Each HD station I listened to broadcast one or two additional channels. By and large the second HD channel had decent sound quality, but that nevertheless never matched the quality of the primary analog or HD channel. This should be expected because there is only so much digital bandwidth for each station to exploit, and the FCC requires that the primary HD channel–which must have the same programming as the analog signal–have the biggest share of the bandwidth.

The second HD channels typically sound like a good webcast station. That is, they sound like medium-quality MP3s with bitrates of 128 kbps or lower. I hear more compression and less dynamic range than the analog side, and some rolling off at the high end. Right now I’m listening to WXRT’s commercial-free HD channel 2 called “Channel X” and it’s pleasant to listen to, no more fatiguing than most web stations.

The stations broadcasting only on additional HD channel had slightly better fidelity on their HD-2 channels than those broadcasting three digital channels. Chicago Public Radio WBEZ broadcasts its Vocalo service on HD-2 and has no HD-3 channel. It sounds a little fuller than WXRT’s HD-2, with better stereo separation, a little more high end, and a little more dynamic range.

WXRT also broadcasts an HD-3 music channel which is branded as last.fm, owned by the station’s parent company CBS. The fidelity on HD-3 is greatly compromised, sounding like a webcast from the late 90s. The highs are heavily rolled off, with lots of shimmery distortion on high pitched instruments like cymbals. I find it pretty unlistenable and think it’s a waste to try and cram music on the HD-3 channel.

The stations that air talk programming on their HD-3 channels are much more listenable, mostly because voice-only programming just doesn’t require as much bandwidth and fidelity as music. WUSN airs a motorsports talk station on its HD-3 channel, and while the programming isn’t my cup of tea, I could imagine listening to it if it aired something of interest to me.

The HD Experience

Listening to HD Radio is not necessarily the most user-friendly experience. The digital HD signal is broadcast at much lower power than the analog signal–in order to lessen interference with adjoining stations. Therefore I had to adjust my antenna carefully to pull in HD signals. The Sony tuner provides a nice signal strength indicator which aids in this task, flashing an HD indicator when a digital signal is detected. You know you’ve got a HD signal tuned in when the HD indicator stops flashing, and more data–like song titles and station name–is displayed.

I have a fifteen-year-old Radio Shack amplified FM antenna that is tunable to frequency. I found with careful tuning I could successfully receive the HD channel for every available station. However, keeping that HD signal was sometimes difficult. Just walking across the room could cause the HD signal to drop out. The HD signal also seemed more susceptible to electrical interference than analog FM. For instance, my wife was shredding documents in the next room, and every time she shredded something the HD channel would drop out, then take 10 – 30 seconds to come back in after she stopped.

Now, it’s true that I live about 10 miles from downtown Chicago, where most major stations are located, on the second floor of an all-brick building. It’s not the ideal location to listen to radio, but not the worst, either. I’ll argue that at least 60% of the metro radio audience lives at least as far away as I do, so I think others’ experience would be similar to mine.

On some stations it was difficult to listen to the HD channels for any length of time. They just wouldn’t stay tuned in, no matter how carefully I adjusted the antenna and tried not to move around. It’s not a big deal if I’m listening to the primary HD channel, since the tuner smoothly falls back to analog, which sounds just as good. But it is frustrating if you’re listening to an HD2 or HD3 channel, since it goes away altogether. No slow degradation, no static–it’s either on or off.

Given the somewhat delicate nature of tuning in HD stations, I have real doubts how many average radio listeners are willing to devote the patience necessary to tune in HD channels. Sure, any radio listener is used to having to move an antenna or radio to get better reception. However, with analog a listener can hear the changes when reception degrades or improves. With HD it’s all or nothing, and therefore much more difficult to finely tune. Furthermore, hearing a crystal-clear analog signal does not necessarily mean you’ll get a clear digital signal. I can only imagine how frustrating it is to try and listen to a portable HD Radio, since just maintaining a clear FM signal with a portable can be a real challenge.

Finally, one of the great experiences of analog radio listening is scanning the dial looking for a good (or tolerable) song, or simply just trying to see what you’ll find. This is not a pleasure one will enjoy with HD radio. In my experience so far it really just isn’t practical to scan HD stations. It simply takes too long to get the HD signal locked in. Perhaps someone living downtown near the major stations might be able to do this, but I just don’t see it happening elsewhere.

Conclusion

I will continue to listen to HD Radio in order to see if the experience improves or I figure out some tricks to improving reception. But so far I find that the technology of cramming a digital signal in next to analog one has too many compromises to be successful. The bandwidth for the HD channels is not enough to offer significantly better fidelity for the primary HD channel, and the leftover bandwidth available for HD2 and HD3 provides sound quality that does not surpass what is available online or on satellite radio. Importantly, tuning in a clear HD signal can be a very finicky process that can try one’s patience. How many signal drop-outs will the average listener endure before giving up on an HD2 or HD3 channel?

Details

As I mentioned I did my listening with a Sony XDRF1-HD tuner which is generally highly regarded for its fidelity and performance on both analog and digital FM. I amplified the audio with a harman/kardon AVR25II receiver, which is a very high quality unit from the mid-90s. The receiver is well maintained and provides quite nice sound quality in plain 2-channel stereo that well exceeds most receivers you’ll find for under $1000 in the electronics store. The speakers are RTR28 bookshelf speakers and an Audiosource 100 watt subwoofer. Laying this out is my way of saying that I believe the electronics were up to task of fairly evaluating the sound quality of HD Radio.

These are the HD stations I listened to, with some listening notes as relevant:

• 91.5 WBEZ HD1 HD2 – HD2 had some of the best sound quality I heard on an HD2 channel.
• 93.1 WXRT HD1 HD2 HD3 – HD3′s music quality was too compressed and nearly unlistenable.
• 93.9 WLIT HD1 HD2 – HD2 is music, sounds OK.
• 95.5 WNUA HD1 HD2 – HD2 is music, sounded above average.
• 96.3 WBBM HD1 HD2 – HD2 is music, sounded average.
• 97.1 WDRV HD1 HD2- HD2 is music, heard high end “shimmery” distortion on cymbals.
• 97.9 WLUP HD1 HD2 – HD2 sounded average.
• 98.7 WFMT HD1 – No HD2 or HD3. HD1 sound quality was the best I heard.
• 99.5 WUSN HD1 HD2 HD3 – HD3 had talk which sounded adequate.
• 100.3 WILV HD1 HD2 – HD2 was talk and sounded very good for that format.
• 101.1 WKQX HD1 HD2 – HD2 was music and sounded decent, but somewhat compressed.
• 101.9 WTMX HD1 HD2 – HD2 was 80s music, pretty highly compressed.
• 102.7 WVAZ HD1 HD2 – HD2 is religious talk, sounds OK.
• 103.5 WKSC HD1 HD2 – HD2 is music, sounds average for HD2.
• 104.3 WJMK HD1 HD2 – HD2 is sports talk, sounds OK.
• 105.1 WOJO HD1 HD2 – HD2 is music, sounded slightly above average. HD3 is music, sounds poor.
• 105.9 WCFS HD1 HD2 – HD2 is simulcast of WBBM-AM. There was a lot of artifacting on HD2, not as clear as the station’s webcast.
• 107.5 WGCI HD1 HD2 – HD2 is music, sounds average.
  

  

  ]]> http://www.radiosurvivor.com/2010/08/08/first-day-with-hd-radio-not-impressed/feed/ 11 http://www.radiosurvivor.com/2009/09/24/the-romance-of-radio-rediscovered-on-the-ipod-nano/ http://www.radiosurvivor.com/2009/09/24/the-romance-of-radio-rediscovered-on-the-ipod-nano/#comments Thu, 24 Sep 2009 23:12:49 +0000 Jennifer Waits http://www.radiosurvivor.com/?p=1133 finish reading The Romance of Radio Rediscovered on the iPod Nano]]>

  iPod Nano

  I probably don’t have to convince anyone reading Radio Survivor that radio rules. But just in case you need some persuading, I’d like to share a beautifully written love-letter to radio (written by a reviewer at Popular Mechanics of all places).

  While checking out the new FM radio feature on the iPod Nano, former college radio DJ Seth Porges rediscovered what he once loved about radio. He writes that his listening habits expanded beyond his self-selected mp3s, broadening to include radio after a 10 year hiatus:

  “…my once-rigid playlist of personal standards has suddenly been infiltrated by daily doses of NPR, college radio and the occasional classic rock riff. Yes, Apple has pushed me back into FM radio…

  …there’s something inimitable and raw about radio. The way it fades into static as you drive out of a city or go too deep into a subway tunnel. The unyielding perkiness found in over-caffeinated morning-show hosts. The exceedingly obvious playlists compiled by classic rock stations.

  The way college radio DJs (of whom I was once one) punctuate every other word with an ‘uhhh’ or ‘you know.’ This nostalgia is only bolstered by the fact that, for many of us, the radio was our first introduction to music.

  For others, constructing a crystal radio kit was a DIY rite of passage. Sure, it’s middle-of-the-road stuff, but it’s also a distinct sort of fun that can’t be replicated by self-programmed playlists—or even the niche programming of satellite radio.”

  
  He finishes the piece by postulating that the new Nano may even work to “introduce a new generation—and reintroduce an old one—to FM radio’s unique listening format.” And wouldn’t that be grand? Earlier this year I heard someone describe radio tuners for iPhones as being akin to transistor radios in terms of the way that they will help to transform radio listening. So, I do think he might be on to something here.
  

  

  ]]> http://www.radiosurvivor.com/2009/09/24/the-romance-of-radio-rediscovered-on-the-ipod-nano/feed/ 4 http://www.radiosurvivor.com/2009/07/21/slacker-radio-does-the-crash-on-blackberry-curve/ http://www.radiosurvivor.com/2009/07/21/slacker-radio-does-the-crash-on-blackberry-curve/#comments Wed, 22 Jul 2009 01:32:09 +0000 Matthew Lasar http://www.radiosurvivor.com/?p=401 finish reading Slacker radio does The Crash on Blackberry Curve]]>

  Problem solved! See update to this story.

  Drat and double drat, I said, following the considerable amount of time it took to put Slacker radio’s app on my Blackberry Curve. It took about 15 minutes for the whole shebang to download and install, and then what? It played a tune for about a minute and crashed the whole darn operating system.

  I patiently waited for my Blackberry to reboot, then tried again, thinking maybe that would fix the problem. The thing just bonked out again. Nuts.

  It’s slow as poop too. Pandora is so much faster. But I’m trying the app again as I write this. Meanwhile I went over to Blackberry Cool today and it looks like I’m not the only one encountering this problem. Here’s what Ed had to report in his comments:

  “Slow? Yes but also bugged up. It crashes my curve often. Still I think its great when it works. I never bothered with radio streams until slacker came out with their caching feature. I have deleted all my mp3 files from my media card to make room for stations.”

  Ditto says Martin. “On a Curve the thing is almost unusable. The performance is dog slow and seems to tie up the whole device,” he notes. “I removed it figuring its probably designed for a Bold….”

  Alas. But hmmm… When I fire the app up it says, “You’ll need an SD card to cache stations.” I think that might be the problem. More on this when I find out.

  Meanwhile, Slacker whacked my system again. Doh!

  

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