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Canadian HD Radio List & Some Questions
As often happens on the web, I came across this while looking for something else. It claims to list all the HD stations on the air in Canada, although I'm not sure how really complete it is. Frankly, I thought there were more.
HD Radio In Canada
As I look at the page, I notice several stations are listed as being in HD on AM. Is that the case or is that just a reference to them being on the FM subcarrier? Either way, I'm not sure I've ever seen them detailed in that way before.
Which brings me to some other questions I hope someone here can answer. After 13 years of almost literally driving my car into the ground, I'm facing the fact I have to get a new one. Is HD Radio now a standard feature in most cars? If not, for those who have one, is it really worth the extra money to get the feature? (I mostly listen to talk so I hardly want to pay more just to hear someone yakking in slightly better quality.) And if you do have one in your car/home, how much do you really use it?
Eventually perhaps everyone will have one and there will be more stations to listen to. But we're not there yet and who knows if we'll ever be. Is HD worth the money for consumers and the expense for broadcasters? I'm not sure if anyone has that answer yet.
- Fitz
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Re: Canadian HD Radio List & Some Questions
The AM stations listed appear top be ones that are carried here as sub-carriers of FM HD stations. There are quite a few AM HD's in the US but none in Toronto. I personally don't like the sound of HD compared to over the air but have some HD radios to monitor what is there and I hate what it does to adjacent frequencies. Like the loss of WBFO in this area due to a nearby HD signal. There is better signal to noice ratio and for talk it should be an improvemnt.
Last edited by Fitz (February 18, 2020 1:00 pm)
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- radiokid
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Re: Canadian HD Radio List & Some Questions
HD is depending on how it's setup sadly. HD on 99.9 has 1010 and 1050 sounding really compressed/low bit rate, but CING on 95.3 has them setup fairly good with more bandwidth available. Some are feeding HD with internet streams instead of a clean feed from an STL. This also doesn't help the sound. HD has ability to sound great, but it's only as good as the audio going in, and bitrate set.
- tvguy
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Re: Canadian HD Radio List & Some Questions
I listen to sports in the car. Gave up a several years ago with trying to listen to FAN590 and TSN1050 anywhere there are TTC streetcar lines. I listen exclusively to these stations on HD radio, have done so since they started using HD. Audio quality is excellent compared with AM and the electrical interference issues. Also if you drive downtown near Scotiabank centre or Rogers Centre, you will hear post-game clearly on HD on either station, driving home, even coming out of the underground parking lots. I listened to the Raptors post-game coming up from under Royal Bank Plaza's parking lot. No AM reception down there. I also like to listen to Doug Kirk's Wave.fm stream, when I am close enough to the Hamilton transmitter. The FCP synchronous rebroad transmitter never activated HD (though it was upgraded to HD) so it basically "nulls out" the HD carriers of KX Durham, wherever I travel in the downtown area. Unfortunate, but that's related to FCP's usurious charges that the impose for use of HD subcarriers. No tower owner in the US imposes an "HD subcarrier" surcharge, to my knowledge. Only in Canada!
I hope this is helpful. Ibiquity (or whatever it is now called) had a pretty comprehensive list at one time of Canadian HD implementers on its website. Not certain the new owners (venture capital company) had kept it updated.
BTW the Zoomer740 signal on 96-3-HD2 is excellent, much better coverage than their 96.7 low powered transmitter, and coverage extends out to Kitchener. I don't think it sounds "worse" than 740 KHz, particularly because it's in stereo at a reasonable bit-rate. But perhaps the previous poster is "hearing" something I'm not in terms of fidelity.
Last edited by tvguy (February 18, 2020 1:30 pm)
- markow202
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Re: Canadian HD Radio List & Some Questions
RadioActive wrote:
As often happens on the web, I came across this while looking for something else. It claims to list all the HD stations on the air in Canada, although I'm not sure how really complete it is. Frankly, I thought there were more.
HD Radio In Canada
As I look at the page, I notice several stations are listed as being in HD on AM. Is that the case or is that just a reference to them being on the FM subcarrier? Either way, I'm not sure I've ever seen them detailed in that way before.
Which brings me to some other questions I hope someone here can answer. After 13 years of almost literally driving my car into the ground, I'm facing the fact I have to get a new one. Is HD Radio now a standard feature in most cars? If not, for those who have one, is it really worth the extra money to get the feature? (I mostly listen to talk so I hardly want to pay more just to hear someone yakking in slightly better quality.) And if you do have one in your car/home, how much do you really use it?
Eventually perhaps everyone will have one and there will be more stations to listen to. But we're not there yet and who knows if we'll ever be. Is HD worth the money for consumers and the expense for broadcasters? I'm not sure if anyone has that answer yet.
Depends on the manufacturer and options.
- Fitz
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Re: Canadian HD Radio List & Some Questions
In the case of Zoomer Radio I don't think the HD sounds worse than 740 but in the case of FM it's usually different.
This past weekend I actually did a test of HD, FM and Internet streams as it's something that I have been trying to figure out. Not a perfect test as there were too many variables but here's some samples of the same segment on each type of broadcast and bonus points for any one that can ID what type of broadcast each is:
Last edited by Fitz (February 18, 2020 4:29 pm)
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Re: Canadian HD Radio List & Some Questions
Well, it'd have to be Jewel 92.1, as I'm pretty sure that's the only station airing that show with HD activated. I'll guess 1=FM, 2=HD, 3=Stream
- Fitz
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Re: Canadian HD Radio List & Some Questions
Well, it'd have to be Jewel 92.1, as I'm pretty sure that's the only station airing that show with HD activated. I'll guess 1=FM, 2=HD, 3=Stream
Nice try Aaron but no cigar. Don't feel bad though because as I mentioned above I F'd up the test due to too many variables in the chain. The best thing to have done woiuld have been to go directly to digital on the HD and FM and I did not do that. Also I should have used a non lossy file format such as Wav and by mistake I used a high bit rate MP3,
I took the internet feed from the Windsor AM station and the others from CKDO HD and the repeater FM.
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