Norway Will Be the First Country to Turn Off FM Radio in 2017

Oh my ... Gloom! DESPAIR!! WOE IS US!!!

(oh, wait)

Norway can get full coverage with FIVE digital FM broadcast sites. It'd take a bit more to "upgrade" elsewhere. Big investment to replace something that doesn't need replacement, although come to think of it, that didn't stop TV going digital. But wait ... Big push there was from commercial interests waiting in line for any bandwidth that would become available with the switch, and that's not much of an issue with the FM band.

FCC has spoken - HD Radio is the choice amongst formats here in the USA. Canada as well if I remember right. Killer sound quality if you're in range, but that's the problem ... it's range is half that of typical FM before it switches over to the backup analog broadcast, and HD Radio would need to be reconfigured entirely to eliminate the need for that analog carrier. If the carrier is still broadcast, might as well modulate it, right? Then there's always the phitz phitz sputter thing well to either side of the digital/analog crossover point.

Short version ... I don't see it happening here anytime soon, or anywhere that has subscribed to the HD Radio format.

Don't get me wrong ... I love HD Radio. Even if there's only a couple home receivers available and a dearth of stations, it's still worth the investment if you can get reception. I needed a couple hundred bucks worth of antenna to make it happen here ...



... but for me, it's worth it just to get the HD sub carriers from my favorite low watt college station. This is from around 20 miles away over metro clutter using a Sony radio head  ...



Crystal clear reception 24/7 now.

PS ... Norway uses the DAB format which uses much higher compression rates with a major impact on sound quality. Less noise on the fringe, so I expect it might be enough to fool people into thinking they're getting a better broadcast.

I suppose I should try HD Radio again.  When I've tried it in the past I've been disappointed at the compression artifacts due to over-compression.  Sounded even worse than old "Xing" encoded < 128kbps MP3s (for those of you who weren't around for the early days of MP3 with Xing -- be glad!).  I suspect that it's like HDTV broadcasts -- they'd rather offer several bad-sounding sub-channels than one or two decent-sounding sub-channels. But perhaps they're improved their encoding...

We're 70 miles as the crow flies from any decent FM station and surrounded by mountains; been limping along with XM (now Sirius) through a Polk receiver, which at least has some decent Burr-Brown DACs, for several years. Recently, with Audio Bill's patient help, have been trying Tidal streaming through Mac Airport Express boxes, which have a very nifty (low cost) DAC. A few bumps in Tidal's road as they upgrade their servers for increased U.S. traffic, but when everything's humming, you're at least getting redbook quality. Plus, your iPhone or Droid becomes a remote control.