Ibiquity Charts a New Course
 By
Guy Wire
(Editor's note: This column contains postscripted
material)
In recent months, a mixed bag of both promising and disturbing
news has flowed fast and furious out of Ibiquity.
In May, the entire HD-R standards setting process officially was
put on hold until the codec problems were resolved. Then Glynn Walden,
the "godfather of IBOC," suddenly was terminated, effective
at the end of July.
As one of the founders of the technology and Ibiquity's VP of engineering,
Walden was by far the most reliable and respected interface between
the company and broadcasters. Also falling under the ax were Rick
Martinson, vice president of program management, and Gerald Marcovsky,
senior legal advisor.
Further layoffs included the key players of the Warren, N.J., PAC
development team. Deepen Sinha, the "godfather of PAC"
and director of audio development, plus Ben Benjamin, senior VP
and co-COO along with Thom Linden, VP of data development, are all
gone.
Officially, Ibiquity said these employees "left the company."
That's of course corporate code for being laid off or just flat
fired. Ibiquity has been burning through cash rapidly as the sales
rollout of HD-R has fallen behind its projected schedule. A total
of roughly 32 employees left the company in recent months, cutting
the payroll to about 80. Some observers say these cuts will shore
up its ability to conserve cash and achieve its revised business
plan expectations.
The in-house, Lucent-developed PAC algorithm also succumbed to
CEO Bob Struble's firing squad.
And the winner is ...
On Aug. 12, Ibiquity unveiled its anxiously awaited codec fix.
For the most part, MPEG won the closely watched round of dueling
codecs. Ibiquity teamed up with Coding Technologies, the developer
of AAC+, to come up with HDC for HD-R. The new name apparently was
chosen to connote High Definition Coding to match the HD branding.
As a close relative of AAC+, the new algorithm uses Spectral Band
Replication, also part of the MPEG-4 technology.
Ibiquity finally realized that it is critically important to include
key industry engineers as well as NRSC members in the evaluation
process of its new codec before it is shown to the public or submitted
for formal acceptance. Too much of its previous work on system development
was done behind the curtain of secrecy.
In July, members of the NRSC along with various corporate engineering
heads were invited to listen to HDC, in some cases without knowing
what it was. They were impressed. Most of the previous grit and
smear in the PAC codec used for AM at 36 kbps apparently is gone.
Even 64 and 96 kbps versions for FM HD-R sounded better than previous
codec demos. More engineers have since heard it at special demos
at NPR.
There are still minor artifacts at low bit rates for AM, but not
as obnoxious as with PAC.
"They got rid of virtually all of the objectionable artifacts,"
one source said. "Only some codec coloration was noticed, but
all the previous swirly stuff is gone."
Several sources cited the use of Elton John's "Goodbye Yellow
Brick Road" as the "standard codec killer" cut to
confirm that HDC performed well.
NRSC DAB Steering Committee chairman Milford Smith raved about
the results, saying "the improvement in audio quality on AM
is spectacular with the HDC codec and there is improvement in FM
quality as well." The demonstration included cascaded examples
of audio compressed by other codecs, including ISDN and satellite
material before being subjected to the final crunch for HD-R.
The NRSC is so confident the codec controversy is resolved that
it has announced that the standards setting process has resumed.
Let's hope this is all bulletproof and the issue finally is laid
to rest.
Cutting down to the bone
Sources have said that Ibiquity was top-heavy and that the roles
played by Walden and Martinson to bring the technology from concept
through development and now deployment essentially are completed.
It is not unusual for technology companies to make such moves after
the primary R&D phase is over and a product hits the market.
But others have suggested there may have been internal disagreement
between various players in the company and those in Ibiquity management
regarding the handling of the codec development and poor performance
of PAC on AM HD-R. In this view, Walden primarily was interested
in developing and delivering the IBOC product in a form that would
best serve the broadcasting industry first, rather than the Ibiquity
balance sheet.
Those who know Glynn Walden well felt he was never fully comfortable
with the USADR and Lucent merger that formed Ibiquity, or the use
of PAC as the codec of choice. Why President/CEO Bob Struble and
others in the Ibiquity inner circle would choose to jettison Walden,
perhaps their highest-profile spokesman and highly regarded proponent,
just as the system was getting off the ground suggests a deep division
existed within Ibiquity on how the company would proceed with development
and marketing from here on. Glynn will be sorely missed and may
be irreplaceable.
The departure of Sinha and Benjamin clearly signaled that the Ibiquity
brass had finally lost confidence in the PAC codec. PAC did not
keep up and stay in synch with the rest of HD-R's development and
deployment schedule. When important performance goals fall short
in any big company, somebody's gotta take the fall.
PAC is still used by Sirius satellite radio. Without leadership
and management's vote of confidence, you have to wonder how long
PAC will survive as a viable product. Look for Sirius switching
to AAC+ or HDC, or at a minimum adding the benefits of Spectral
Band Replication.
Behind the scenes
Sources told Radio World that Rick Martinson had been working on
integrating AAC+ for HD-R. With his departure, Ibiquity rejected
that solution in favor of a new codec with its own name on it.
It's now clear that Ibiquity teamed up with Coding Technologies
to develop HDC many months before all the layoffs around the beginning
of this year. "We've been working behind the scenes for quite
some time on HDC and believe all of our commercialization partners
will be thrilled with the audio quality of HD Radio," Struble
stated in his unveiling announcement.
Ibiquity is carefully calling HDC a new proprietary codec. That
probably helped the company negotiate a better licensing deal and
save face by not appearing to cave in to the MPEG AAC+ proponents.
By putting its own name on it, Ibiquity reassures the industry
that it left no stone unturned to produce a codec most suited for
HD-R. While it may contain elements from other algorithms, including
PAC, it appears to be primarily a product of Coding Technologies
and the MPEG-4 core technology.
Ibiquity's budget most certainly did not contemplate having to
license a different codec and dump its own product, already bought
and paid for. The layoffs probably were needed to help pay for developing
HDC and other costs.
Receiver manufacturers have been nervous about how this dueling
codec complication would play out. Most are developing or using
chips that can handle any codec for HD-R so that simple software
changes will accommodate any codec of any flavor.
Philips is developing an AISC chip for this while TI uses DSP chips
available to many receiver makers. Kenwood has long been working
on this approach. Ultimately, this will serve the industry better
over the long haul as further codec changes and refinements are
invented and incorporated into the technology as software upgrades.
Still a noisy mess
Even if the codec is finally fixed, there are still troubling issues
hounding AM as Ibiquity continues with the HD-R rollout.
The effects of adjacent-channel interference, especially from skywave,
remain problematic and controversial. As stations come on the air
with AM HD-R, the band will fill up with digital hash. Many stations
are bound to be affected by this and will experience loss of both
day and nighttime analog coverage to varying degrees.
If stations pay attention and choose to press the FCC for relief,
the growth of AM HD-R could be seriously hampered. Implementing
the hybrid phase of this technology will be messy and not without
ongoing controversy and delay.
DRM to the rescue?
Even here in the heartland, some industry observers are touting
DRM as a better alternative technology to AM HD-R here in the United
States and are calling for face-off testing. Digital Radio Mondiale
was invented as an all-digital replacement for international analog
AM broadcasting below 30 MHz. With its official unveiling in June
and impressive performance at various trade shows and demonstrations,
DRM would seem to be a worthy candidate.
While it holds great promise for shortwave broadcasters where traditional
analog listening is rapidly disappearing, dropping it in on the
incredibly crowded U.S. AM broadcast band does not really solve
the major problem faced by HD-R. Nor does it offer a hybrid digital/analog
mode to allow analog to remain useable. While it could be done,
DRM provides no information about that on its Web site or any other
public communications. (Editor's note: See postscript
below..)
Even if DRM offers a hybrid mode with audio performance equal or
better to HD-R, the digital modulation would have to be carried
in the upper and lower sidebands as bookends to the existing analog
carrier. They would spill into adjacent channels as interference
just like HD-R.
Different but very similar
In the all-digital mode, AM HD-R undoubtedly will play very similar
to DRM. Both use COFDM modulation schemes and codecs that are more
similar than they are different. The major difference we see is
that DRM is highly scalable and delivers a variable carrier capability
to accommodate different channel bandwidths and frequency response
needs, depending on the service.
DRM also offers selectable coding modes that are optimized to combat
various propagation distortions inflicted by skywave for different
frequency bands. And at least three different codec flavors can
be selected by the user of DRM, depending on programming and channel
bandwidth.
IBOC digital in the AM broadcast band will not need such a wide
array of mode choices as those offered by DRM. Certainly we can
see the benefit of some stations changing modes from day to night
if their skywave audience is significant or they want to minimize
the effects of skywave and groundwave mixing interference in fringe
areas. Talk stations could choose a different codec and frequency
response mode than music stations.
We see no reason Ibiquity would not seek to incorporate the best
of the DRM offerings into the AM HD-R design as it evolves. They've
already joined forces with an outside provider for a better codec.
Even though Ibiquity claims all of the HD-R problems will be solved
with their current design in the all-digital mode, DRM is an open-source
standard, so borrowing features from it would be easy. By the time
HD-R gets to the all-digital mode, it could well have morphed into
a scaled down version of DRM.
Forging ahead
To launch HD-R effectively with a hybrid mode for both AM and FM
that uses a common standard receiver chip, we are pretty much stuck
with the Ibiquity model at this stage in the game. But with so many
heads rolling off the table, it's not clear who at Ibiquity will
be watching out for broadcasters' best interests as the HD-R saga
plays out. Glynn Walden was the key player who could do that.
Can we now trust Bob Struble and the remaining technical staff
to make the right decisions without a savvy broadcaster with technical
expertise in his inner circle? As the rollout picks up steam, there
will be many critical choices to be made that must safeguard the
vitality and future growth of our enterprise and still allow Ibiquity
to achieve success.
Don't stop listening to us, Bob, and don't let us down. Ibiquity
can never succeed unless U.S. broadcasting continues to do so.
Guy Wire is the pseudonym for a veteran broadcast engineer with major-market radio credentials. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Radio World. RW welcomes other points of view.
Postscript:
Dear Guy,
The article "Ibiquity
Charts a New Course" contains the following statements
about DRM:
"Digital Radio Mondiale was invented as an all-digital replacement
for international analog AM broadcasting below 30 MHz." ...
"Nor does it offer a hybrid digital/analog mode to allow analog
to remain useable."
This statement is factually incorrect, since DRM does indeed have
a "simulcast" mode which has both analogue and digital
components.
The article also contains the following statement:
"While it could be done, DRM provides no information about
that on its Web site or any other public communications."
As the following sample links from the DRM website show, this statement
is also factually incorrect:-
http://www.drm.org/newsevents/faqs/faq-053.htm
http://www.drm.org/newsevents/faqs/faq-054.htm
http://www.drm.org/newsevents/faqs/faq-055.htm
The RW Online website will be widely read within the US radio industry
and a statement such as this is likely adversely to affect the perception
of DRM as well as misinform your readership. I'm sure you'll wish
to publish a correction, particularly as you surely pride yourselves
on the accuracy of your reporting.
Best wishes
Carey
http://www.wohnort.demon.co.uk/DAB/
Guy responds:
Carey,
It's always good to hear from merry old England, especially on
matters of DAB.
Your cited claims of incorrect information regarding my review
of the DRM hybrid or "simulcast" mode are technically
accurate. I thought I had researched this issue carefully. The DRM
simulcast mode does exist and apparently is still being tested,
but it's hardly a significant part of the system specification.
The DRM website (www.drm.org)
makes no mention of it whatsoever in system specifications, preferring
instead to make only passing mention of it in 3 brief answers buried
among 60 FAQ's in the News & Events section.....which you cited
and which I unfortunately missed. But I have to ask, if this were
truly an important mode for DRM, why would it be almost invisible
on the website and elsewhere throughout the trade press?
Clearly the reason is that DRM was conceived as a complete digital
replacement technology for analog AM below 30 MHz, primarily in
WARC regions 1 and 3. The inventors chose to focus on that instead
of a fully developed hybrid compatible mode as Ibiquity has proposed
to allow the preservation of existing analog transmission and reception.
The 3 FAQ's you cite indicate that the DRM simulcast mode was being
tested and that further information would be forthcoming. Curiously
these were last updated in June, 2002, almost 16 months ago.
FAQ 54 suggests that the DRM simulcast mode contemplates SSB or
asymmetric/vestigial SB operation to reduce interference but at
the expense of increased distortion. Further research seems to indicate
that the 10 kHz DSB simulcast mode of DRM would not fit in the NRSC
bandwidth mask limitation for our AM band. If this mode is to be
useful in the US as an alternative to Ibiquity's AM HD-R, a lot
more tweaking, testing and revelation is needed.
The context of my remarks on DRM come out of the reality that Ibiquity
has rigorously tested, demonstrated, and proposed as a standard
their hybrid model which does fit in the NRSC mask and as such is
a real and valid product. Yes there are some interference issues
that will have to be dealt with, especially for nighttime operation.
While DRM may have a hybrid mode that is being quietly evaluated
behind the scenes, it still appears to me that it's nowhere close
to being a contender that could offer performance equal or better
to Ibiquity's HD-R for the US AM broadcast band.
-- GW
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