IBOC DAB Benefits Will Be Few
One Observer Says ‘Pay No Attention to
That Man Behind the Curtain’
by Aaron "Bishop" Read
I belong to a few online mailing lists. Recently,
a well-meaning fellow on one radio group asked for opinions on
what radio would be like in five or 10 years, what with digital
radio and IBOC looming.
Hoo-boy. I steeled myself for the usual onslaught
of e-mail.
If you know me, you know I’m opinionated.
("No, really?" my cube-neighbor pipes up. I smack him
with my Nerf football). Also, I tend to join lists that attract
folks like myself.
Not surprisingly, the posts flooded in. Also
not surprisingly, the majority was pessimistic about the viability
of IBOC.
"The audio quality just isn’t there."
"The cost of conversion is too high." "The delay
is too great." The usual suspects, if you will.
But then someone hit the magic answer: "The
public won’t buy the receivers because there’s nothing
better about IBOC for them."
Ahhhh. Give that man a cigar.
Benefits
It’s a question that must be asked before
any business venture is started. Not "why is a customer going
to buy this," but "why isn’t a customer
going to buy this?"
Greg McLemore, founder of Pets.com, are you
listening?
So what if IBOC is digital radio, anyway?
Didn’t we learn our lesson from AM stereo? Didn’t Eureka
flop in Europe?
Well, it’s a lot of extra bandwidth channels,
so you could offer more services!
Hmmm, wait a minute. What exactly could we offer
here?
Well, how about a national system that automatically
switches from station to station to keep the same genre on (i.e.,
always keep the top 40 hits goin’ as you cruise from Boston
to L.A.)? That’d be nice.
Hmmm, don’t think so; the system might
switch a listener to a nearby competitor. Okay, scratch that idea.
Well, we could show cool announcements like
"Call in and win!" Yeah, that’s cool. Hmmm, but
it’s yet another thing to take my eyes off the road.
I live in Boston, which is right next door to
Cambridge, where the lovable Click and Clack of NPR’s "Car
Talk" have helped push through a ban on the use of cellphones
while driving. I can see them choking in between their cackles
when they hear about displays on a radio.
Starting to see a pattern here?
Well, Ibiquity, the surviving IBOC proponent,
tells us IBOC will sound better! There we go, a real improvement!
Err ... wait a minute, FM radio already sounds
pretty good. And here’s the real rub: it won’t sound
any better in the car.
The numbers don’t lie: morning and afternoon
drive are the main times people listen to most stations. And they’re
in their cars, a notoriously poor acoustical environment.
So how will they tell the difference? They can’t.
Jeez, I can only listen to my MiniDiscs in my car because they
sound so awful on my home stereo, but fine when I’m on the
road.
Speaking of which, haven’t we all noticed
how ridiculously overprocessed most FM stations are these days?
I listen to my local rocker to lose weight. After 20 minutes,
I’m so fatigued I feel like I ran 10 miles.
How can they get away with it? Because most
cars are so loud to begin with that you can’t possibly hear
the audio loss from over-processing. But then why do they
do it?
"Well hell, we gotta sound louder than
the other guys," screams the PD. And God help us, but satellite
radio’s coming down from above like the meteors in "Deep
Impact" and they’re digital, too!
Keep up with the Joneses
Ahhhh, now there’s a reason to go
to IBOC – because your GM / PD / SM / SA / VI (Village Idiot)
heard the other guy is doing it, and if they’re digital,
then they must be better, right?
Yes, I can hear you groaning now, and I feel
your pain. I know more than a few of you engineering readers have
installed a knob that does nothing at master control and pantomined
turning the knob in the presence of the PD because he or she insists
your station doesn’t have enough (pick one) "funk,"
"punch," "jazz," "life," "rock-n-roll,"
"presence," "awakeness" (yes, I have actually
heard that one), "buzz," "loudness," or "that
thing."
Oops, I just gave away our secret, didn’t
I? Sorry, guys.
So what does this all boil down to?
I say IBOC is boiling down to something even
my dog wouldn’t eat for most FM stations. Also it is a potential
death knell for Class D, LPFM and small Class A stations that
can’t foot the steep bill for a digital transmitter. Rosy
picture, eh?
Sound like I’m overlooking someone? Nope,
I haven’t forgotten AM stations. They’re about the only
group I see benefiting from this. And it could be a nifty benefit.
Certainly audio fidelity would improve.
We could see a nice resurgence of AM radio.
Certainly it could be the lifeline that helps save AM from being
hit hard by satellite radio … as both AM and FM may well
end up be.
Ah-hah. We finally found a benefit
that outweighs the detriments for IBOC. Hoo-rah!
I guess only time will tell, eh? Because this
is where the curmudgeon behind the curtain puts away his crystal
ball and gets back to pretending to work.
Aaron Read isn’t an engineer, but he plays one on TV.
He says he spends far too much time at WBRS(FM) in Waltham, Mass.,
and Allston Brighton Free Radio instead of getting some real work
done. Reach him at aread@speakeasy.net.
RW welcomes other points of view.
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