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HD Radio, only 96 KBPS broadcasts?
Brian B asked:
I was reading some material on HD radio quality and it says it transmits at 96 KBPS, “near cd quality”….
I was reading some material on HD radio quality and it says it transmits at 96 KBPS, “near cd quality”….
Are they talking about the same thing as mp3 format? Because 96kbps isnt all that great.
2 Responses on HD Radio, only 96 KBPS broadcasts?
You are using the word “transmits” maybe they are refering to the transmission in HD radio. It has nothing to do with mp3 format encoding. Because it will be waste of time if they will re-encode mp3 to 96 when most of them are 112 up. So they are not talking about the bit rate. Its the TRANSMISSION RATE.
FM stations that have HD, the total bit rate is 96kbps. many HD stations put 2 or 3 programs on the HD so they have to share the bit rate. So the program you want may be 48kpbs or even less! However, it is NOT mp3 encoding, it is much more sophisticated. In fact it takes nearly 8 seconds to encode in real time. An HD station has to delay its analog program by 8 seconds so that your receiver can blend between HD and analog. The sample rate used is the same as audio CDs, 41.1k. Golden Ears can detect the artifacts in the digital encoding in A/B source comparisons. However, when comparing HD to Analog FM in a car, the HD is prefered universally because of the low noise and elimination of multipath distortion. Its like comparing Compact Cassette tape to a CD player, everyone prefers the CD.
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