It looks like Crutchfield has decent HD radio head units for under $100 that will fit my Civic. I'm torn about going to the trouble of ripping out the old radio for something that doesn't seem like it's really caught on?

Are these things going to be the laserdisc of the 21st century?

quote:

Originally posted by Angus the Kid:
I think HD radio sounds better than XM radio.

Definitely. The sound quality of SiriusXM is pretty bad. They just don't have enough bandwidth for the number of channels they broadcast.

quote:

Originally posted by jhe888:
HD sounds better than regular FM. I have it in my car. I listen to several stations' HD channels and like them.

In an ideal setting (e.g., a good home FM receiver, a good fixed antenna, and a very clear signal), analog FM has the potential to sound better than HD Radio (at least the lower-bitrate stations). It's almost impossible to get a really clean analog FM signal, though.

Being digital, HD Radio is a lot less susceptible to signal strength variation, noise, etc.

In a moving vehicle, HD Radio will almost always sound better if only because of the absence of static, fading, and so on.

quote:

Originally posted by petr:
The HD is supposed to be more of a CD quality sound. Though like HD television, there is no static. It is either sound or nothing.

HD Radio doesn't have the bandwidth for CD quality audio... it's in the range of not-very-good to decent quality mp3 (depends on the specific station and how they broadcast).

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
It looks like Crutchfield has decent HD radio head units for under $100 that will fit my Civic. I'm torn about going to the trouble of ripping out the old radio for something that doesn't seem like it's really caught on?

Are these things going to be the laserdisc of the 21st century?

I think HD Radio will last as long as regular AM and FM radio does. Broadcaster adoption keeps creeping up, although I can't find hard numbers for what percentage of US radio stations use HD radio.

In 2008 it was about 20%. As best I can tell, it's now about 40%, and adoption seems to be biased (as you would expect) towards larger stations in more populated areas.

The company behind HD Radio claims that 78% of radio listening is done with HD Radio. Some of the 22% of non-HD Radio listening is bound to be people without an HD Radio listening to stations that do broadcast in HD.

Pretty much every new car comes with an HD Radio, and I suspect listening in the car is where the majority of radio listening happens these days.

Digital doesn't mean better. Even CDs are questionable at 44k and 16 bits. MP3 is far far worse and lossy. If music being broadcast was 96k at 24 bits, maybe it would be "better".

Compounding the problem is the fact that car radio is programmed, very likely already MP3s, highly compressed to maximize signal removing all dynamic range.