For the consumer audio industry, I am the ideal target customer: A twenty-something male who loves music but has no current loyalty to a single listening platform. My once-treasured CD collection is buried beneath old clothes and textbooks in the closet; a turntable handed down from my grandparents is accompanied by one record each by Al Green and Johnny Cash; my Apple ( ) iPod was stolen at a house party last year; and I have neither the expendable income nor the allegiance to Howard Stern to go the satellite radio route with a provider like Sirius Satellite Radio ( ). So I'm dabbling in HD (hybrid digital) Radio, kicking off a series of reviews aimed at helping you pick from among a crop of receivers designed to deliver the gamut of HD signals.
A hybrid digital-analog technology developed by iBiquity Digital and approved by the Federal Communications Commission as the new standard for local broadcast radio a few years back, HD Radio allows up to eight programming channels to stream on one FM frequency. So if you're into jazz like me, this means your favorite station may one day broadcast bebop on one channel and big band, fusion, Latin, Dixieland, free jazz, smooth jazz, and funk on the others. Dig?
Oh yeah mdash;HD channels are purported to stream in CD-like quality, and at least for most of this year, they're meant to be commercial-free. Best of all, HD Radio is free. The catch?
You need a specially equipped FM receiver to pick up the channels. That's where this series comes in. I'm beginning with RadioShack's ( ) Accurian HD Digital Radio, which at $199.
99, is the cheapest HD receiver on the market. Aside from a sleek curved face and a nice big LCD screen, the radio didn't look or feel much more high-tech than the one I used to crank Nirvana in the 4th grade. The same power/volume knob in the center, the same black metal-grated, 2-inch speakers and the same clunky metal tuning buttons that go clickety-clack made me double-check the label on the box.
Was this the best RadioShack could contribute to a state-of-the-art category? Once over my initial disappointment, I gave the Accurian a home on the corner of my desk and had a listen. At the outset, of the 23 HD stations that iBiquity says are now available in New York City, I was able to tune in about four.
After some grunts and moans, I dug through the box to find something most of my generation forgot existed mdash;an antenna. Before long my desk was strung up in wires like something out of the Griswold family Christmas, but I did manage to pick up 15 HD channels. Be warned: On most HD radios, it takes several seconds of silence to tune into each one so you'll need to exercise patience.
Once I found a few stations I liked, I was hooked. The Accurian's no-frills preset controls made it easy to preprogram six stations and then toggle between them at whim. For an entire week I spent my mornings basking in the symphonic splendor of NPR's classical music-dedicated channel and my afternoons bopping my head to Hot 97's old-school hip-hop.
It's in niche programming like this, along with easy-to-navigate receivers, that HD Radio fares best in a head-to-head rivalry with satellite radio. When I can get from Mahler's Symphony No. 1 to A Tribe Called Quest's Bonita Applebaum with one click, I am a happy customer.
Where I believe HD Radio fares worst is sound quality. Of the 15 HD stations I got, only two could justifiably claim near-CD quality sound, living up to the HD Radio marketing hype. The others lightly fuzzed and hissed just like regular radio stations, and some actually experienced frequent one- to two-second outages.
This is not really RadioShack's fault mdash;it also happened to various degrees on three other leading HD Radio receivers I'm testing. It shows that broadcasters have yet to achieve the right blend of analog and digital signal output. However, the Accurian did encounter connectivity problems more frequently than the others, possibly because of its small size.
I mostly used the Accurian as an office radio, listening at low volumes or with headphones while I worked. The headphone jack is in the front, which always makes life a little easier. And despite my gripes about its down-market appearance, the Accurian does look at home in the office setting.
It even drew envious glances from several co-workers passing by my desk. But at home, where my lifestyle calls for pounding bass beats and crystal-clear guitar licks, the Accurian is laughable. Its 2-inch speakers can barely produce a sound louder than my 13-inch TV, and that sound is tinny, harsh, and devoid of a bottom.
There's also no auxiliary output, so I couldn't direct my favorite HD Radio station through my roommate's killer sound system if I'd wanted to. It's true that the RadioShack Accurian is the most affordable way into the appealing new club that is HD Radio, but it's costly for all the wrong reasons. One look underneath the base of an Accurian explains its $200 price tag.
There, a sticker reads: HD Radio Technology Under License From iBiquity Digital Corporation. Instead of developing a radio capable of superior sound quality, I'm guessing that RadioShack paid iBiquity a fortune for the license, cheaply put together a subpar product, and passed the licensing cost on to consumers. I'm not an early adopter of anything mdash;I'll remain on the sidelines of the digital music playing field until at least the end of this series.
But anyone who is ready to pony up for HD Radio now should spend at least $300 on a product that will sound great and last for years to come.
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