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Standards panel deals firm setback

Friday, May 30, 2003

By Michael Woods, Post-Gazette National Bureau

WASHINGTON -- A company named iBiquity Digital Corp. threw an invitation-only shindig at National Public Radio several weeks ago to showcase its technology for a new generation of digital radio receivers.

Called high-definition, or HD, radio, its ultraclear audio and other innovations are regarded as the future of the medium, the biggest advance in radio technology since FM.

But iBiquity's demonstration was not well received. In fact, it went so badly that it seems likely to delay the nationwide transition to digital radio, which involves an obscure standards-setting organization called the National Radio Systems Committee. The committee was organized by the National Association of Broadcasters and the Consumer Electronics Association.

After hearing music reproduced with iBiquity's technology, members of an NRSC digital subcommittee decided that it was not good enough to broadcast. They suspended further work on a standard that would be used industrywide in building HD radio receivers.

Milford Smith, chairman of NRSC's digital audio subcommittee, said members had been hearing reports that iBiquity's technology produced poor-quality AM sound. The group previously reviewed the iBiquity FM audio and found it acceptable. Yet members turned thumbs down on the AM version after the studio demonstration.

In an interview, Smith, who is vice president for engineering at Greater Media Inc., an East Brunswick, N.J., company that owns radio stations and newspapers, described the AM technology he had heard as "swirling [and] watery."

A spokesman for iBiquity said the firm would make improvements, describing the setback as a "short-term issue" that will not delay HD's inevitable nationwide distribution. The firm, based in Columbia, Md., is the sole developer and licenser of HD radio in the United States.

The audio being demonstrated, based on the latest version of iBiquity's proprietary audio coding system, was planned for use in the first-generation of HD radio receivers.

Digital FM signals are CD-ROM quality, and digital AM is supposed to be clearer, with less static, than ordinary "analog" AM.

IBiquity's technology allows broadcasters to transmit AM and FM -- in both conventional analog and digital format -- at the same time without using additional space in the radio-band spectrum.

Michael Woods can be reached at mwoods@nationalpress.com or 1-202-662-7072.

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