Comments on Profile Post by purr1n

First thing I noticed with the trial I got with my car purchase. Garbage sound.

For me, I'm 90% sure the garbage DAC in my car is the culprit. The radio station might also be using a crap ADC.

The compression is insane. The max bit rate is 144kbps mp4, but most stations use way less.

@JewBear gets it. HD Radio uses HE-AAC, which is a fantastically efficient codec, but most stations do not utilize the higher qualities available. Especially since they want to add value by having two HD channels, meaning, you guessed it, they cut both channels' max bitrate in half. I bought a good tuner for $20 a few years ago and it sounds great for classical broadcasts.

I've been watching Craigslist and eBay for HD radios with SPDIF for a long time but there were so few made and people know about them. I'm very curious to hook one up to my Pulse XFi and see where the bottlenecks really are.

@Azteca Do you have any recs? I am interested in getting one for my father that I'll hook up to a Pulse infinity and some speakers for him.

@zerodeefex Sangean HDT-1X is the only one I know of. Note that only the 1X has SPDIF. Make sure you look at the back panel on any listing.
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_sacat=0&_nkw=sangean%20hdt%201x&LH_Complete=1&LH_Sold=1&rt=nc&_trksid=p2045573.m1684