I realize the review flips from the radio to the HD technology a few times back and forth; I will try to rewrite it as time and interest allows.
I just bought the XDR-F1HD radio last week. At $99 it's been favorably reviewed and is a good entry point to HD Radio. It's also a good, sensitive analog FM radio. I've been testing it for a week now, for two very different purposes.
I listen to NPR most of the time, but flip around to other stations at times. I don't listen to the radio for music very often, if ever.
I live in the middle of the city, less than 8 miles from most of the local FM stations and reception is a breeze here. I also get lots of Baltimore stations, about 30 miles away. I have an antenna on my roof but it is designed for high-VHF and UHF-only. It works better than an indoor antenna for FM, so I use it. I've also tested the radio with the included dipole.
Conclusion #1: Reception is fine, it seems. I get all the local stations that are broadcasting in HD, provided they are actually broadcasting in HD (100.3, 98.7 come to mind, for those in the DC area). I was disappointed that when I got it I did not get 103.5, WTOP, whose all-traffic-and-weather subchannel is what somebody told me is "the only useful thing on HD radio." Not my words, a quote. It's come in one day, and not the other, so I'm thinking it's on their end. The analog couldn't be stronger, so if it is on my end then I will say there is indeed a problem with HD reception being tough. It's 6 miles away and should come in on the dipole or rabbit ears. I'm excluding the rooftop antenna since it's not designed for the FM band.
Conclusion #2: The sound quality is not good. When I plugged in my first HDTV (which is a veritable POS, by the way), I was amazed at how good the stations looked. I also enjoy how great the picture looks on my SD TV with a box. I like DTV, as it gives me something I didn't have before--noise-free pictures. The first thing I thought with the HD radio was that it sounded like listening to radio on the internet, which is something I never got into due to the warbly sound. I tried "the test," listening to the no-subchannels classical station and thought the same thing. Since I can't switch back and forth on the Sony radio I am only judging the HD quality, and it is not a "wow" like HDTV/DTV was.
Conclusion #3: AM HD reception is really, really difficult. I can listen to regular AM very easily anywhere in my house. I had to play around with the radio for an hour to get three different stations to decode, about 8 miles away. I played with four loops (two homemade) to get it to work, at very different positions even when analog sounded good. It was impossible at night--another hour I played around with reception. When they did come in, the sound was so harsh I'd rather have the analog. Talk radio was almost unbearable between the processing and the compression (as in codec, not dynamic range). I don't hear the advantage in the audio. It sounds like a regular AM station with a huge shelf EQ boost on treble. If the low-bitrate FM subchannels are an indication, I don't want to hear music on HD AM. I think the idea of digital signals on the AM band is interesting but this use is not very convincing or useful.
Overall conclusion: FM HD reception is fine, but the audio quality is not going to be the selling point. It's not terrible, but it's not worth the money of the receiver. AM seems like a lost cause, or a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.
IBOC angers the AM and FM DX hobbyists quite a bit due to the adjacent channel interference but some are taking it as a new challenge. I think I'm in the latter. I didn't DX until about two months ago so I don't know what the band was like before IBOC. I hardly knew of IBOC until then despite being "tech savvy." In any case, I bought the radio because it performs well for DX, and HD and RDS are interesting for DX'ing purposes. There are still open frequencies here so I'm not too bugged about it. I've gotten quite a few catches so I'm not complaining, yet.
Conclusion: The Sony radio performs well for DX. Take what you will from that. Some of the most enthusiastic reviews for this HD Radio tuner are from FM DXers looking for good analog reception, for what that's worth. The radio registers a strong signal on the adjacent HD hashes so I doubt I'll be able to DX on the adjacent channels which does limit the number of stations I'll be able to get. That's not the Sony radio's fault, though; that's a design characteristic of iBiquity's system.
I also like AM DX (totally different from FM DX as it's regular nightly) because it's "neat" and I occasionally like to listen to 690 out of Montreal to keep my French in line. I can get it online as I can with stations from France if I desired, but it's "neat" to get it at a distance. It comes in OK on this radio with my homemade loop. That's just my hobby, and since that particular station is for now unaffected by hashes I'm not bugged. My opinion will probably change if the adjacent 680 or 700 stations broadcast HD at night.
The overall-overall conclusion: I'm not convinced HD Radio, as presented by iBiquity, is impressive or worth the money. Besides the traffic/weather subchannel and the WAMU (local NPR affiliate) subchannel with a BBC World relay, I don't find much in the way of added value. I don't know anything about DAB (never heard it for myself, at least) so I won't make a comparison.
As I noted before I think DTV is vastly superior to analog TV (even if I'll miss analog TV from a DX perspective) so I won't make a blanket argument on analog versus digital. I, however, will say that HD Radio, from my viewpoint, is not worth any investment and as far as AM goes is a nuisance, even strictly from the sound quality standpoint. The local NPR station is promoting it a lot because of their subchannels but I don't know how successful that's been.
Overall, I don't see this technology succeeding. I am aware of the uphill battle FM radio faced in its infancy (read more here) but the addition of HD on the existing bands doesn't quite parallel the creation of a separate band for the then-new service. Plus, as listening has shifted to iPods and the like, the demand for any new broadcasting service will have to provide a very clear advantage in order to convince people to buy hardware. iBiquity's HD Radio does not offer a great advantage in sound quality; I doubt anyone will be won over on those grounds. If stations provide compelling content on subchannels some may be won over, I suppose. But if that doesn't happen, the vague promise of new content and very dubious claims of improved sound quality won't be enough.
Written by Claudio Leite. Last modified 2008-07-15.