Dolby to acquire low-bandwidth Swedish tech house

Dolby Laboratories says it will acquire Swedish technology house Coding Technologies in a deal said to be worth 250 million dollars. Like Dolby, Coding Technologies has a number of proprietary algorithms which improve the efficiency of compressed audio formats like AAC+ and MP3Pro. Dolby says that the purchase will “broaden its technology portfolio and […]

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I think it’s a toss up between Degidesign and Dolby as to which has become the Microsoft of the audio industry. You don’t use their products because you want to; you use them because you have to.

Smarty-pants remarks from me aside, I’ve only found press releases about this so far, no discussion. What happens when Dolby owns the company that co-developed MP3 surround, a possible solution for delivering surround sound on digital radio?

Pushback on HD Radio in AM: Citadel Turns off Nighttime AM

Criticisms of problems in using HD Radio encodings for AM stations date back to the earliest days of the technology: The FCC approved nighttime broadcasting of HD Radio over AM a few months ago, but there are still relatively few AM stations using HD Radio, and thus problems are only starting to emerge.
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Radio World reports that Citadel Broadcasting, which has HD Radio enabled on 16 of its 66 AM stations, decided to turn off the 10 stations that were broadcasting digital signals at night due to reports of interference. The problem occurs when listeners hear “hiss” and stations on nearby channels hear noise.

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I first heard of this problem a couple of years ago while sitting in on a talk at the AES convention in NYC.

Jump2Go Providing Tagging Technology for HD Radio

Jump2Go announced the availability of the Go Commerce service to support Apple’s radio tagging feature for HD Radio and RDS-equipped radio stations.

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This is a really interesting development, not because it involves HD Radio but because the service could be expanded to Internet Radio.

Apple’s IPod Touch Will Not Allow Downloads of MP3s from the Web

Apple confirmed with Listening Post that the iPod Touch will not allow users to download MP3s from web pages over its WiFi connection, so devotees of MP3 blogs will need to stick to the old plan: download to computer, import into iTunes, and sync to iPod.

However, streaming radio is still a strong possibility for the iPod Touch, and could become a bigger part of the iPhone too.  When asked whether the iPod Touch would handle streaming radio from either Apple or third party sites such as Pandora and Seeqpod, my Apple contact told me there are "no announced plans."

Nor could the representative confirm my theory that Apple will release an iTunes Tagging feature for streaming radio similar to what was announced today in the world of HD Radio.  Such a feature would allow the iPod Touch and iPhone users to tag webcast songs on their devices for purchase from the iTunes store.

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This is all getting very interesting. “Radio” would love a way to climb aboard the iPod platform.

HD Radio?

HD Radio May Not Make It – According to the broadcasting blog of former broadcaster and founder of Inside Radio, Jerry del Colliano, “HD Radio’s chances of making it to prime time are slim to none…” He says the erroneously named HD Radio was too late to the party. The younger generation doesn’t want a terrestrial radio signal – digital or analog. “Give any young person a choice between an iPod and a radio and you know the verdict…HD Radio will not be under the tree.”

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XM Satellite Radio and Raytheon Propose Sky-Based Plane Navigation

Potential merger candidates XM and Sirius appear to be coming to the realization that for streaming music to homes and offices, internet pipes make more sense than satellites.  And eventually, when the internet’s available in cars, they’ll lose the only advantage they currently have over webcasters (aside from their percentage-based royalty rate).

What will happen to all of those extra satellites if the companies merge, and/or when cheap broadband becomes accessible from highways?

The Boston Globe reported on one possibility today — that XM will team with Raytheon to offer satellite-based navigation systems for US-based planes.

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HD Radio’s Uphill Climb

Radio World reports 450,000 weekly listeners to HD Radio: That seems actually quite high to me given how many radios must be in people’s hands–nothing like 450,000. 57 million people in the US listen to Internet radio each week, and satellite radio has 15 million subscribers. 93.5% of Americans listen to terrestrial radio, however, while 30% listen to MP3 players.

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CBS buys Last.fm – and what it means

CBS today will announce the acquisition of Last.fm for $280 million.

What is Last.fm, you ask? It’s a popular social network built around musical tastes, says the LA Times. But what it really is is personalized online radio. It’s radio that learns what you like and gets better – for you personally.

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It is inevitable that radio – or aspects of radio – will become personalized.

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Bad news for HD. Bad news for satellite. And bad news for you if you expect your station’s future to be strictly tied to terrestrial broadcast.

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Surround Sound Radio

This dawned on me a while ago but it’s becoming increasingly obvious that it’s true. I said it out loud to a few people at the AES Convention in Vienna lately and they nodded in agreement.

The simplest way to deliver surround sound audio to “radio” listeners is via the internet. There are potential solutions for both DAB and HD Radio but there are a lot of stumbling blocks along the way.

Most of us sit in front of computers with high speed internet connections all day. We just need folks to buy a few more speakers and get the right software installed. It would be nice and tidy if it were one format but in fact with internet delivery it’s not that big a deal. Most of us are comfortable having multiple players installed on our machines. So it could be MPEG Surround, QuickTime, or even Windows Media.

Let’s just start delivering some content so people get hooked on this stuff.

DAB Comes to Ipods

Frontier Silicon has teamed with Roberts Radio to develop a DAB/FM plug-in accessory that allows listeners to listen to radio stations with an Ipod.

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Interesting but they’ll have to learn how to spell iPod first!