HD FM Radio stations

[Dave B]

In my area we have several FM radio stations that broadcast both analog and digital stereo. I see the signal in GQRX, it looks like this. Is there a way to decode or listen to the digital signal in GQRX?

Wiki on digital HD radio... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_Radio

Digital HD signal example... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:FM_spectrum_IBOC.png

[David Ranch]

I had researched this a few months ago but HD Radio here in the US is completely proprietary.  I was unable to find any SDR based software solutions to decode it.  Some stations do stream their HD stations via the Internet ( http://www.cnet.com/news/listen-to-hd-radio-without-buying-any-new-hardware/ ) but that's not the same thing as what you're trying to do.

This is a pretty serious bummer to me and I have no idea why the US Broadcasters and the FCC allowed this.  Europe's DAB standard is open doesn't have this issue:
http://www.rtl-sdr.com/tag/dab/ though Gqrx doesn't offer a DAB decoder today.

--David
KI6ZHD

[gorgeous george]

I CANT GET ANY STATIONS TO COME IN ON MY GQRX,,I HAVE NEVER GOT EVEN ONE VOICE,,HOW DO YOU FIND STATIONS WITH PEOPLE TALKING,,??OR ANYTHING,,IM TIRED OF LISTENING TO STATIC,,,IS THIS ALL THERE IS TO TRL RADIO???WHAT A BUMMER,,,

[David Ranch]

As mentioned previously in this thread, *no* SDR program (that I'm aware of at least) supports the proprietary HD-RADIO found in the US.  With that said, GQRX does a bang up job with analog WFM radio stations with RDS decoding, etc.  If you cannot hear any analog FM, first.. get a good antenna OUTSIDE your home.  This is very very very important.  Then after that, the quality of reception comes down to the SDR you have (at $10, RTL dongles are only so good) and maybe investing in better units like an AirSpy, etc.

--David
KI6ZHD

[kj4...@gmail.com]

You may be looking for something like this:

   https://github.com/theori-io/nrsc5

it decodes hd radio nicely.

[David Ranch]

Thanks for the reply and yes, I'm familiar with that solution.  What I'd personally love to see is something that could be natively managed in Gqrx.  I know that Gqrx doesn't support modules per se and integrating something like NRSC might be deemed "IP risky". Maybe Gqrx could some generic approach other than just the UDP streaming approach.  Dunno if that could happen in Gqrx vs. the upcoming successor to it.

--David
KI6ZHD