Decline in Use
Radio stations around the world are converting to various systems of digital radio, such as Digital Radio Mondiale, DAB or HD Radio (in the United States). Some of these digital radio systems, most notably HD Radio have "hybrid modes" which let a station broadcast a standard AM signal along with the digital information. While these transmission modes allow standard AM, they are not compatible with any AM stereo system (meaning you can't broadcast both at the same time).
Digital AM broadcasting systems, such as HD Radio have been criticized by supporters of AM stereo as sounding "harsh" and "artificial", but supporters of Digital systems argue that the extended frequency response, increased dynamic range, lack of noise and lower distortion make up for the compression artifacts. However, HD Radio also increases adjacent channel noise due to the digital sidebands, which pose serious problems for nighttime broadcasts. Some have proposed to use HD Radio in the daytime and AM stereo at night. Many HD radios are based on a common chipset that decodes C-QUAM.
Read more about this topic: AM Stereo
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