atlanta A6

I can’t believe this occurred. I was going through some MMI menus and realized ever since I purchased the car in Oct of last year, the HD radio option was turned to "off".
Listening to HD FM stations today, didn’t notice a huge difference in sound quality. Is that something that should be really noticeable?

13c7a6

If you are listening to HD station, the station display will show xx.x HD1 vs. just xx.x.

atlanta A6

Yes got that part-it displays the HD channels now that I turned it on. I dont notice a sounds quality change over non HD channels though. Should I?

Alphatero

I find the sound improvement marginal in HD on the FM. It is very noticeable on AM.

13c7a6

Unfortunately, there are not that many AM HD stations

Beside sound quality, there are sub stations HD2; HD3 etc. available in HD. Since those stations are HD only, you get nothing when the signal is weak vs. in HD1, the system falls back to non-HD and you can get static before the signal goes away.

DB22

The advantage of HD radio is that there is no such thing as weak reception. It either works or it doesn't.
HD radio is another compressed format that is further compressed in transmission. If you have a station that allocates full bandwidth then it should be as good as other MP3 sources such as low bps iTunes downloads, SD cards or HDD being ripped from crap sources.

And AM! I didn't think that cars had that any more! I am not sure that LA has a station that doesn't speak Spanish.

NightCrawler

I almost never listen to the radio so it took me almost a year to notice it. I knew the car had it and wondered why I didn't see HD stations. I was really surprised to find that you can even turn the HD stations off, and more surprised the vehicle came with that defaulted to "off".

13c7a6

The stations in my area simulcast in FM and HD1 and our radio will fall back to non-HD (blending?) when the HD signal is no longer available (e.g. inside a tunnel) and you will get static if the FM signal is weak, only on HD2, HD3 will you get the silent (either work or not work) treatment.