Get to Know HD Radio & Unlock JazzNEO

There’s a great new reason to consider buying an HD radio for your home or to pay attention to whether you already have an HD radio installed in your car, since most people reading this may have HD radios in their cars without knowing it. Ideastream Public Media – i.e., your National Public Radio friends in Northeast Ohio – has announced that starting on Feb. 26, it will begin broadcasting and streaming JazzNEO, the region’s only 24-hour jazz channel. The new jazz channel will feature local hosts Dee Perry, Dan Polletta and John Simna, and will keep you posted on the area’s jazz musicians, the local jazz scene and national and international performers who are drawn to Northeast Ohio.

Currently, WCLV at 90.3 broadcasts jazz from midnight to 6 a.m., with classical music offered during the remaining 18 hours. The announcement means that jazz will now be available to everyone all the time, not just night owls. WCLV will soon switch to FM broadcasts of all-day classical music offered on the HD1 channel and regular FM radio. The new JazzNEO broadcast will be offered on the HD2 channel at the 90.3 location on the FM dial.

HD radio broadcasts began in 2002, and for years, most car manufacturers have put HD radios in new cars. Unless you have a particularly old car, you likely will be able to listen to JazzNEO as you are driving around town. If you’re not sure whether your car is HD radio equipped, click here for help.

If you find you don’t have an HD radio in your car, don’t worry! You don’t have to have an HD radio to listen to JazzNEO. You will be able to listen via your computer at jazzneo.org or using the Ideastream app on your smartphone. And of course, once you have the app, you can stream the music to a Bluetooth speaker or connect your phone to a stereo. You’ll also be able to listen on your smart speaker at home by simply ordering it to “play JazzNEO.”

If you are a serious music fan, or you love public radio, you should put the Ideastream app on your mobile phone. During the recent holiday season, for example, the app offered round-the-clock broadcasts of both holiday classical music and jazz holiday music. And if you’re a folk music fan, you can use the app to listen to WKSU’s Folk Alley channel, which constantly broadcasts folk music. You also can use the app to listen to your favorite Cleveland public radio broadcasts when you leave town. The Ideastream app is available for both Apple and Android phones.

HD radio is a technology that allows a radio station to offer more than one channel of programming at the same location on the FM radio dial. If you have an HD radio, you’ll have the option to simply switch on a radio to get a broadcast. To do that with JazzNEO, you’ll need to know about HD radio and the possibilities it offers if you have an HD radio receiver.

For example, Ideastream’s WKSU at FM 89.7 has four channels: An HD1 channel that provides the same broadcast as the FM station, an HD2 Folk Alley channel, an HD3 channel with 24-hour classical music and an HD4 news channel. Those channels are available at the 104.9 FM station repeater in Cleveland and other repeater locations, such as 90.7 in Norwalk, 89.3 in Wooster, 91.5 in Dover and 89.1 in Thompson. Ideastream’s WCLV broadcast at 90.3, which has a powerful signal reaching much of the Cleveland area, will have classical music at HD1 and JazzNEO at HD2.

HD radio differs from FM broadcasts in certain ways. For one thing, HD radio offers a clear, high-quality audio sound, free of static. If you’ve had the experience of listening to your favorite FM station in Cleveland, you might have noticed how it deteriorates into static and noise as you drive away from the city in your car. By contrast, HD radio is usually an all-or-nothing affair. You’ll either have great sound or, if you are out of range of the station, you’ll get nothing.

If you want to listen to JazzNEO or other HD radio offerings in your home, you may want an HD home radio instead of relying on web streaming, your smart speaker or your mobile app.

Despite public radio stations often taking advantage of HD technology, HD broadcasts have not caught on in a big way with commercial radio stations, although several Cleveland stations do offer HD broadcasts. As a result, buying an HD radio may be a little more difficult than simply buying an FM radio. However, there are a few HD radios for the home easily available to people who like radios.

Best Buy offers an Insignia tabletop FM/HD radio that costs about $60. Insignia is the electronics chain’s house brand, and the radio is available from the store’s website and in local retail locations. In addition, Sangean, a company with a well-deserved reputation for quality radios, makes at least four HD radios, ranging in price from about $68 to about $160.

Personally, I am a radio nut who collects radios, so in addition to Best Buy’s HD radio, I own the Sangean HDR-16 HD radio which has FM and AM in addition to HD radio, and which costs about $108. If you Google “Sangean HDR-16,” you’ll see it’s available from the usual big online shopping sites, such as Amazon and Walmart.

I can report that both radios work great if you live in the Cleveland area and you want to tune in the HD channels at WCLV at 90.3 and WKSU at 104.9. Both run on batteries but also can be connected to wall outlets. They also have auxiliary plugs, allowing users to listen to other audio sources. Small auxiliary Bluetooth plug-in devices are available for a few dollars, allowing you to turn these two radios (or any other radio with an auxiliary jack) into a Bluetooth speaker.

And if you do buy an HD radio, consider keeping the original box that it came in. That way, you can safely pack it up for trips when you go out of town, allowing you to listen to other public radio stations, even if some of them aren’t quite as great as Ideastream.

Tom Jackson lives in Berea and is a longtime public radio fan who loves classical music and jazz.