Does your radio skip?

[AZJeepGuy]

My radio skips. When I go from preset to preset using my steering wheel control after a second the music will skip. Mostly on stations that have a graphic and other stuff in the display. I did a bit of searching and found issues with the USB but not this.
Does anyone else's radio do this? Mine is getting worse as time goes on. If the unit fails will the rest of the vehicle still operate? I would think so but might as well ask.

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[Enis]

If I try change the music with my steering wheel controls I lose Bluetooth

 

[aldo98229]

Are you talking about AM/FM, XM, Pandora...?

 

[Shibadog]

No issues here.

 

[AZJeepGuy]

Are you talking about AM/FM, XM, Pandora...?

Radio meaning FM.

 

[Echo4papa]

Does it happen on all stations, or just HD stations?

 

[AZJeepGuy]

It's FM. Didn't know there was such a thing as HD FM.

 

[driventoadventure]

It's from the channels being available in "high definition" which is a feature where radio stations are actually sending the same music (sometimes also other "channels" available through multiplexing the data) digitally with the analog signal. Because there is a demodulation process to convert from analog to digital, it has to buffer that signal. The skipping you are hearing is because this means that even though the transmitter is sending the signal out so that the music is technically simultaneous, the receiving radio will skip as it goes to the same timestamp of the song, which when decoded is now some number of seconds behind.

This is a VERY Simplified explanation that doesn't account for MANY factors that can lead to the perceptible lag in the signal...

 

[driventoadventure]

It's FM. Didn't know there was such a thing as HD FM.

HD Radio has been a thing for a little over a decade, and really became the norm in broadcast about the same time as OTA Television went from analog to digital... The biggest reasons were quality and density. The fact that it uses the sidebands of the "frequency" you are tuning to, and the fact that it can compress the data allows for as much as 4x the density of broadcast channels, similar to how digital television allowed not only for HD content, but for a near-tripling of the number of channels that could be sent over a given frequency range. Basically think of it as being an analogous change to Vinyl versus MP3.

The biggest reason you didn't know it was a thing, was that even though there have been HD Radio broadcasts since as early as 2011, the fact that radios have a per-unit licensing cost means that even today it is considered a "High-End" option. If the OTA Radio industry doesn't keep consolidating like it is, there may soon be a need to require the transition to pure "HD" radio since many markets already have their radio spectra fully saturated.

 

[AZJeepGuy]

Can I turn off the HD so it doesn't skip? Sometimes it will skip in the middle of the song. Seems to be getting worse.
To me, this is a defective radio.

 

[AZJeepGuy]

Can I turn off the HD so it doesn't skip? Sometimes it will skip in the middle of the song. Seems to be getting worse.
To me, this is a defective radio.

Edit: I saw the HD on the panel and it turned off when I hit it. Never noticed before.

No more skipping! And it sounds better.

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