Are Tuners - Audiophile quality

Once the tuner receives a strong enough signal to go into what is called "full quieting", it is pretty much up to the tuner from there. This is taking into account that it is receiving a direct signal and not something loaded with multipath reflections. As such, almost ANY outdoor antenna can pull in a reasonable signal so long as you are not a million miles from the transmitter.

To prove the point, how many times have you been able to listen to a station in your car with a factory installed stereo and then gone into the house and NOT been able to get the station in near as good using a wire dipole, amplified indoor antenna, rabbit ears, etc... ??? Do you think that the difference was that the "cheezy" car stereo had a better tuner section in it than your "hi-fi" grade tuner or was it the fact that the ( much shorter ) car antenna was outside ????

While i am a BIG fan of proper antenna systems, they become FAR more important at distance OR when you are nearfield with a lot of tall buildings or structures that will deflect the signal. You can actually run into problems by having TOO much antenna when the receiver is located relatively close to the transmitter. This is called "front end overload" and can be quite a problem in big cities.

As to Marv / Fanfare's comments, Quad used to do very similar tests / demo's when they came out with their FM-4. They even went so far as to bring a small transmitter being fed via vinyl to their "big" dealers and demo this for them and the interested customers. Switching between the vinyl being fed directly into the audio system and then listening to the same record via the signal being transmitted and then received by the FM-4 resulted in no discernable difference ( other than the delay ) under those conditions. Sean
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Sean makes a very good point...what your reception location in regards to broadcast signals is. I am so used to being in the "sticks" that a very directional antenna with very good side and rear rejection..and rejection of 6 and 7 on the TV VHF band have been very important. That said, it is easier for any audio or RF circuit to porduce a cleaner signal out when it is feed a cleaner signal in.

The person who said that th4e FM band exists between channels 6 and 7 on the TV dial is correct about that and somewhat inaccurate about the rest.

The fact the FM band exists where it does will allow a TV antenna to "broadband" th FM signal, but with no elements actually dedicated to the FM frequencies, the actual gain at 100MHz could be less than unity (0dB). The signal could be noisy because the antenna's design makes it susceptible to harmonics of other frequencies with can become just plain noise. This type of problem does not occur with a dedicated FM antenna because it is tuned narrowly to the FM band, and in doing so has sufficient gain at the FM frequency band to disregard low signal harmonic interference. The analogy here might be that hi-test gas is a rip-off if it does not provide better performance for a high performance engine.

And what about AM reception, Marv...only the Audiolab serves us well...y'know the WAF factor hurts us there...so much that I had to put my Addison out for her.

Marv, since when is 20 MHz ( 88 MHz to 108 MHZ ) considered "narrowband" ??? There is NO antenna made that will offer a linear gain curve for that wide of a bandwidth. One could build a design with a low Q ( maximum bandwidth but with lower overall gain ) and tune it for the middle of the band or "peak it" for maximum gain at one end of the band or the other.

As to your comments about "dedicated" FM antennas increasing the selectivity and rejecting out of band signals to a greater extent than "broadband" TV antennas, that IS a falsehood. An antenna that was specifically resonated for FM would also be HIGHLY susceptible to amplifying the 4th harmonic that was originally generated within the CB band. Since hundreds if not thousands of watts are in use on that band with little to no filtering in the amplifiers, high level 4th order harmonics ARE a reality. As such, a higher gain antenna at that frequency could actually INCREASE out of band interference and its susceptability to such things. That is, UNLESS the antenna was highly directional and pointed right at the FM transmitter and the offending CB'er was not in the pathway.

This is not to mention that many earlier cordless phones, baby monitors, etc... are transmitting around 49 MHz. As such, their second harmonic is occuring pretty much smack dab within the FM range.

With those things in mind, optimum performance for anyone that is located at distance from the majority of transmitters would be realized with a large directional yagi array on a rotor mounted as high as possible. Since the majority of citizens don't want to deal with something like that, simply installing SOME type of antenna on one's roof or in the attic would do wonders compared to an indoor wire dipole or rabbit ears. As to the "specialized" FM designs like the Fanfare and Magnum antennas, they are both base loaded designs. Anyone that works with RF knows that base loading is pretty low in efficiency. The main benefit of this design is that it offers less wind load and is not quite as ugly as a top or center load. Nonetheless, this design should offer pretty reasonable performance as long as they are vertically oriented and mounted out in the open. The use of a tuned counterpoise underneath them would also benefit them quite a bit.

Simply using the "homebrew" center fed dipole mounted vertically that i detailed how to build in a previous post might also solve a LOT of reception problems for less than $5. Sean
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