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Also, with the boost " On " stations which are weak will drift in and out of stereo, while with no boost they come in clearly in mono.All in all I am very pleased with the performance. The reception is good all around, but I normally leave the boost feature " off " because it picks up to many weak stations on scan. I was unable to get good FM reception from my Onkyo home theater system because my home has metal foil installed on the inside of the roof area to limit heat loss and improve A/C efficiency. After installing the Terk FM-50 antenna outdoors on the roof, I now can pick up a station about 45 miles away.
I live in a very remote location about 50 miles from a large town which has TV and radio stations. Have also used it with my Trivola radio in another location and it works well there too.
I have even had my XM radio discontinued as I much prefer a good selection of local FM stations. I did not even have to use the antennas's electrical hookup.
Great antena. Imagine my surprise and delight when I was able to finally get a great selection of FM stations after hooking this antenna up to my tuner.
I would recommend this antenna to anyone. I, like so many others, have not had good luck with antennas, in fact I had almost given up ever getting good FM reception.
The only interference I have are high mountains, which effectively block out all the FM signals.
I easily installed in attic so my aluminum siding on house would not interfere with reception. I live in small township south of Cleveland, Ohio and had terrible FM reception with the antenna that came with my receiver. All my stations that I listen to come in crystal clear with the meter showing a very strong signal. I listen to a wide variety of music and this antenna solved all my reception problems. I could only get one country station that didn't give static or go off station as I walked around house. I bought this antenna a few weeks back.
The only way that it is possible for an amplifier located at the antenna to improve the result is if the amount of noise that is being picked up in the transmission line between the antenna and the receiver is greater than the amount of noised added to the signal within that same amplifier. In the interest of full disclosure, I have never used this antenna, and I am writing this because none of the other people who have written a review have bothered to properly test it against a standard folded dipole antenna. Terk makes a lot of antennae that include built-in amplifiers, and on the packaging they quote the antenna gain, not the gain of the antenna itself. In all likelihood, the true reason that this antenna is giving many people better results than a cheap folded dipole, has nothing to do with the built-in amplifier, but is due to the use of coaxial transmission line.
Coaxial wire is inordinately superior. People who are reporting good results with this antenna might well get equivalent results with a $5 folded dipole but using two 300-Ohm / 75-Ohm adapters, one located right at the antenna and the other at the receiver so that shielded coax can be used over the distance that separates the antenna from the receiver. The common folded dipole that you buy at Radio Snack or elsewhere uses 300-ohm flat lead transmission wire, which is not particularly good at protecting the signal from noise. It is therefore no surprise that several people who have experimented with turning off the amplifier have reported that the amplifier does not seem to do anything.
Common sense should tell you that if an amplifier could make up for a poor signal coming from the antenna itself, you could turn any crummy antenna into an excellent antenna simply by adding amplification. Thus, if the amplifier is doing anything at all in a typical home setup, it is only compensating for a transmission line that does not do a good job of shielding the signal from noise. To do such a test properly, you would need to place both antennae in the exact same location and orientation, not at the same time of course. When the transmission line is long, the signal will experience attenuation, and in this case it can make sense to boost the signal at the antenna, the effect of which will be to keep the absolute strength of the signal high relative to the level of noise picked up along the transmission line.
What matters to the receiver is not the absolute strength of the signal, but rather the signal-to-noise ratio. This is wrong and misleading. Unfortunately, it does not work that way.
Am very happy with this product. The Terk FM-50 was the next best alternative to a roof mounted TV antenna with a rotor. My new house is in a terrible reception area. I have a battery of assorted amplified antennas and none of them did diddly.
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