miker@polari.UUCP (Mike Ranta) (05/03/91)
>I was paging though Crutchfield the other day when i came >upon a fm signal booster for ~30 bucks. Now, i thought to >myself, I wouldn't mind trying one of those out, since >my rather cheezy tuner don't lock into the stereo carrier >too good. But I wasn't about to buy it, for several reasons.. FM signal boosters are basically worthless. Unless you have a _real_ cheap receiver _and_ live way out in the sticks, they only create more problems than they solve. For one thing, signal strength usually isn't the problem with FM reception. All that crap you hear as you drive around is usually multipath and is caused by reflections not by low signal (it does _appear_ that the signal is dropping in and out but it's actually being cancelled). Secondly, if you do live a long distance from your stations, the limiting factor is usually the noise figure of the front end of your receiver. The noise figure of the FM boosters is usually no better, if not worse than most receivers. Finally, the boosters also amplify all the strong stuff and usually cause overload problems (and make the multipath worse).