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Post by widespreadpanic on Jun 14, 2019 22:25:17 GMT -5
Can someone please explain to me exactly what this does? Do I need this? Thank you kindly for your consideration.
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Post by MusicHead on Jun 15, 2019 14:11:34 GMT -5
If you are talking about something like the MD 205 Signal Sleuth FM Amplifier, it is a tunable bandpass active filter.
Think of it as a single channel parametric equalizer but for the FM radio band instead of audio band 😁.
I can see it as potentially useful only if you listen to very far away stations with weak signal or vice versa if you receive many adjacent strong ones and you want to "isolate" one in particular.
It depends also on how good your FM tuner is. If you are using an external antenna and a very long run of cable, the best place for any RF preamp is always at the antenna, upstream of the cable. That is where the best S/N ratio is. The preamp would amplify the cleanest signal so that the boost it gives to it will make up for the loss on the cable.
A preamp downstream of the antenna cable may even do more harm than good, overloading the receiver front end with a strong signal with a low S/N ratio, as it would have to amplify the signal after it has been attenuated by the cable.
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