AM radio reception

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OK, who knows stuff? About the topic above... about 2 months ago AM radio reception in my apartment suddenly went south. I used to get most local stations here in Toronto and even a few from Buffalo, across the lake, pretty well most of the time esp at night when I really wanted it.

Then suddenly all I get is interference. Whether it's RF or EM or Microwave or whatever I have no idea. I've tested at least a half dozen radio receivers, some just with batteries to eliminate the main power being the problem, and it's the same on all of them... just a machine-like mid pitch whine right across the whole band except for maybe one station that I can almost listen to at 1010.

I've shut down all electrical devices nearby and even brought my best radio into my neighbor's apartment down the hall and it's the same there too so it's not an immediate local problem.

I'm on the 24th of a 30 floor bldg and there are a number of Microwave/cell phone antennae up on the roof and on other buildings nearby as well. Across the street there are a number of large dish antennae but I think they are all just receiving. I live right downtown so there's a lot of that kind of stuff all over the place. There was nothing new being installed or constructed when this happened that I could see.

I've tried to research it elsewhere online but have found little of use. I like to listen to sports talk radio to fall asleep but haven't been able to now for a while.

ideas? Or maybe just a link to a good help site related to this topic?

[Train]

Kind of sounds like a bad transformer in a neon light.
Or a bad capacitor start system on a electric motor.
Ballast in florescent lighting is another source I have run into.
Take a transistor radio and check the reception at various floors in the tower.

[Train]

It well could be harmonics being emitted by the equipment on the roof.
So test to see if it worse higher up.

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Yeah, vertical test is next. I've gone as far as I can horizontally.

[SpywareDr]

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Interesting idea. I will investigate that further however the problem was never that I was needing to get a better antenna for reception because that was always good but something is interfering with the reception.

I thought about a Faraday cage but that would shield good and bad stuff. Plus realistically it would make accessing the radio too difficult to adjust in the middle of the night, lying in bed anyway.

EDIT- it did get me to remember a small am loop antenna I have lying around somewhere from an older stereo receiver I have at the back of my closet. I'll try and find that.

[Train]

I have used rain gutters for antennas. Landlord never knew.
Of coarse 530 on the AM dial requires
Full Wave = 984 Half Wave = 468 Quarter Wave = 234 ft antennas.

[Train]

As FM only needs 11 ft at 88 Mhz so that 234 ft antenna works as a signal amp.

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OK, I found the am loop antenna and pulled my old receiver out and hooked it up. The reception was somewhat better but to listen to any particular station I had to adjust the antenna with a different orientation for each one. Clearly the more elaborate one that's in the howto video above would work better but it would be even more directional and sensitive so using something like that is a nonstarter for a clock radio by my bed.. not to mention the size of it and my cat probably wanting to play with it.

I'm going to change tack here and use my old laptop to stream radio stations. I've checked and pretty much all the local stations I want to listen to have online streams. All I need is a really cheap powered speaker and I can get one of those easily.

Has anyone seen a browser addon or windows application that automatically switches sound on/off that follows the focus of the selected window or tab? What I mean is if I open say 3 tabs each with a different station then only the single selected tab would be audible.

I'll start a new thread elsewhere for that question as well so others will see it.

http://discussions.virtualdr.com/sho...g-audio-source

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Just an update for anyones future reference.

I've been using the laptop setup for a couple of days/nights now and it works reasonably well. There are some cons though and I'll go through them...

Pro- Reliable connection with no RF or EM interference to all local radio stations with the bonus of finding stations anywhere in the world that has internet streaming (most do.. am and fm) 24/7.

Sound quality is as good as the computer speakers you have which is often better than an average clock radio.

Audio stream uses very little bandwidth.

Con- Not easy to reach over and quickly switch stations while falling asleep which I often did. You have to wake up and look at what you're doing with your browser so you become more awake and may not fall back to sleep as easily as if you had a clock radio like the one I used which just had some easily found preset station buttons on the front. Complicated by the fact I wear glasses.

(Solution is to find the station you want to listen to and not switch LOL.)

I don't like to leave a computer running full time so I put it on standby by closing the lid when I want to stop listening. That means waking the computer and restarting the stream(s) before you go to bed.. takes more time than just turning on the radio.

You need to use a black desktop background, minimize the browser and hide most icons and the taskbar to prevent the opened laptop from illuminating the room at night.

Some streams require turning off adblock otherwise they disconnect when the background flash ads start (ESPN for eg) No big deal but it took a little trouble shooting to figure that one out.

It's a Tie- Adjusting volume.. the radio has one volume knob. The computer speakers have one volume knob.

Summary- Overall I'd still rather have a working radio with good reception because the of the station switching hassle but the laptop is a decent workaround given no other realistic options.