Tuner reception

[kpinks]

For some reason, when I turn on my Smart TV, my radio reception on my Onkyo reciever gets static sounding?

 

[markw]

Sounds like your smart TV generated noise in the FM spectrum

 

[TLS Guy]

For some reason, when I turn on my Smart TV, my radio reception on my Onkyo reciever gets static sounding?

That is RF generated by the switching power supply of the TV. Traditional radio is dead and dying and will soon be gone in my view. There is now so much RF in the home, especially from LED light bulbs, that good reception is next to impossible. The IBiquity HD system does solve the issue, but it has never caught on. Now there is a reason to use it, it is dying out and loosing ground.

Radio listening really has no option but to migrate to Internet streaming.

 

[mtrycrafts]

For some reason, when I turn on my Smart TV, my radio reception on my Onkyo reciever gets static sounding?

Is this on both AM and FM bands? Where is the FM antenna in relations with the TV, how close?

 

[herbu]

Is this on both AM and FM bands? Where is the FM antenna in relations with the TV, how close?

That's the direction I would go. Try moving your FM antenna around. Further away from your TV, (and higher), might be better.

 

[Rickster71]

Sounds like you need some coax to a remote or external antenna.

 

[TLS Guy]

Sounds like you need some coax to a remote or external antenna.

That has not worked for me. The RF noise of LED bulbs reaches my roof antenna. The noise of these bulbs and other discontinuous loads is right across the FM band. So for analog FM that means listening in the dark pretty much. So I have shifted to HD and Internet. The trouble is the Internet US streams are pretty poor quality.

I hate to think what these new MOSFET driven high frequency inductive ranges are going to do.

I don't know if you have encountered these, but I bet you have.

One of my sons has just remodeled and installed one of these.

Anyhow they need 5G wire from the panel and take 65 amps. Not only that, the panel wire is copper, and the wire from the cook top aluminum.

Luckily I turned up when the electrician was there, as I had to fashion an airflow baffle that was missing and the manufacturer had trouble finding, but did subsequently.

Anyhow they only had 6G wire nuts and could not get 5G ones. So I asked him if the wing nuts were tight. He said NO! So I said I would research it, and told him to stop.

So I found one supplier and they said they had no 5 G wing nuts. So then I phoned the Twin Cities largest electric supplier, and they told me that wire nuts larger than 6 G were now banned for safety reasons. They suggested a split bolt.

So, I went to the supplier. I looked at the split bolt disapprovingly. Luckily there was an older experienced electrician at the counter. He asked me what I was doing, and told him. He told me they had had a lot of trouble with those cook top installations. He said the split bolt would not work and cause galvanic problems.

He recommended these.

They are pre loaded with the grease for aluminum/copper connections. A firm connection is made with an Allen key screw. They were perfect for this installation and I got three in a 4" junction box.

When I got done, I put a great big pot of boiling water on the huge largest "burner". The pot came to a boil in 50 sec! I was dumbfounded. And of course, the so called "burner" does not get hot.

The only problem is an audible buzz from the unit. I hate to think how much RF it likely broadcasts.

 

[Rickster71]

Those are nice and exactly what I'd use.

As for the OP.
He mentioned the problem only appeared when his TV was on. So I suspect he doesn't issues with his lighting.

 

[TLS Guy]

Those are nice and exactly what I'd use.

As for the OP.
He mentioned the problem only appeared when his TV was on. So I suspect he doesn't issues with his lighting.

He will as he has to change his light bulbs.

 

[mtrycrafts]

Well, I just experimented, turned on the LED lights, 4, on the 2nd story right below an omni directional FM antenna in the attic. Don't hear an audible induced noise on FM or AM band. I even turned on the LEDs in the living room , not far from the AM loop antenna that came with the Onky, nothing. Even turned on a light with electronic dimmer, nothing.

 

[TLS Guy]

Well, I just experimented, turned on the LED lights, 4, on the 2nd story right below an omni directional FM antenna in the attic. Don't hear an audible induced noise on FM or AM band. I even turned on the LEDs in the living room , not far from the AM loop antenna that came with the Onky, nothing. Even turned on a light with electronic dimmer, nothing.

You are lucky. Nine scream like a banshee. What brand are yours? Mine are all TCP contractor grade.

This a well documented problem on the Internet.

 

[mtrycrafts]

You are lucky. Nine scream like a banshee. What brand are yours? Mine are all TCP contractor grade.

This a well documented problem on the Internet.

The bulbs are Feit brand, R-30, non dimable.

 

[TLS Guy]

The bulbs are Feit brand, R-30, non dimable.

I have a lot of BR 40s on Maestro LED dimmers.

 

[markw]

The bulbs are Feit brand, R-30, non dimable.

I have a lot of BR 40s on Maestro LED dimmers.

Anyone else notice a difference here?

 

[Speedskater]

'TLS Guy' two questions:
1] What brand is that connector?
2] Where did you find the interference chart?

 

[herbu]

Anyone else notice a difference here?

Nope. We've been replacing our bulbs over the last year w/ Cree 40w Dimmable. None of them are actually on a dimmer. I've seen no issue w/ FM on my tuner. But we're in the country. No cable. Weak cell. Perhaps the new high tech RF just hasn't gotten here yet.

 

[Swerd]

TLS Guy – Don't you have a high gain FM antenna on your roof? Is there also an antenna amplifier? Probably not, but I'll ask anyway.

Just a thought, but back in the days when I worked radio intercept in the Navy, we had an enormously large and sensitive short wave radio antenna. The circular arrangement allowed accurate direction finding. This one is near Anchorage, Alaska. It, and another one in southern Italy was where I spent my cold war military duty.

In Italy, we were not far from a busy road. We often could hear noise, probably from Italian trucks with noisy distributors, as they drove by. At least, that's what everyone said it was. We had an electronic maintenance chief who also was a devoted rally car driver. He decided to test that idea. He set up his car with a noisy unshielded distributor and had me drive it around while he stayed at the work site listening on several receivers, recording what he received. Sure enough, it was distributor noise. There were a series of tests done first with the car nearby, to determine what frequencies were involved. Later we tested how far away we could pick up the noise. I had a planned out route and clipboard. I wrote down the times as I passed various checkpoints, so he could later check that against his tape record. Afterwards, we had a record of the signal strengths of the noise at the various frequencies, and how far away we could pick it up. So they built some trap filters that fixed the problem. The brass worried that the trap filters would block signals we wanted to receive, and it took some time to convince them this was a good solution. That test recording was the data that did the trick.

Anyway, the point of my long story is that TLS Guy lives in a very low signal strength area and has a high gain FM antenna. Maybe his rig is unusually susceptible to interference from LED lights. Just my 2¢.

 

[mtrycrafts]

...sensitive short wave radio antenna.


We often could hear noise, probably from Italian trucks with noisy distributors, as they drove by. ...

I speculate that your setup back then the reception and monitoring was amplitude modulated signals type, not frequency mod. I would expect noise to get in as it is amplitude modulated.
No different than picking up noise in a car AM band when such an unshielded car went by or stopped at the signal next to you, at least in the olden days.

 

[TLS Guy]

I think there are a number of issues why I have the problem.

I have a high gain roof Yagi-Uda array. I'm about 45 to 50 miles from the transmitter at Blackduck MN. I get a good signal though. On my Quad FM 4s only the very top LED is partially lit. When the LEDs are off then I have no noticeable background noise.

I have used ultra high efficiency LED bulbs, not available in stores, that are for commercial use. These higher quality bulbs are known to produce more interference.

These would meet secs demanded by the EEC.

In addition I have a lot of LEDs, around 150 over the whole compound. Of course they are not all on at once. Most of the bulbs are on the highest standard Maestro dimmers.

I have a lot of cans with some long runs. So there is a lot of wiring to transmit the RF.

There are five levels in the home, but only the top three and the lowest level have LED bulbs.

All of the top three levels transmit the interference to the antenna. The lowest level does not.

The interference does transmit to my vehicles and they have to be a significant distance from the house before the interference is not audible.

This program is saving on average 200 Kilowatt hours per month.

This is actually not a big problem as HD transmission is now finally better than analog and is totally silent.

Also this is better then the incandescent lighting dimmers, which sent enough interference to be just picked up by my Marantz pre/pro. These LED dimmers do not.

The only difficulty is that I can not use the Quad FM 4 down on the first level if any of the LEDS are on, on the three upper levels.

This issue has been a much bigger issue in Europe, as incandescent bulbs have been phased out for much longer. This has forced many to migrate to DAB or Internet radio. In any event for classical music from the BBC Internet is the best way to go, as it is 320 kbs HE AAC MPEG DASH.

I am able to get that, and because the BBC are certainly the best recording engineers around, the actual quality is about the best available and better than most CDs, as their broadcasts have such realistic perspective and balance. On iPlayer downloads the bit rate is 640 kbs with the same codec.

The BBC are hoping to launch US subscription streaming and download site this year.

In my view it is time for broadcasters to start phasing out terrestrial transmission and migrating to high quality Internet transmission. Traditional transmission is now starting to sound very jaded to me, and below the quality of other available options by miles now.

This will help explain the issues.

You can see images of the spectral patterns here.

FM radio transmission is now nearly 70 years old. It is time for it to blend into the pages of history gracefully.

 

[Swerd]

I speculate that your setup back then the reception and monitoring was amplitude modulated signals type, not frequency mod. I would expect noise to get in as it is amplitude modulated.
No different than picking up noise in a car AM band when such an unshielded car went by or stopped at the signal next to you, at least in the olden days.

We could monitor any type of modulation as long as it was on a carrier wave anywhere in the entire range of short wave. Much of machine talk back then, such as teletype, was sent as multi-band FM. Even Morse code could be FM.