I have two Yamaha AVRs and my only complaints is poor FM reception. I'm thinking of buying from Radio Shack, a FM antenna replacements in hopes of providing a better signal to the tuner to improve reception. I know tuners in modern day AVRs are an after thought or low priority on manufacturer's part so I don;t want to go down that rat hole. I simply want to know if my logic is sound?
In my experience, indoors, nothing beats a simple, quarter-wave folded di-pole. The higher up in the room, the better. And it should be oriented perpendicularly to the direction from which the signal of your most desired station is coming.
That said, indoor antennas don't work worth a damn. ANY of them. The reason is probably NOT due to poor tuner performance. Modern homes use a lot of foil covered insulated exterior wall board. Increasingly, as good lumber gets more expensive and harder to obtain, framing in houses is increasingly going to galvanized steel. These new construction trends act as shielding, reducing the strength of signals entering the home.
What's more, modern homes are awash in electronic noise and digital hash, generated by cell phones, televisions, computers, microwave ovens, set top boxes, gaming consoles, iPods, anything with digital circuitry, which can be anything from your nice modern refrigerator to your toaster oven to your hair dryer.
There are decent indoor/outdoor antennas that can be mounted either outside on the roof or even above the living area in the attic. Unless you intend to be a DX'er, you don't usually need a huge or expensive antenna. Just about any modesty decent antenna can work well if mounted up high, preferably outside.
