Radio Frequency Interference From Nearby AM Radio Station Tower

October 3, 2007 by Lukas Gilkey
Filed under: Home Audio



One of our readers and a fellow blogger asked for a bit of help with an audio related problem he is having. I figured some of the gifted minds on here might be able to help him out. Feel free to leave a comment if you have any ideas for Matt and his AM radio station from hell.


My question is: RFI/EMI

I've had nothing but issues in my house with a nearby radio station
AM1500... I really HATE talk radio! It's in everything, even in my OVEN!
I've tried everything. Cable companies and the engineer from the station
can't even help me out. I have even tried a Level 2 power conditioner
(Panamax) and still hear and see noise. Super annoying! So, the question is do power conditioners actually work? And do you have any ideas of what I could do or know of any products that could solve this issue?

The strange part is when I talked with the engineer he said they switch
towers and therefore it goes away after 6pm and returns at 6am on the
dot. Very Strange.... It's Video and Audio.

When I have the cable (coax) connected to my TV, my system must loop it
and extend the signal, even my LAN line has the same issue. I ran
everything into a Panamx level 2 filter/power conditioner and it was
still there but not as apparent, but was hard to listen to softer music
or watch a DVD.

Maybe the better question is will a Level 3+ filtering system like
Panamax take care of the issue. Maybe see if other people noticed a
difference when using Panamax. The difference is extreme cases like mine
or the people who buy it cause they think they need it for
protection.... I even get AM in my amps when I'm recording but I can use
filters/gates to fix it.

Example
Isolation room I built

Thanks so much for looking into this!
I really don't want to spend $300+ just to fix noise!

Matt
Gee-Zu.com

Comments (4)
lukas 10 months and 1 week ago

Matt, I stumbled onto this...
www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=904171

He rips on the power conditioners pretty bad. I've read that running your power through a battery is the best type of conditioning. I do not have any experience with that though. You could try it out by purchasing one of the less expensive APC battery backup units (you can get them for as little as $35). Charge it up and test it out plugged in, and then unplugged so it is running only off of the battery just to be sure the problem goes away.
mpacyga 10 months and 1 week ago

Hmmm.... Interesting. I kind of thought power conditioners were a marketing scam.

Where can I find a battery backup? Any suggestions as to where to pick one up?

I'm still waiting to hear back from our power plant to see if its a wiring issue. I have a friend stopping to check it out with me as well. I'll keep everyone posted. Also I'm thinking of getting one of these panamax 5100. Its a great price and it says its a Level 4 filter? Really whats that mean? Level 4?

Thanks for all the tips.
lukas 10 months and 1 week ago

You can get the APC backups from Office Depot and Staples. I'd try that before forking down some serious money on another power conditioner. You may even want to call APC and see if they have a unit that always runs off of the battery. That would be ideal as the battery would act as a buffer.
foobar 6 months and 4 weeks ago

Did you ever fix this? I'm near the AM1500 KSTP tower in Maplewood, and am having this same issue. Mainly in my computer head phones I get it all the time, no idea how to fix it.
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