David Gentleman wrote:If you need a suppressor, do it properly and fit one to the alternator or behind the radio.
I was not going to comment on this misleading quote originally as, although partially correct because fitting supressors to Alternators is a must to reduce whine, but because the further quote below is only leading to more confusion and misleading comment.
The fitting of a suppressor behind a radio will have no effect at all from spark induced Interference from commutators in DC electric motors, be it the fuel pumps or other motor operated devices. Any Car Radio worth its salt has its own ferrite supperssion circuit within itself, the Philips OE Radio is no exception. Apart from the ferrite component there is capacitive and inductive components which all work together to eliminate intrusion of interference through the Before and After ign 12v feeds.
It must be remembered that 99.9% of interference on any radio, but car radios in particular, gets into the radio through the Aerial, a particular component that cannot be suppressed except by inefficient band pass filters depending on which frequency band you are tuned to.
So the moral of this is:- In the event of interference, find the suppress at source.
This was followed up by:-
David Gentleman wrote:If you get whining through your stereo on 'some occasions' then its not the fuel pump is it, it runs all the time.
In reference to the fuel pump suppression, someone stated that without the suppressor interference was apparent "Intermittently", or as stated above on "some occasions".
I have no problem of understanding the intermittentcy of interference from the unsuppresses fuel pump, because as rightly stated, the pump runs all the time, but that has little to do with it.
What the Intermittent side has to do with, is the "Signal to Noise" ratio. All radios .... especially Car Radios .... have what is called an AVC circuit (Automatic Volume control) the purpose of which, especially radio's on the move, is to keep adjusting the volume of the radio constant while the signal level is changing.
In open spaces the signal to noise ratio (s/n) is good assuming you are within reasonable range of the Radio Station's transmitter, and as such with a s/n of, say, 90% signal, and 10% noise, you will not hear things like the fuel pump, however if you are a long way from the transmitter, in a tunnel or in a built up area, then the s/n can be adversely different, ie:- 10% signal, and 90% noise. Now the AVC is working hard to maintain a user set volume to the listener, but with a changing s/n, the interference part of the audio can apear to come and go ..... Intermittently.
I hope some of you concerned about suppression in their Alps find this interesting and perhaps in reading this, helps you to understand the vagaries of Radio Reception and suppression.
John