FM time-shifting

January 9, 2005 11:03 PM

FM time-shiftingfilter: I purchased a Griffin radioshark, and, although a great idea, its FM reception is for crap. It doesn't pick up the one station I listen to all the time -- KCRW -- and my home is just 25 miles from Santa Monica.

Griffin says an external antenna can be plugged into the headphone jack in the back of the unit. Of course, they also say plugging in headphones will serve the same purpose, and still the reception is poor (no improvement). Trouble is: I can't seem to find any external FM antennas on the net that explicitly state they plug into a headphone jack. Is a headphone jack called something else? I've been going down googleholes for hours with no answer.
posted by mrkinla to Technology (10 answers total)

I can't help with you your more general question but I just wanted to point that KCRW archives many of their programs.
posted by rdr at 11:09 PM on January 9, 2005

A headphone jack (1/8") is also commonly referred to as a stereo 'mini' jack. You can do all kinds of neat conversions into other forms of audio cables like RCA and such. I'm not sure how this helps you, though, since most antennas aren't designed to be connected like this. I guess the best you could do might be a really long headphone cord :o(
posted by onalark at 11:29 PM on January 9, 2005

I've not done this so I can't confirm it'll work, but couldn't you stop by a RadioShack, buy a 'mini' jack, solder some wire to the center conductor and have an antenna? It should be pretty easy and cheap. Maybe, while you're there, an employee will have experience with your problem and have a better solution.
posted by SAC at 11:48 PM on January 9, 2005

Just buy a long 1/8 inch cable and plug it into the headphone jack - it will function as an antenna. It's just the length of the wire you're after. Move it around until you get a good signal.

If you want to get really old school, you can wrap it around a wooden frame for that vintage Amplitude Modulation look.
posted by aladfar at 12:35 AM on January 10, 2005

If it wasn't clear in the answers before, those jacks are sometimes called "1/8th inch" jacks. That's what I call them all the time as "headphone jack" means different things to different people.
posted by pwb503 at 12:47 AM on January 10, 2005

Note that Aladfar's solution is directional, you need to point it in the direction of the signal. But your better off with just a long straight wire if you've got some where to string it.
posted by Mitheral at 7:55 AM on January 10, 2005

Most portable radios and personal stereos work the same way. When you plug any pair of headphones into the jack, they use the headphone cable as an antenna. I bet if you plug any headphones into the cable, you'll see an improvement.

This will be a directional antenna, so move it around to get the best reception.
posted by ascullion at 8:26 AM on January 10, 2005

A partial solution might be to try KPCC, which has a lot of the same programming, although you probably already know this.
posted by shoos at 8:52 AM on January 10, 2005

I think KCRW streams its programing live using Real Audio. Does the old program Streambox VCR work on live streams? I have a friend that uses it to listen to This American Life and other NPR Real Audio stuff on his MP3 player. But he's never tried it on a live stream.
posted by probablysteve at 10:52 AM on January 10, 2005

KCRW offers MP3 streams, so you can timeshift quite well using streamripper.
posted by ascullion at 1:01 PM on January 10, 2005