Indoor AM antenna

[JZL]

Can I just use speaker wire to make a simple indoor AM antenna loop? It's just for baseball so the quality isn't super big deal. I don't seem to be able to tune any AM stations; the FM band, which has an antenna, is fine.

Denon AV 588 if that matters. It has inputs for each band.

[DaJMasta]

You can, but the required length for AM needs to be pretty long - as much as a hundred feet for full effectiveness, but you may be able to get away with like 10 feet or so, less is going to mean less sensitivity. There's even some value of using a longer wire and having the amount you can't extend fully in a coil at the base near the receiver (inductive loading).



That said, there are ways of getting around raw length by using more complex antenna designs, so there are compact commercial designs that aren't too expensive if the length of wire option isn't sufficient.

[JZL]

I think I should test with a smaller length.

This isn't gonna short anything is it?

[DaJMasta]

Provided it's just an open ended wire only connected on one side to the receiver, should be fine. Just a long wire is a legit kind of antenna, and as long as you don't shove any power into it from something else (socket, powered device, lightning, etc.) you should be fine.

[JZL]

I picked up an actual AM loop antenna but it didn't help. There's nothing, not even static, so I'm stumped.

[DaJMasta]

Hmmm, I wonder if there's something up with the AM input section? Are there any recommendations as to what to use in the manual for the receiver?




Maybe there's an auto noise removal setting that can be disabled? Even no antenna should at least produce static unless it's been auto-muted by hardware or something.




The AM receiver end is potentially a very simple device, though I'm sure there's some extra filtering and processing to clean it up in a modern receiver and maybe something's getting lost along the way. You could try running the receiver (or the antenna) outside on a nice day and see if it changes at all - would at least give you an idea if it was reception related.