HD Radio HELP, ALpine Unit!

[grizzly02 10+ year member]

MY new Alpine HD-Radio goes in and out of an analog signal and never really stays true to the HD. I called Alpine and told them everythign is in an 05 Mazda. They asked me if it had a roof mount Antenna and said that the Blue wire from the HD unit has to be connected to the blue wire in the wire harness (radio harness) if thee is a lue wire in the harness, because the roof mount antenna needs to be energized? WTF does that mean, are roof mount antennas energized?

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[ebrunn 10+ year member]

You read the instructions when installing it?

 

[grizzly02 10+ year member]

Yes, but it says to connect to the power wntenna, I do not have a power antenna! WTF?

 

[ToxicBanana 10+ year member]

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hd_radio

Most of the first generation HD Radio tuners have been noted as being very insensitive, making reception problematic. In hybrid mode, the HD Radio signal is 1/100th the power of a station's analog signal. Due to its relative weakness, the HD Radio signal will sometimes drop out and the receiver will revert to analog mode. This can be especially problematic in fringe areas, where the digital signal may frequently be lost. If the digital stream on the HD-2 channel is different than the analog broadcast (multicasting), then any time the digital signal fades out the radio effectively changes stations to whatever program is broadcast on the analog signal. While this is by design, and is part of the HD specification, it can be very annoying to the listener, who perceives the channel to have been randomly changed. In addition it has been noted that the analog section of some tuners displays poor reception capabilities compared to older non-digital models.[28]