Home > Consumer Reviews > Audiovox AF1 AM/FM Amplified Stereo Antenna

I've used this compact antenna for years in a small apartment in NYC where signals bounce between the buildings and often cause an echo effect. It has worked very well. I do not use this for AM reception; I unplug it when listening to AM radio and use a passive TERK AM Advantage antenna, which I cannot recommend too strongly. Also, I've never tried to listen to an FM station farther away than Newark, NJ, so I'm not sure whether this antenna is really an improvement over the older TERK model it replaced, but there's no comparison between it and the T-shaped wire that came with the tuner. The sound is clear and static free, even during storms. I will admit that it is a bit of a chore to adjust the pin-dots every time a radio station on a different part of the dial is selected, though.

Didn't seem to make the FM reception any better, except for the fact that when I was trying to get the classical station from NYC, to my horror, I got loud and clear, the local Christian station. Not what I wanted. The AM reception was completely gone; I went back to the antenna which came with the Onkyo tuner, which sort of works. I didn't have much luck with the "pin the dot" tuning system. More gain just made it more static-y (with more pain).
Bottom line will be an attempted return to CC; we'll see how that goes.

I live in a suburban area where reception from the nearest major cities (about 20-30 miles away) is largely blocked by a range of hills.

Although I did not try a simple loop-type antenna, when I connected this Terk antenna, I was able to get 4-bars (signal strength indicator on the tuner) out of five in broad-band mode and 5 bars in "Pin-Dot" (narrow-band) mode, on a relatively weak FM station I was interested in. I did not need to set the antenna gain on maximum in either case to get these results. I am satisfied that the antenna works well for me for FM in my situation.

I haven't used the AM antenna.

For the price I expected more. The AM antenna is not powered, non-amplified. The FM antenna works great. The wires are too short. It can not be moved far from the Receiver. It has no on off switch. It has to be adjusted for every station.

I live in the bottom of a ravine just outside of San Francisco. The steep hills prevent good FM reception through a standard dipole or normal roof-mounted FM antenna. With this power antenna I am able to listen to new and talk radio on the left end of the dial (that is where my stations are) with acceptable clarity. Music reception is still somewhat noisy so I have to put the receiver on mono.

The alleged precision tuning of the antenna does not live up to its claim. However, the gain control does seem to be the key to reception. I have to tune the antenna as I change stations.

The operation of the antenna is not at all intuitive and the manufacturer provide no installation or usage documentation. I looked on the Audiovox badly design website and did search for all sorts of phrases like "Q", "Q antenna" "AM/FM". No joy. You can look up by model number but I could find no indication on the box what the model # was. Finally I called customer support and they emailed me a small pdf. For the price of the antenna they should provide documentation.