I got a phone call the other day and
the customer had questions about his Nissan diversity
antenna system.
A diversity or sometimes called a dual diversity antenna
system came on the scene in the mid 80s.
Sony made an aftermarket car stereo that you could plug
two car antenna into.
The purpose was to eliminate the
multipath noises common on mobile (moving) FM
reception, sometimes called
picket fencing.
In the 80s where aftermarket car stereo was really
dabbling in HIGH END, some of the FM receivers were so
sensitive that they had HUGE problems with multipath. As
an installer, I would often take out the crappy
old factory stereo and install a state of the art
Alpine, Concord, Soundstream, Proton or other good
stereo and the customer would return with reception
problems that they did not have with the old factory
stereo..
FLUTTER... Caused by the FM
signals being blocked and bounced by buildings in the
city.
Trying to get rid of this problem without
desensitizing the tuner or cutting off high frequencies
(like the factory stereos) they came up with the
diversity idea.
The diversity radio had the ability to sample both
antenna inputs and automatically switch to the antenna
that had the best signal..
A few factory car stereos such as some Nissans also
made some diversity tuners, these cars have two antennas
..
At this time I am not aware of any aftermarket car
stereo that uses two antennas.. So the customers
question was, How do I hook in the two antennas to a
radio with only one antenna port?
Now they do make an
adapter for the dual antennas, but my solution
when I was installing and before they made the current
adapters was to simply use ONE of the antennas from the
car. The aftermarket stereo has only one
input so it cannot possibly SAMPLE two antennas and
choose the best one like the original diversity radios
were said to do. So why would you even need two antennas
in a normal stereo? I don't think you do.
Just pick one and give it a try, or pick the other one
and see if you like it better, or buy the adapter
available now and try both at once (not truly diversity,
just two antennas) and see if you think the receptions
is better or worse.