RTL-2832 Help

[Scannerfan15]

Hello
I have a RTL-2832 SDR and am having poor performance and have a few questions.
Is this a good Pre-Amp for it?
New 36 DB Cable TV Antenna Booster Signal Amplifier 36nu llHD TVA mp USFr eeSH | eBay
What kind of filters do i need for good UHF and VHF reception? Do I need a filter for VHF Broadcast band or the AM band or 900 MHz paging?
Do I need to get the radio away from the computer with a active USB cable and do I need Ferrites?
I shielded the radio with foil tape and grounded the tape to the USB Male connector, is this ok? do I need to do better?
Thanks

[majoco]

You shouldn't need a pre-amp at all.

You don't need to get the radio away from the computer, mine is plugged into one of the USB ports on my laptop. It even worked pretty well with the supplied whip but now works very well with an outside unused multiband TV antenna.

You cannot receive the AM broadcast band or anything below 25Mhz according to the spec. I haven't tried.

Quite a few reports of them being dead on arrival. NooElec are honouring the warranty - I doubt if an Asian import will do the same.

How have you set the AGC and gains in the 'configuration' box - assuming you are using SDR# - I have both RTL and Tuner AGC set to off and the manual gain set to 32.8dB. Seems to give a good balance between noise and signal.

[rbm]

Originally Posted by Scannerfan15

Hello
I have a RTL-2832 SDR and am having poor performance and have a few questions.
Is this a good Pre-Amp for it?

You didn't mention what antenna you're using.
My SDR dongles were relatively deaf with the tiny antennas they came with.

For VHF/UHF and above, a preamp 'may' help, but there are a lot of caveats with that.
Just a little too much gain can overload the input to the point where you'll hear almost nothing at all, or a lot of self inflicted garbage.

I wouldn't use a preamp with the small indoor antenna.

With an outdoor antenna you probably will need an FM trap and a variable attenuator like those sold at Radio Shack if you want to try a preamp.

Since you can see what's happening in the spectrum analyzer part of the display, you adjust the attenuator for stable operation.

I find amplifiers useful under the right conditions (I have around 30 of them).
However, they can also be your worst enemy if not used wisely.

36dB is a LOT of gain and will almost certainly cause problems.
And there is no noise figure specified, so I don't think it's something they're very proud of.

Since the one you referenced has a gain control, it may or may not work for you on an outside antenna.
It depends on how low the gain can be adjusted.
For the $17 price, it's a cheap enough experiment.

Typically a good starting point is about 10dB more than the loss in your coax at your preferred frequency.

Rich

By the way, this is what they're capable of with an outside antenna, preamp, fm trap, and variable attenuator.
In this case I had the AGC turned OFF and the rf gain turned way down.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p5IURvNhP0

Here is the approximate range for the various tuner chips; (in order of preference by some users)
• E4000 - Tuner. 60MHz to 1700MHz (with a gap somewhere around 1100 MHz (varies between units, run 'rtl_test -t' to find what it is)
• R820T - Tuner 24MHz to 1850MHz
• FC0013 - Tuner 50MHz to 1700MHz
• FC0012 - Tuner 50MHz to 1000MHz