So I bought and installed a snazzy new stereo head unit (Pioneer with GPS=2 DIN) and it works great.

But why do I have 2 antenna plugs? Spoke to a radio guy who suggested I should just use a 'TV style' co-ax splitter and 2 plugs, join them all together.

But my question is why does it have 2 antenna plugs, and is it ok to join them into one and plug them both into the new head unit?

 

Thanks.

So I bought and installed a snazzy new stereo head unit (Pioneer with GPS=2 DIN) and it works great.

But why do I have 2 antenna plugs? Spoke to a radio guy who suggested I should just use a 'TV style' co-ax splitter and 2 plugs, join them all together.

But my question is why does it have 2 antenna plugs, and is it ok to join them into one and plug them both into the new head unit?

 

Thanks.

 

 

never heard of this before, i assume you mean there are 2 antenna connections under/inside the dash. there is a possibility that one is for a cell phone mounting unit, or one for a front antenna and one for a rear antenna or ......

 

try one, if it works you're good, if not try the other.

Thanks for your response.

I don't have the car with me so no photos.

The Suby radio has an unusual antenna plug, with 2 small pins on the lead, and earth on the outside similar to a co-ax idea but with 2 small pins and it is bigger altogether.

There is a short lead from the radio down to the side of the left of the trans tunnel hidden by the console where the 2 antenna leads come up, one is male so I used a short extension and plugged it in (it works) but the other cord is female instead.

I think you may be correct a front and rear antenna, so I thought I would make a 'splitter' with 2 male leads and one female, see what happens.

I need to remove the passenger seat and CD stacker so I'll check out the leads further down next week.

This is referred to as a diversity antenna system. It works really well at boosting reception under poor signal strength conditions. Either should work.

Thanks Scoobywagon,

So 1 does work, but I do visit a poor reception area so will try and join them together, do you think this will work Ok?

Joining them together won't work. It may even be detrimental to your reception. There's some fairly esoteric math that goes into making that sort of thing work.

 

It also occurs that you may have a weatherband radio with a separate antenna for the weather. I would try each antenna, in turn, in the area where you expect the worst reception. Pick the one that gets the better reception and go with that one.

If Subaru does it anything like some other car makers, one antenna is the rear defroster grid, and the other may be a regular rod antenna.

 

A diversity reception tuner decides "on the fly" which of the two antennas is providing a better signal and chooses whichever is optimum. I agree that just connecting them together will not be beneficial...in fact, it's asking for multipath interference. (basically, the same radio signal will reach each antenna at slightly different times depending on the angle and distance of each antenna to the transmitter.)

 

Nathan