Edit/Addendum: It’s amazing how sensitive the tuner is on this thing, it picks up like every station anywhere even close to our area, with great quality no less. I mean sure it’s mono, but still great quality for something made in the early 1980s.
And yes, I listened to the whole song, because why not? 😂
A mono FM receiver – with zero support for stereo whatsoever – should indeed exhibit greater sensitivity and selectivity when tuning stations, because they need only electronically filter for a ~15 kHz mono signal within the assigned 200 kHz band for each distinct station.
A wider filter suitable for stereo reception could have similar behavior, but it would require better/pricier components or a greatly modified design for the radio. In most cases, sensitivity is sacrificed to keep the price point of a stereo receiver, since people care more about properly selecting nearby radio stations rather than faraway stations. Even when a stereo receiver were – somehow – receiving a mono broadcast, the penalty is already paid because of the receiver’s design.
Source: Wikipedia
Interesting. I was already aware that mono FM lends itself to better reception, but I never fully studied exactly why or how.
Sad that the Wiki image you posted is practically invisible on dark mode theme, black on black…
The image is a PNG with a transparent background. If you view it on the Wikipedia page it should be easier to view. I had the same issue in Voyager. It just opened to a black screen lol.