The FM signal is line of sight type transmission. Hills between the transmitter and your antenna will effect the signal. Reflecting surfaces can cause multipath distortion (getting the signal from two different directions, for example one direct and one bouncing off a nearby surface such as a large building nearby etc. I'm glad you are planning on an outside antenna - best kind to use is a directional antenna with a rotor so you can point it at the transmitter for whichever station you want to listen to. I would imagine that in western Mass your going to have quite a few problems with FM because of all of the hills (especially if you live in a valley. Your car antenna probably works better as its outdoors and is omni directional and constantly moving - would work well for local stations in any direction. Your situation is not unusual at all.
You can usually tell you have a tube problem as the tone will get dullish, or one channel will get noisy before the other (its possible they could both get noisy at the same time). It might sound like static, more likely snap, crackle & pop.
You can usually tell you have a tube problem as the tone will get dullish, or one channel will get noisy before the other (its possible they could both get noisy at the same time). It might sound like static, more likely snap, crackle & pop.