Digital voice standards

[Boatanchor]

i'm not buying any digital radio until they release something with multi standard DV.

I refuse to be locked into one vendors DV standard and I believe there are a lot of others of the same opinion.
All those people that race out to buy Dstar or System Fusion radios, only to sell them at a huge loss 12 months later
because the novelty has worn off or the people they expected to talk to, just aren't there, is laughable.

The manufacturers are their own worst enemy here.

 

[Jimru]

i'm not buying any digital radio until they release something with multi standard DV.

I refuse to be locked into one vendors DV standard and I believe there are a lot of others of the same opinion.
All those people that race out to buy Dstar or System Fusion radios, only to sell them at a huge loss 12 months later
because the novelty has worn off or the people they expected to talk to, just aren't there, is laughable.

The manufacturers are their own worst enemy here.

I'm in agreement with everything you said! With the ARRL pushing Public Service so hard, it would seem that they would lobby for a digital voice standard that all the manufacturers would sell; otherwise, interoperability is only available with analog.

Or, your idea of the manufacturers creating multi-format digital radios, so if I have an Icom digital and you have a Yaesu digital, a menu selection can enable them to communicate.

I think the single standard would ultimately be the best solution.

 

[R8000]

I do agree on holding off as well. I don't mind digital, but in the ham world the big 4 need to sit down in a room and find one standard and agree on it I am really shocked the ARRL hasn't done this already. Then again, maybe they tried ? I don't know.

I won't be buying and ham grade digital stuff until this happens....probably never

 

[MTS2000des]

I don't mind digital, but in the ham world the big 4 need to sit down in a room and find one standard and agree on it I am really shocked the ARRL hasn't done this already. Then again, maybe they tried ? I don't know.

That will never happen.

Ham radio is all about experimentation, and the two players in the digital ham world (Icom and Yaesu) have different backers. The JARL was a big part of D-Star development, and Icom got in where they fit in.

Yaesu, the Radio, developed Fusion on their own. Why they did this and not go with something from the LMR world like NXDN or DMR is anyone's guess. At one time when Yaesu, The Radio, was a part of Vertex-Standard/Motorola Solutions, one would think that DMR would be a logical step.

But they split off, and that didn't happen. I don't think any one digital standard will ever prevail. In the meantime, would be nice to see a mutli-format subscriber radio. That is certainly doable.

Now maybe when this mysterious vaporware that is the CS-7000 ever gets put on the market that would be the one to get. But I'm not holding my breath.

 

[AK9R]

I've moved the general digital voice standards comments to a separate thread. Let's keep the other thread focused on the new Yaesu mobile. (BTW, the relative merits of various digital voice standards is a recurring theme that gets hashed out in this forum periodically.)

The ARRL won't promote one digital voice mode over the others because it could hurt QST advertising revenue. That may be the conspiracy theorist in me talking, but I think the ARRL will try to remain neutral on the subject now that two of the major amateur radio manufacturers have "competing" standards.

The advantage that Yaesu System Fusion has over the other digital voice modes is that as long as the repeaters are set up for Automatic Mode Select, analog users are not locked out. You put up a D-Star, DMR, NXDN, or P25 repeater and, generally, analog users are forced to buy a new radio if they want to use the repeater. That's not the case with a YSF repeater using AMS. Nonetheless, Yaesu's approach does have its flaws and some of the other modes have features that Yaesu is probably years away from implementing.

 

[Project25_MASTR]

I never got into D*Star. Locally we have a D*Star system (2m/70cm and a borrowed 1.2GHz repeater) is either up but has no internet access or is just down. Since it was purchased in 2007, I believe it's been on the air for less than a year because everyone who works on it stops once they think it's up and running instead of following through.

I suggested they sell the (owned) D*Star equipment and take advantage of Yaesu's buying incentives to upgrade the half working 2m repeater and the poorly working 70 cm repeater to two of the new Yaesu repeaters.

Personally, I think the auto mode may just be System Fusion's downfall. They created incentive to buy the repeaters, but how do they create the incentive to use digital? Especially with majority of the repeaters being run in auto modes or auto in with an analog out?

I'm not holding my breath on the CS7000. I've known about it for 2.5 years now…still nothing.

I sell DMR Tier III offerings from Simoco…own TRBO equipment. So far I've paid less to get into DMR with like new equipment than I would to buy used DStar or new Fusion gear.

 

[jeatock]

VHS vs Beta all over again. The ultimate winner: The Internet. Why? Licensing of copyrighted proprietary manufacturing rights vs free.

The digital vs digital radio issue is like the browser you are using to read this. My PC is still happily running XP, and since Microsoft has declared XP obsolete the latest IE versions won't run on it, forcing me (in theory) to pay Microsoft to upgrade to W7, W8 or W10. Some web code won't run on this older IE version. My solution: freeware Mozilla.

Which is more responsive to user's needs: IE or Mozilla? Who owns IE's code? Microsoft. Who owns Mozilla's code? No one/everyone. Who owns D-Star? "They' do. Who owns DMR? Someone else, and they don't play well together.

Analog has gone about as far as it will go; there's not much more than can be improved. (And it works, universally and well.) It's unstable in very stable well documented ways. Sort of like asking your doctor why it hurts when you scratch your left ear with your right arm by reaching behind one leg. His reply should be to use your left hand.

Two things have to happen before there will be a universal digital standard.

First the standard needs to be freely available to everyone in the same identical single format, without proprietary 'enhancements'. Not going to happen since A) a group has to have both reason and authority to develop it, and B) once the arrangement of 1's and 0's is fixed, nobody can twiddle with it. (I've never met a code author who can resist changing code 'just a little to make it better'.)

And if the above does manage to become a reality every manufacturer will need to offer that universal format. That won't happen because it directly impacts the stockholder's dividends. Proprietary formats are the bread and butter of the radio manufacturers.

 

[Voyager]

VHS/Beta was two standards. There are at least a dozen digital voice standards out there.

That said, one portable is planned to support a few at least: The CSI CS-7000. It's still in development, and has been delayed a few times, but might be out this year.

 

[n2nov]

I'm in agreement with everything you said! With the ARRL pushing Public Service so hard, it would seem that they would lobby for a digital voice standard that all the manufacturers would sell; otherwise, interoperability is only available with analog.

Public service? That's why I always advocate analog as the most inter-operative method for everyone to be able to communicate with each other, ham or first responder.

 

[N8OHU]

First the standard needs to be freely available to everyone in the same identical single format, without proprietary 'enhancements'. Not going to happen since A) a group has to have both reason and authority to develop it, and B) once the arrangement of 1's and 0's is fixed, nobody can twiddle with it. (I've never met a code author who can resist changing code 'just a little to make it better'.)

Currently the case for ALL digital voice modes; the fact is that Yaesu easily could have developed a D-STAR radio had they wanted to, just like they could have developed a DMR one. And unlike DMR, where the selling points of the individual systems are the differences in manufacturer implementations, any changes that are made to a given protocol by a vendor go into the next revision of the protocol. For exapmple, the new ID-5100 and ID-51A radios support a faster digital data mode that modifies the regular DV stream to carry the additional data, and the method used is in the most recent version of the JARL D-STAR specification.

And if the above does manage to become a reality every manufacturer will need to offer that universal format. That won't happen because it directly impacts the stockholder's dividends. Proprietary formats are the bread and butter of the radio manufacturers.

No, it's the vendor specific enhancements to the core protocol that are often permitted by the creator of the standard that are the bread and butter of the radio manufacturers. This is why features that exist on one brand of DMR radio may not be compatible with a feature with the same name on another brand. It's also why some manufacturers will tell you that you can't mix repeater brands on a network, even though the two of them use the same core networking protocol.

 

[krokus]

This topic ties in to my annoyance with D-Star: it is not truly open source. The protocol is, but requires a single source chip, which negates the open source aspect.

Until the suppliers get their act together, or the more likely case of the community establishes a standard, we will continue to have competing methods.

Sent via Tapatalk

 

[Boatanchor]

Funny thing is that there really is no compelling reason to even go DV on the V/UHF ham bands - aside from the 'its been made available to us, it's new and so we should buy it'.

There is no 'Narroband mandate' forcing everyone to use 12.5Khz channel steps, 2.5Khz deviation and reduced frequency response.

Standard FM provides excellent S/n ratio under most conditions, good weak signal performance, and unparalleled audio quality. IMHO, even analogue NFM sounds better than DV under most conditions.

Digital audio sounds like crap to me. Depending on the tonal qualities of ones voice, the vocoder can make you sound like you are speaking with a mouth full of marbles and if there is any background noise, everything goes even more pear shaped.

And personally, I prefer to hear a little background hiss on the signal. That hiss is a valuable feedback mechanism letting me know that I am entering a poor signal area and that I should factor that into any tasking risk assesment.

There is very little warning of that approaching DV cliff, but once you go over it...

 

[N8OHU]

I've moved the general digital voice standards comments to a separate thread. Let's keep the other thread focused on the new Yaesu mobile. (BTW, the relative merits of various digital voice standards is a recurring theme that gets hashed out in this forum periodically.)

The ARRL won't promote one digital voice mode over the others because it could hurt QST advertising revenue. That may be the conspiracy theorist in me talking, but I think the ARRL will try to remain neutral on the subject now that two of the major amateur radio manufacturers have "competing" standards.

The advantage that Yaesu System Fusion has over the other digital voice modes is that as long as the repeaters are set up for Automatic Mode Select, analog users are not locked out. You put up a D-Star, DMR, NXDN, or P25 repeater and, generally, analog users are forced to buy a new radio if they want to use the repeater. That's not the case with a YSF repeater using AMS. Nonetheless, Yaesu's approach does have its flaws and some of the other modes have features that Yaesu is probably years away from implementing.

I think where Yaesu got it right was implementation of analog and digital along with networking on the same repeater, even though it currently doesn't work for the digital side; the other systems that support analog and digital on the same repeater either don't allow networking when in mixed mode, or only digital gets network access. Where they screwed up is by tying that networking to their servers after the success that Icom had with independently managed servers. But hams can fix that because the software exists to do so; if you want more information, pm me here.

 

[box23]

...
The advantage that Yaesu System Fusion has over the other digital voice modes is that as long as the repeaters are set up for Automatic Mode Select, analog users are not locked out. You put up a D-Star, DMR, NXDN, or P25 repeater and, generally, analog users are forced to buy a new radio if they want to use the repeater. That's not the case with a YSF repeater using AMS. Nonetheless, Yaesu's approach does have its flaws and some of the other modes have features that Yaesu is probably years away from implementing.

I've seen this mentioned before and would like to clarify that every commercial P25 repeater I know of can be setup to function in mixed mode operation. Although this is new for amateur grade equipment, it is not new technology.

Being that Fusion is so similar to P25 it still doesn't make sense why they didn't go P25 in the first place. Don't take this as P25 being perfect as it obviously is not, but what does Fusion actually bring to the table that is better than P25?

 

[N8OHU]

I've seen this mentioned before and would like to clarify that every commercial P25 repeater I know of can be setup to function in mixed mode operation. Although this is new for amateur grade equipment, it is not new technology.

Being that Fusion is so similar to P25 it still doesn't make sense why they didn't go P25 in the first place. Don't take this as P25 being perfect as it obviously is not, but what does Fusion actually bring to the table that is better than P25?

Because System Fusion is actually more closely related to dPMR than to P25; they actually have a digital radio for non-hams that does many of the same things Fusion does, except for the repeater side of things.

 

[Project25_MASTR]

So it's fairly well agreed that the (networkable) auto mode is the one the unique features of Fusion. However, in order to not lock the analog only users out many clubs may not be running auto input auto output (which mean if its digital in it'll be digital out, analog in then analog out) but instead auto input analog output.

After conversing with several club officers from different parts of the US who's clubs have purchased the new Yaesu repeater. 80% intend to run the repeater exactly as I mentioned (auto in/analog out).

We know Yaesu is taking a bit of a hit on these repeaters at their current pricing. I would be assuming they are planning on making it up in sales of digital mobile and portable radios. So if the owners are catering specifically to the analog operators who have no interest in upgrading to digital, where is the incentive to purchase the mobile and portable equipment?

The intended economics are great. Sell infrastructure low, create need for regularly priced UI's. Simoco is currently doing this with Tier III DMR systems (3 site, 6 repeater system with training for $16,500). Their mobiles and portables are currently a little higher in price than the comparable second gen TRBO radios. Yaesu is intending the same strategy…but will it pay out when the owners have the ability to cater to the local users?

 

[N4KVE]

After conversing with several club officers from different parts of the US who's clubs have purchased the new Yaesu repeater. 80% intend to run the repeater exactly as I mentioned (auto in/analog out).

We know Yaesu is taking a bit of a hit on these repeaters at their current pricing. I would be assuming they are planning on making it up in sales of digital mobile and portable radios. So if the owners are catering specifically to the analog operators who have no interest in upgrading to digital, where is the incentive to purchase the mobile and portable equipment?

There is none. This is what's happening locally in south Florida. Many clubs are retiring their 70-80's era repeaters, & replacing them with the new Fusion units for $500. While a few of the more adventurous users are buying Fusion HT's to use on the repeaters, most aren't. Matter of fact, many of the repeater board members who voted to spend club money on the new repeaters, spent their own money to buy Quantun QP-2100's for half the cost of a Fusion HT to use on somebody else's DMR repeater. So this way, the club gets a new repeater at a bargain basement price, & the board members spend $200 for HT's that can talk everywhere. How ironic.

 

[N8OHU]

Hams in general are not convinced that digital provides any benefits, even when the manufacturers talk about them in the literature. This is one reason that many hams aren't interested in buying radios with digital capabilities; cost and a lack of a single standard supported by all manufacturers are others.

 

[beischel]

That will never happen.

Ham radio is all about experimentation, and the two players in the digital ham world (Icom and Yaesu) have different backers. The JARL was a big part of D-Star development, and Icom got in where they fit in.

Yaesu, the Radio, developed Fusion on their own. Why they did this and not go with something from the LMR world like NXDN or DMR is anyone's guess. At one time when Yaesu, The Radio, was a part of Vertex-Standard/Motorola Solutions, one would think that DMR would be a logical step.

But they split off, and that didn't happen. I don't think any one digital standard will ever prevail. In the meantime, would be nice to see a mutli-format subscriber radio. That is certainly doable.

Now maybe when this mysterious vaporware that is the CS-7000 ever gets put on the market that would be the one to get. But I'm not holding my breath.

The biggest reason that Yaesu did not go with any of the commercial standards is that they are not designed for ham radio. Sure they can be used, the best formats are those designed for a specific market. DMR with radio numbers is clearly a commercial standard. We hams work with calls, not radio serial numbers which are of course more suited for commercial.

There is also no need for amateur radios to interoperate with public service standards like P25. Ask any major police or fire department, they don't want hams on their system. So they don't want us to interoperate with them so no need to have similar or same equipment.

As someone else mentioned, ALL amateur radio manufacturers should have gotten behind a single standard. But the reality is, some don't want it. Because it creates competition and competition means lower prices. They would rather have brand bigots push the higher priced radios on the masses and let the most popular manufacturer win so to speak.

 

[beischel]

This topic ties in to my annoyance with D-Star: it is not truly open source. The protocol is, but requires a single source chip, which negates the open source aspect.

Until the suppliers get their act together, or the more likely case of the community establishes a standard, we will continue to have competing methods.

Sent via Tapatalk

Wow, here we go with the DStar is not open stuff again. Of ALL the digital protocols, DStar is the most open. You are correct, the Codec is proprietary and single source. The DStar Codec comes from the same place as the P25, DMR, Fusion, etc. Codecs. They are ALL proprietary except for the FreeDV codec that no major manufacturer has yet to use.

Some may say that DMR is open. Well Jerry at Connect Systems made this clear that it is not as open as some may state that there are a number of patents that Motorola holds for technology used in DMR. That's an issue. There are no patent issues that I know of with DStar other than the name being trademarked.

I have not seen anything come out on Fusion so I assume that system is proprietary.

If you want a system that is truly open, you will all have to get the big three to adopt FreeDV, but so far in my experimentation, while the audio is clear, it does not have the quality of DStar, Fusion, DMR or P25 probably because it was designed to work in a very narrow bandwidth.

So in summary, if you want a single standard, or completely open standard with great audio quality, for now I think we are all screwed. Isn't going to happen. So either stick with FM or pick your poison on the digital front.

BTW, I am very happy with DStar and will continue with it. With 3,100+ repeaters now and 40,000+ users worldwide, there are a lot of people to talk to.