Help w/Philly Police

I'm trying to monitor the Philly PD with my BCD396XT. I live in Gloucester County, NJ, so I'm not too far away. On receiving a signal, I'm getting a nice strong signal on my display. Problem is, the voices sound very digitized and sometimes hard to understand. Also, many of the channels digitally fade in at the beginning of the transmission, making the first part of the discussion hard to follow.

Is there anything I can do to tweak my settings to make this work better?

Hold down the 'HOLD' button as you power the scanner up. Go into the main scanner settings menu & change the 'P25 Adjust Level' from 50 to 150. Unfortunately, this is a scanner-wide change (but makes Philly sound a lot better, I've heard!).

What does that do - from a technical standpoint? Just curious.

Not too sure specifically - it's been floated around here recently on the forums as a way of improving audio on digital systems.

I haven't used the tweak myself, though. The digital stuff I listen to up here in north jersey decodes just fine.

Next time I'm down in south jersey for work I'll give it a try. I probably have to be in Cinnaminson & Deptford for service calls this week...

Have you tried this jjudson? Change the 'P25 Adjust Level' If do did you see a difference?
Im also in your neck of the woods..

I did try it. It seems to help a LITTLE bit - but I could be just wishful thinking. I wonder why the voice traffic sounds as bad as it does from Philly, especially in light of having such a strong signal on the meter.

Hello,
Try changing the frequency programming mode to FM rather than NFM. That helps me down here in Wilmington. Honestly without an outdoor antenna (I use a 13dBi YAGI and am 170' ASL) don't expect much. I still have trouble down here until the leaves on the trees fall.

Dave

Hi guys, I tried the above mentions,changed the programming mode to FM rather than NFM and i also changed the 'P25 Adjust Level' and i auctually did notice a difference in transmissions.thanks for everybody's input..