Stereo Feed vs. Second Feed

I currently run 1 mono feed. Was thinking on splitting it up to have police and fire on one side and EMS on the other. However, I do have a USB sound card so it would be no problem to start a second feed.

When you listen to a feed, do you prefer a stereo feed or listening to 2 separate feeds?

As a feed provider, which do you prefer providing? A stereo feed or multiple feeds.

I have tried setting up a stereo feed once before but it did not work. So I am thinking a second feed may be best. Looking for some feedback on this.

Thanks

What didn't work about it? If I had to take a guess, you have a hum on the two signals. Different power supplies @ different ground potential can cause issues like that.

If you tried it again, I would use an audio grade transformer in between each audio feed to the input of your sound card. Also, I would throw in my input and say that I could like mixing in L/R 2 feeds on the same broadcasted feed - EMS left and PD right, or something like that. This would separate the traffic nicely so the listener knows what they're hearing correctly. Surely you would need 2 separate radios feeding it though.

Wire a 3.5mm TRS plug with feed from scanner one on Tip/Sleeve. Wire scanner two on ring/sleeve. This would be a good breakout. Perhaps I could build a box for such an endeavor and take some pictures.

Good luck to you!

Mine's stereo: Wauconda Police and Quad 3 Fire

I set it up primarily so I could listen to my town while at work 25 miles away; the stream doesn't make it through the firewall, so I use my iPhone app. Can't run two streams at the same time on an iPhone, so one stereo feed works great. Even better at home when I listen to the mono county sheriff feed too... my town PD on the left, sheriff in the middle, Fire District on the right.

I just took a standard 1/8" stereo plug to RCA cable, cut off the RCA plugs and put on 1/8" mono plugs.

< When you listen to a feed, do you prefer a stereo feed or listening to 2 separate feeds?

For me when listening, I prefer stereo feed with one on left and one on right. However, there are times that a mono feed is better depending on what I am listening to.

< As a feed provider, which do you prefer providing? A stereo feed or multiple feeds.

I think I would like to feed stereo feeds. By doing it this way, you can separate the feeds for ie: FD on left and PD on right.

Instead of having both feeds going into mono feeding both. It's possible when in mono, when feed FD and PD at the same time, to miss some of the dispatch. By stereo, you should be able to have full or most of each dispatch in one ear or the other.

My issues is I don't have enough radios in order to do that. For what I would like to do I need 4 radios at minimum

I'm not sure I understand how you get 4 radios needed to accomplish 2 feeds? Please enlighten us.

KC8ESL said:

I'm not sure I understand how you get 4 radios needed to accomplish 2 feeds? Please enlighten us.

Click to expand...

2 stereo feeds...

My preference is for mono feeds. This is much easier for those with hearing problems (especially when only one ear works correctly). A stereo feed (PD on left, FD on right) for us sounds like this.

Car 51, 53, major accident at <FD tones drown out address> Blue Engine Chevy 32 Cobalt Medic 27 vs Honda Ridgeline major accident injuries ...

K9DAK said:

Mine's stereo: Wauconda Police and Quad 3 Fire

I set it up primarily so I could listen to my town while at work 25 miles away; the stream doesn't make it through the firewall, so I use my iPhone app. Can't run two streams at the same time on an iPhone, so one stereo feed works great.

Click to expand...

Actually, you can. On my iPhone I regularly have 5-0 Scanner Pro, Action ScannerPro, and Scanner Radio Deluxe all running at the same time on my iPhone 4 running iOS 7.1.2 and regularly use 5-0 Radio Pro and Scanner Radio Deluxe on my iPad running iOS 8.1.1
Unfortunately since I upgraded to iOS 8XX on the iPad it no longer plays Action Scanner Pro but the free version of Action Scanner still (mostly) works.

Hi all, I prefer mono feeds, I ran a stereo feed for a short time and noticed that listeners dropped off. I'm now back on two mono feeds. I ran the srereo feeds a couple of years ago. It's just painful to listen to and i avoid them where possible.
cheers

I ran a stereo feed for a short time. I liked it. I had a balance control slider on the app to cut back on what I didn't wont to hear. I only run this feed for my neighbor. she loves it.....but she has an apple. the apple versions of scanner radio do not have a balance slider....Stereo feeds are no good without sliders

I run my feed stereo, but only because the second feed has very sporadic traffic. It puts the main feed on the left, which has the city police/fire, and county sheriff/EMS on the left (also has alpha tags), and rural fire (which most days has no traffic other than the am/pm pager tests) on the right. It just seemed like a waste to devote an entire feed to something that insignificant.. But another reason is when things DO happen, there is related traffic on both channels - but there is no mobile app that lets you stream two feeds simultaneously.

I use a stereo feed for my FIRE/EMS feed. Dispatch on Left and Ops on Right. But I keep my other county's Fire/EMS and Police feeds separate. I haven't had any issues with listeners dropping off with this setup.

I hate stereo feeds. They're cumbersome in the fact you have to find a balance control on something to filter out the mix-mosh of audio. I'll take the mono feeds any day of the week.

I use a stereo stream on my feed. However, it's for 2 ham radio repeaters which isn't as chaotic as PD/FD/EMS traffic so it works well.