All sorts of problems this time... sigh.

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AZScanner

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OK, someone help me out here - I feel like I'm cursed when it comes to SDR stuff.

I recently inherited (my son got a new gaming rig and gave me his old PC) a quad core AMD machine. I'm thinking this will work GREAT for SDR#, Unitrunker and DSD, so I spent several hours last night ATTEMPTING to set all this up.

First problem was with Unitrunker talking to SDR#. I don't know what the hell the problem is, but the new remote.dll NEVER works for me. Ever! I always end up cobbling something together with the old version and the new plugin. This time around was no different. I finally got Unitrunker and SDR# talking to each other after a couple hours of uninstalling and reinstalling and saying words I won't repeat here.

On the new version of SDR#, the dongle tunes to the correct frequency and then tunes back to the control channel. The problem is, it tunes back to the control channel too quickly. I get maybe one or two syllables of voice and then it hops back over to the control channel. The "Delay Retune" feature works great for locking the dongle onto whatever frequency it's on at the time. And when I say locking on, I mean LOCKING ON - it won't move from there until I uncheck the option.

With the old version (the original trunking one) I can't get the damn dongle to tune to the correct frequency. I have the same ppm offset specified and the same mode/sample rate and everything but it's several MHZ off and I have no idea why. Bizarro world. It also won't change channels for some reason.
Bottom line is I can't use the old SDR# at all.

Then I encountered the latest issue which really baffles me... I changed SDR# to use the speakers for output instead of VBCable so I could hear the control channel (this helps with filter settings - you just know when it sounds right) and now when I tune to a frequency, even with no squelch - I thought that might have been the problem but it wasn't, I get about a half second of audio and then silence. What. The. Hockeypuck.

Guys, I'm about ready to see how well these dongles can fly and how well they can penetrate drywall. Help me out here. I've already consigned myself to the fact that I will need to write my own trunking plugin again. I've already done it before so I can have another one running in a few hours. But if I can't get SDR# to even pass audio to VBCable then the whole thing is moot. Just curious if anyone else here has encountered the same issues.

Thanks,
-AZ
 

tylerwatt12

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There's a couple things you can try tweaking.
Lower the latency in SDR# as much as possible, just make sure the audio coming out isn't popping or cutting out. That could help with the cut off conversations.
Try setting your mode to WFM, bandwidth 12500hz, AF Gain Max, turn filtering off, Make sure you don't have digital noise reduction on.
Use dsd.exe -l to disable audio processing, that will help decode considerably
There is a new preview version of unitrunker out, it's a little buggy for some people, but It supports the direct use of RTL-SDRs as a discriminator, so you don't need SDR# for the control channel. The download link is in the preview folder for unitrunker.com's download section.

Also try using some steps from this guide I wrote. http://tylerwatt12.com/trunking-20-police-scanner/
 
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