Remember that offset can only use the normal volume steps, so your volume 13 plus 3 will be 15 as that are the max volume you can set on a 436, a 13% difference. When you use lower volume settings a volume 6 will be increased 3 step, a 50% difference. When you try and reduce the volume and set it to 1 it will be increased to volume 4, a 400% difference.
What Uniden should do are to make the volume offset more logical and use a percentage so that it uses less steps at lower volume settings and larger steps at higher volume settings.
Portable scanners doesn't have any powerful speakers or amplifiers so you could use something like a bluetooth speaker to get a more dynamic audio that doesn't overloads at higher levels. Or if used in a car there are often an aux input to the cars audio system with a standard 3,5mm plug, the same as on the scanner, but then you cannot listen to any background music at the same time. In Europe we have RDS in car radios that interrupts and override any ongoing audio to play important local traffic information updates. Don't know if US has some similar functions or you will miss out on that info. Sometimes a more effective passive external speaker are all it takes. I tried a 2 ohm Motorola speaker and it sounds good, but the overall volume seems to be low on 436 as it doesn't overload at max volume and are lots of headroom left as if volume 20 could be the max setting.
Uniden could raise the gain to the speaker amplifier to at least twice the level to get the volume settings more useable.
/Ubbe
