WS1040: Breaking Up on P25; How to improve audio clarity?

[samiam003]

I bought the RR.com subscription and used PSRedit to import my county's data. I'm a total newbie to all this, but I think it went really smoothly, and I was pleasantly surprised about that! I'm receiving trunked data (the square icon with the "T") and everything seems fine. It's just that the audio breaks up badly and it's difficult to make out what's being said. Is this something that can be improved? I did mess around with the squelch a bit, but it doesn't seem to help much.

It's my local county PD dispatch, so I'm wondering if maybe that's an encryption issue or something? Or perhaps there's a setting I should fiddle with? I did enable audio boost, but other than that, I left everything pretty much default.

I'm attaching a screenshot of my scanlist listing. I'm not sure if that's helpful or not, but any advice is super appreciated!

 

[samiam003]

I've tried turning off ROAM and turning on narrow band, but no change. I'm not sure what else to play with. Attenuate?

Sometimes I can only hear one side of a conversation on it, and those not very well.

 

[diskmonger]

Can you post a RR database link to the system you are trying to monitor? If it's P25 simulcast that could explain your issues.

 

[samiam003]

You mean this?

Palmetto (P25) Trunking System, Various, South Carolina - Scanner Frequencies

I've chosen only the ones specific to my county (Sumter).

 

[Swipesy]

In the TSYS System Editor in PSREdit do you have the System Type set to P-25 Auto? Also try setting Multi Site Mode to OFF.

 

[samiam003]

Yeah, I did fiddle with those. These are the settings I'm currently at. I read something about maybe trying with Digital AGC off, so I'll try that this afternoon and see if it gets any results.

I feel like I'm not receiving much. Last night I was scanning my local PD, sheriff, EMS, and fire, all at the same time, and there'd only be maybe one instance of chatter every 10 minutes or so. The town is small, but probably not that quiet, lol.

 

[Technoguy58]

Half of the talkgroups you have programmed to listen to are encrypted. Are you sure or do you know if your local agencies are using or not using these encrypted talkgroups? They may only use non-encrypted talkgroups sporadically. This could be why the amount of radio traffic you hear by local agencies is sparse.

 

[Technoguy58]

Well, at least 1 PD, 1 SO, 1 EMS, and 1 Fire talkjgroups show as being encrypted. It is possible others are also and not listed as such. Do you have any idea how close you are to the tower (site)? Maybe the sites in neighboring counties are closer to you and would give you a stronger signal.

 

[Technoguy58]

From looking at the counties listed for the Palmetto P25 system I would have to say that surely there are more than 9 sites for the whole state of S, Carolina. Maybe someone on this forum that lives in S. Carolina can do some checking using Pro96com or Unitrunker and see if this is correct. I'm thinking you just might not be getting a good signal to decode. Depends on your location in relationship to the tower as well as other factors (weather, topography, etc.) to get a strong signal for good decoding.

 

[theTastyCat]

I'm having some very similar issues; getting only a few words here and there, often audio is garbled, feel like I'm missing 95% of what's happening. Brand new user but trying to figure things out! Anything special I need to do since the two major systems I'm wanting to monitor are P25 and NXDN respectively?

Thanks all!

 

[samiam003]

I have no idea about tower location. How do I find where the nearest tower might be located? Sorry if that's a dumb question.

As for this:

"Half of the talkgroups you have programmed to listen to are encrypted. Are you sure or do you know if your local agencies are using or not using these encrypted talkgroups? They may only use non-encrypted talkgroups sporadically. This could be why the amount of radio traffic you hear by local agencies is sparse."

I'm really not sure. I just chose all applicable talkgroups to my county from the RR database. Maybe I could try looking at some of the other ones, though.

 

[KevinC]

Continue discussion here...

http://forums.radioreference.com/so...5204-advice-scanning-palmetto-p25-ws1040.html