RTL-SDR Scanning

[Dav21g]

Recently purchased a RTL-SDR dongle and got it up and running on my PC using SDRSharp. I am picking up good strong analog signals after playing around with the software for a bit, which is great. Some fire departments in my area still use analog. Most police departments in my area however use digital. I’ve researched how to listen to digital transmissions on the SDRSharp software and there are many ways it seems, but I cannot seem to wrap my head around it. Has anyone successfully done this? If so can you tell and/or show how you successfully got the software to decode the non-encrypted digital transmissions?
Any help for the newbie is appreciated
Thank you!

 

[AB9NN]

get DSD+ FastLane and don't use SDR# to tune. This software will tune a LOT of digital radio traffic and does it very well. It also can scan. I run 4 RTLSDRs. One for HF. Three for scanning. One of the three is for P25 on one frequency but there are a lot of services on it. The other two run scan lists of mixed modes. Why two? Because it's twice as fast as one! Good luck with experimenting...

 

[a417]

This is the biggest pitfall many people have when they start to get into digital decoding. They want to see the signals, they don't need to see the signals, and it sets them up for stress and heartache. Programs like DSD+ FL have a tailor made program for feeding them, and too many people are hours in fighting with SDR# and virtual audio cables and nonsense like that - when the best program going for DSD+ FL is sitting in the same folder as the DSD+ executable. It's almost like it was made for it, wait...it was.

Use that program like it was meant to be, and you will quickly realize how many extra steps, CPU overhead and cruft you no longer have to deal with.