prcguy
Member
Yes it can. Discriminator taps in scanners have been used since the 1960s or so to feed tone decoders and various other audio band devices. You would gently couple to that with a low value capacitor to get the frequency response you need without loading down the circuit.
Then at some point digital modes come along and people try and connect new digital decoder stuff using old methods and in some cases it just won't work reliably unless you actively buffer and isolate the discriminator without loosing its frequency response down to DC to preserve digital 1's and 0s and the perfect square waves that go with them, which were created by FSK type modulation.
Then at some point digital modes come along and people try and connect new digital decoder stuff using old methods and in some cases it just won't work reliably unless you actively buffer and isolate the discriminator without loosing its frequency response down to DC to preserve digital 1's and 0s and the perfect square waves that go with them, which were created by FSK type modulation.
That's not what's being done here though. The scanner discriminator tap isn't expecting anything to be connected to it, so ignoring DC bias or overloading the circuit can cause the scanner to quit working when you connect to the discriminator.