Dual Feeds / Stereo

[n1ti]

I looked through the stickies and could not see anyone else with the same problem...so here goes.

I am trying to configure two feeds on the same sound card. All of the hardware seems correct however I can not seem to separate my feeds. In each of my feeds, I am running scannercast configured to the main sound card and have enabled stereo. I hear one scanner in the left channel and one in the right channel. However when I start broadcasting, I can not isolate the feeds. I'm definitely getting dedicated audio from each scanner in each channel.

Any tips anyone?

Thanks,

Tim, N1TI

 

[GTR8000]

Let's clarify here: You are running two stereo feeds? Four total scanners? And the trouble is what, that L and R channels are mixing within each individual stereo feed, or that both stereo feeds are somehow mixing? Is this a L + R mixing issue per feed, or a Feed 1 + Feed 2 mixing issue?

EDIT: See my next post, I figured out what you're trying to do

 

[GTR8000]

Ah ok, after re-reading your post, I think I see what you are trying to accomplish. You're trying to run two mono feeds on two instances of ScannerCast by splitting the L and R audio from a single sound card, correct? That's not going to happen, there's no way to isolate them in ScannerCast that way. You'll have to either run a single stereo feed with one scanner on the L channel and the other scanner on the R channel...or you'll have to install a second soundcard to run the second feed.

 

[johnmac]

I'm not sure he is doing 4 feeds. I only see mention of two.

I run stereo feeds with no problem. It would be up to the listener to listen to both or adjust the balance right or left depending what they were interested. If you adjust the balance slightly, one will be louder than the other.

Works fine for me.

 

[gmclam]

I am running two mono feeds. I am using two $1 USB sound cards to do this. It is much more sane than dealing with stereo inputs/etc. I recommend this over a stereo feed, especially if you are also supplying text tags.

 

[n1ti]

Problem solved (sort of)

Thanks a lot guys. I was trying to run a single sound card to support two mono feeds. I added a separate sound card and problem is solved. I'm using onboard sound plus an external USB sound card. The only thing now is I have a very low cross talk from each feed to the other, hardly noticeable but I'm going to recheck all my homebrew cabling tomorrow. Thanks again for everyone's help and confirmation.

Tim

 

[GTR8000]

Glad to help, Tim. I've seen the very low level crosstalk between feeds like that myself, and after extensive testing and eliminating cabling issues, I'm convinced it's a Windows 'thing' and can't really be easily solved. Luckily it's hardly noticeable.

 

[gmclam]

I think it is a grounding issue

Glad to help, Tim. I've seen the very low level crosstalk between feeds like that myself, and after extensive testing and eliminating cabling issues, I'm convinced it's a Windows 'thing' and can't really be easily solved. Luckily it's hardly noticeable.

I am running more scanners than I can count into computers with ZERO crosstalk. The problem may come from ungrounded signals. I am using EXT SP jacks, not headphone jacks; I have all signals feeding through isolation transformers; and I am using only USB sound cards when I can.

The biggest problems I ran into when setting things up was when I tried to use the headphone outputs from scanners to feed the audio. The jacks inside the scanners are wired so that a user can plug in a mono or stereo headphone and have both sides function. To do this the ground (sleeve) of the jack connects to ground through a resistor inside the scanner. When I connected a ground (from the ext power or antenna ground) to the audio the problems went away. Fortunately all scanners I have connected now have EXT SP jacks, and one side of that is a true ground.