@Pendragon1991
Need is a very strong word. No you do not NEED an SDS200/100... however you will be a lot happier with one. Just about everything in the Detroit metro is on some kind of simulcast. If you do not get a scanner that has been designed with simulcast in mind, there will be a lot of multipath distortion due to the number of towers the simulcast systems in our area use.
Since multipath distortion is at the heart of this thread... think of it like this.... a simulcast system uses multiple towers broadcasting the exact same thing at the same time on all the towers. Your scanner receives all those signals at a slightly different time (think fractions of milliseconds) due to the different distance between you and the various towers. The scanner gets overloaded, cant decode the digital signal since its a jumbled mess, and a jumbled mess is a good description of what you hear over the scanner with multipath distortion. While some of the scanners are okay at handling that... the SDS was specifically built to address that issue which had been very prominent in the scanner industry for years.
I have owned several scanners over the past 10 years. None of them have handled simulcast well, especially the Detroit simulcast, due to the number of towers in use. More towers = more simulcast distortion. While I don't personally own an SDS I have used them and they work the best so far.
On a side note there are videos on youtube that will show you how to setup just about any scanner out there.
Need is a very strong word. No you do not NEED an SDS200/100... however you will be a lot happier with one. Just about everything in the Detroit metro is on some kind of simulcast. If you do not get a scanner that has been designed with simulcast in mind, there will be a lot of multipath distortion due to the number of towers the simulcast systems in our area use.
Since multipath distortion is at the heart of this thread... think of it like this.... a simulcast system uses multiple towers broadcasting the exact same thing at the same time on all the towers. Your scanner receives all those signals at a slightly different time (think fractions of milliseconds) due to the different distance between you and the various towers. The scanner gets overloaded, cant decode the digital signal since its a jumbled mess, and a jumbled mess is a good description of what you hear over the scanner with multipath distortion. While some of the scanners are okay at handling that... the SDS was specifically built to address that issue which had been very prominent in the scanner industry for years.
I have owned several scanners over the past 10 years. None of them have handled simulcast well, especially the Detroit simulcast, due to the number of towers in use. More towers = more simulcast distortion. While I don't personally own an SDS I have used them and they work the best so far.
On a side note there are videos on youtube that will show you how to setup just about any scanner out there.