ofd,
You may be the Guinea Pig here.
There is a lot of speculation the AGC does not work on these platforms, have not confirmed this.
But there also a lot of different AGC settings and I think Uniden needs to put together an White Paper/Application Guide that explains what each setting and how it works as well as explain what the "default" or non AGC settings are.
Not sure anyone has an idea how to set the AGC and what the "baseline" settings are.
Giving you have a pretty obvious sound level difference between the trunked systems, you may actually tell if the AGC settings do anything.
Yes you could use the Volume Offset, I use this for a State Police patch that is very loud on my County system, this allows me to "balance" the audio levels out. I also bump the volume of a few critical channels that would be considered "Important" because this allows me to tell without looking at the display if the channel is a "Important" channel for me. Also if I have the volume lower or the wife or kids turn down the scanner a bit, my "Important" channel can hopefully still hear my "Important" channel(s).
Overall I really like and think the Volume Offset is a great option, I use it quite a bit for different reasons, but I think we all need to figure out the AGC, if it works and how the settings influence reception.
I think the best way for someone to determine if and how the AGC works is to have 2 of the same platform scanners and have them configured to scan a small subset of a system, then on one of the platforms, turn on the AGC and see if there is a difference in the unit with the AGC enabled. Maybe even test on a NOAA Weather broadcast channel or possibly set the radio on a control channel or some other constant broadcast??
Otherwise you are somewhat shooting in the dark.
