What is the big difference between Digital signals and analog? I'm just new to this, and was told all the police, etc. are going digital.
Don Winrich
Don Winrich
The HT1000 had 640 BYTES of RAM. One single DSP chip handled all audio processing (and all was done digitally including CTCSS/DCS/MDC/QC/Single tone) and a single audio IC handled both main and ancillary accessory audio. These were cutting edge radios when they rolled out when Bill Clinton first took office in 1992.I've used Motorola HT1000 analog transceivers and the Motorola digital equivalent transceivers as they transitioned from analog to digital over the years at my place of employment.
With all of the digital processing the batteries on the digital radios never lasts a whole shift. Everyone gets frustrated because it hard to find a fully charged battery in the chargers. Even after the boss orders new batteries.
On the analog radios you could put a fresh battery on your transceiver at the start of your shift and you were good to go.
Also, working in noisy locations(foundry, stamping plants, etc.), the analog receiver conversations are a lot easier to understand. Digital receivers are awful in a noisy location as the processing is always trying to adjust when someone is speaking making for a lot of garbled audio.
Jim
For our needs, give us good reliable communication that works well in a noisy environment. The digital radio sounds great when someone in a nice quiet office calls for you.
The radios are only about 5 years old. When we complained about the audio they did send the vendor in and they made their adjustments on every radio. It didn't help. I will agree with you that they more than likely are not adjusted correctly. There were a few adjustments that we had access to in the menus and we tried some different combinations to no avail. We ended up putting them back to the original settings. There were also some menus that we didn't have access to.
There were no receive accessories with the radio as we didn't expect any or need any with the older analog radios.
As for the batteries, new chargers and batteries were supplied with the new system. We just expect them to supply the correct equipment for us. Whether they were the right batteries and chargers, I don't know. They weren't worth a crap from the get-go.
I transferred out of that location about 6 months ago and don't remember the Motorola model number. They haven't assigned me a radio at the new location.
This is probably more of a simple radio vs a complex radio issue. On the older 900mhz analog radios they would program the new radios channel ID's and it was ready to go.
They need to find a more responsive shop.
Well, that's because the analogs were working in that environment, and the digitals can also, but it requires a shop that is willing to support it's customers after the sale is complete.
A good speaker mic or even headset can help a lot.
Yeah, not surprising. The proper accessories can get expensive, and it's often the first place that gets cut.
Depending on how heavily the radios get used, they may need to have higher capacity batteries.
Turning down RF power to the minimum amount necessary will also extend battery life.
Using proper audio accessories allows running the radios at a lower volume that will help extend battery run time.
1 hour chargers should be there to allow batteries to be cycled through faster. If someone bought the desktop trickle chargers to save a few bucks, there's your issue.
I usually strongly recommend that each radio gets two batteries and a rapid charger. That can add to the costs of the system quickly, but in any sort of critical application, the radios are only as good as the battery pack.
Ah, got it. I had issues for years with Motorola shops. There are some good ones out there, but I seemed to always get the ones that were more focused on sales than service. It's not a good place to be/
A bad shop or a bad tech can screw up a perfectly good radio system.
Analog worked well since it pretty much passed whatever it heard. Human ears are good at picking voices out of crappy audio. When they started using digital, they didn't get things right, and it caused a lot of issues. Took a lot of work to get things right. Now most digital radios can do a pretty good job of getting human voices out of and into loud environments with a pretty high level of fidelity. But like I said, it does take a tech that knows what they are doing.
It sucks when the end user gets stuck with this sort of stuff.