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sigintlocal

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I'm using a RTL2832U dongle and SDR# with VB Cable to DSD+ to decode a p25 signal.

I'm really enjoying the added features of DSD+ but the mp3 encoding compresses the output to 11kbps which basically makes it unintelligible.

Does anyone know how to decrease the mp3 compression in DSD+ ? Is this something within the lame dll?

I'd love for DSD+ to output the mp3 @ 64kbps or higher. Please and thank you.
 

joeuser

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Gettings DSD+ to work with Unitracker & VB cable

Hi, first off I'd like to acknowledge the work of the folks that make SDR#, Unitracker, & DSD+. Not to mention all the ancillary programs, drivers, etc. SDR is great & a cheap way to monitor. Very fun. This has been an interesting thread but it's taken quite awhile to read. Speaking of... I have had great luck using WFM vs. NFM to keep my signal solid while the oscillator wobbles around with temperature waxing & waning. It beats chasing proper calibration with Frequency Correction on the front end.

I'm in no mans land. I have only 1 trunked system I can monitor, which is in my county. Other towers in neighboring counties are to far away to effectively monitor. So all I get is the KSICS tower & in the three days I have been listening - I have never heard anything. I assume its working because I can see DSD+ decode scrolling by like crazy *or* Unitracker showing me the info for the system.

What I can't figure out is how to get DSD+ to work with Unitracker. SDR# pipes out signal to VB Cable A & then I have Unitracker picking up the signal & also grabbing VB Cable A exclusively. When I try to run DSD+ it can't get VB Cable A and I assume it's because Unitracker has it. I don't see anyway to pipe out of Unitracker to VB Cable B & when I tell DSD+ (listening to VB Cable A) to pipe out to VB Cable B, Unitracker doesn't work when I have it looking to VB Cable B. Seems like all the guides show Unitracker run first then DSD+ but I have tried the reverse & still no go. Thoughts?
 

br0adband

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I'm using a RTL2832U dongle and SDR# with VB Cable to DSD+ to decode a p25 signal.

I'm really enjoying the added features of DSD+ but the mp3 encoding compresses the output to 11kbps which basically makes it unintelligible.

Does anyone know how to decrease the mp3 compression in DSD+ ? Is this something within the lame dll?

I'd love for DSD+ to output the mp3 @ 64kbps or higher. Please and thank you.

Unless the author or someone else posts a specific method to do such a thing, I'd say you (and all of us) are stuck with using WAV - which is the default anyway - and then doing a transcode from WAV to MP3 as required at the bitrates you want. It's not an issue with the LAME DLL, by the way - that just accepts whatever parameters that DSD+ is sending to it along with the source audio data - it might be possible to "hack" the .exe file and alter the bitrate settings, who knows <hint, hint>.

Personally I'd love to see more people start using Opus for low bitrate audio recordings (meaning the developers in their apps) but I guess it's just not going to happen. MP3 is so damned entrenched after all these years that even when better audio codecs are being released it seems like MP3 still gets automagically chosen for compressed audio - and by "better" I mean a direct MP3 vs Opus comparison at very low bitrates - Opus wins by leaps and bounds because that's what it was designed for. Ogg Vorbis is still damned awesome as well but Opus was designed by most of the same psychoacoustic audio developers.

But then again, that's another topic for another thread I guess... as it is, because DSD+ doesn't have any external configuration file - now THAT would be pretty awesome - or doesn't apparently offer the ability to customize audio options more than mono/stereo and WAV/MP3 (unless there's some hidden switches to adjust things with respect to the audio format bitrates) then again we're stuck with it as is.

I'm not knocking it, hardly, just stating things - perhaps the DSD+ author may add some of the stuff people are hoping for, maybe not. Even so, in its present original state it's still awesome.
 

joeuser

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Whoops! Unitrunker - Universal Trunker even!! Sorry...
As for my issue... I think life will be easier - just getting a second dongle.
 

TurboLed

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joeuser

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TurboLed

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Could you explain what you did to get both applications working?

Nothing special basically, it just worked ;)
I never had any problems with DSD not having access to the virtual audio cable even if Unitrunker is listening to it.
Which version of Unitrunker are you using, did you try the latest?

Also did you make sure to set the "shared" mode bitrate of both your Cable input and Cable output devices to 48000 Hz ? Instructions here: RTL-SDR Tutorial: Decoding Digital Voice (P25) with DSD - rtl-sdr.com

And of course set your Unitruniker receiver bitrate to 48000 too.

I can think of problems if several applications are trying to open the audio pipe with different bitrates.
 

joeuser

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Nothing special basically, it just worked ;)
I never had any problems with DSD not having access to the virtual audio cable even if Unitrunker is listening to it.
Which version of Unitrunker are you using, did you try the latest?

Also did you make sure to set the "shared" mode bitrate of both your Cable input and Cable output devices to 48000 Hz ? Instructions here: RTL-SDR Tutorial: Decoding Digital Voice (P25) with DSD - rtl-sdr.com

And of course set your Unitruniker receiver bitrate to 48000 too.

I can think of problems if several applications are trying to open the audio pipe with different bitrates.

I'm using UniTrunker 1,0,26,16. I think that the problem is I'm only getting 1 channel out from VB Cable. I cannot change it within the VB cable control application. I get no options within the Windows audio properties nor by way of device manager... If there's only 1 channel this would be a problem. I am at 48000 though! This might be a limitation of my hardware - as this is on board audio, RealTek chip. Plus this box has XP... The other dongle is here I'm just waiting for my pigtail SO239 to MCX. If I can't figure this out - it's not the end of the world. Appreciate your help so far!
 

airforceflyr

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Experts,

Is anyone using the ICOM R-8500 dis tap ? I am and not having good decode on P-25 or DMR. Choppy and unintelligible snippets using -fa , -f1 and -fr . Here is a raw audio file. Hope I did this correctly :

Zippyshare.com - 155.640 DMR.wav

Using a MacBook air with parallels. I tried previously using an older Sony Vaio laptop. Thinking it was to slow, I switched to the Mac and same result.

Anyone able to help troubleshoot ? Also have a screen grab attch'd. A msg the screen grab failed to see was also a msg at the conclusion of the transmission that reads "Synch: no Synch"


Thanks

Quick update to this, I'm now getting cleaner decodes of NXDN/ Trbo using my dongle&SDR# vs the ICOM 8500 dis tap. They are using the same antenna. I'm sure it's an tweak somewhere that is causing the 8500 audio to hiccup but I'm not complaining. Sometimes the expensive stuff isn't the answer for everything!

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk 2
 

john749

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Newbie here. Just got a discriminator tap install on my scanner (PRO79) and trying to decode what I beleived to be trunked NXDN from my local electric utility with DSD+. In the hdr line above the cmd prompt window I see the "Lvl= " vary as I adjust the line in level. And I see the "S/S= " toggling randomly between 4800 and 9600 until the scanner receives a xmission, at which time it locks steady at 4800 baud. Yet the only thing DSD+ ever outputs is and occassional "sync invalidated" message. I've tried slowly adjusting the line level throughout its range and I've tried monitoring the control channel as well as the only other channel on the site that ever seems to have traffic (random bursts of digital noise). I've read most of this thread from the begining and it appears most of you are using SDRs as opposed to scanners. If I need to take this to another part of the forum please advise, but this is the only thread I've found concerning DSD+ which I was hoping would finally enable me to decode trunked NXDN. Thanks for any suggestions you may have.
John B
 

racingfan360

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John

If you use the DSD+ record function have a go at capturing some raw traffic and upload it to a site like Zippyshare, and post a link. I can then try and take a look. Try an Lvl=20-30 please.

Have you been able to use DSD+ to decode anything else? P25? MotoTRBO?

Jim
 

john749

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Thanks, I'll try to upload some raw once I figure out how Zippyshare works.
I only have one other digital system I can rcv. It's P25 and I can monitor it on my HP1, but the cheap scanner I picked up on Ebay to tap doesn't do 800Mhz. I do have an old pro94 dual trunking which I am reluctant to tap due to the densely packed circuitry and my no longer steady hands. But out of frustration, I did hook it up via the earphone jack and loaded the P25 system's freqs...same lack of response from DSD+, but with filtered audio, not a very conclusive test. Still kinda expected something. Starting to think it's possibly soundchip incompatibility? Don't even know what's built into this Dell Vostro 230. Do I need special drvs for this?
 

br0adband

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Hrmmm... well, I just lost a decent post, guess I'll let it go. :(

/me hates computers and wireless connections sometimes...

Basically the gist of that "Mega-post" was that since you're talking about an NXDN system, there is a chance that the particular equipment in use is using offset frequencies because that's what NXDN is capable of supporting. Your actual scanner may not be able to provide you with a dead-on signal because of how it tunes frequencies and to what accuracy which is incredibly important with NXDN more so than any other digital protocol in my experience.

If you happen to live in an area where an NXDN system (or several depending) is/are using offset transmissions that will mean they have an assigned frequency from the FCC, say 451.2625 MHz, but because they're following the narrowbanding mandates now in place the equipment is capable of transmitting on frequencies slightly above and below the licensed one. In my area, 451.2625 is licensed to Rebel Wireless (FCC license WPMT214) but they don't transmit on that frequency: they transmit on 451.259375 (-3.125 kHz offset) and 451.265625 (+3.125 kHz). See what I mean about the accuracy of the frequency there? It's 6 places past the decimal point and most scanners can't tune things with that level of accuracy properly.

Yes, you can tune close to it, but it won't be exactly what it needs to be which would mean that the signal you're feeding DSD+ even using the discriminator tap still won't be good enough in terms of clarity and quality for DSD+ to work with it. It's possible, mind you, I'm just saying that old Pro-79 you have can't tune things with enough accuracy for it to be of any use to you in this respect. I've got an older Pro-series scanner here myself, basically useless for most intents and purposes, and even though the display will show 4 places past the decimal point I can't use it for trying to provide a discriminator tap for NXDN content because of the offset systems here in my area and the fact that the offset frequencies are 6-digits precise to get the transmission in the clear.

Hope this makes sense. I can't say for certain if the NXDN content you're trying to tune in your area is or is not using offset frequencies, but if it is, and it's using something that the Pro-79 simply can't tune accurately or precisely enough, you're never going to get a solid decode from it. I don't think that even using dsdtune on the signal will provide enough accuracy of the signal for DSD+ to do its magic, but it can't hurt to try.

If I'm wrong about all this and you get it working, fantastic, but I figured I'd post the info just in case - I know that scanner is somewhat old nowadays and because of the 6-digit accuracy some systems transmit on in terms of frequencies the older stuff literally either can't hear it or it'll almost act like what you're trying to monitor is on a sideband to some degree.

As for the other digital modes like P25, DMR/MOTOTRBO, etc, while they could use offset frequencies for transmissions I've yet to encounter one that did. Seems to be more trouble than it's worth but because of narrowbanding and digital protocols really moving in pretty fast, sooner or later two-slot systems using offset transmissions for two 6.25 kHz wide channels inside the 12.5 kHz spacing will become a lot more common and those older scanners won't be of much use anymore.

Of course you could solve this potential problem with a $10-20 RTL stick, easily. :)
 
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racingfan360

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Hi br0adband......you're spot on re the need for accuracy to decode many NXDN systems. Likewise I've never come across this 3.125khz offset on a DMR/P25 system, again largely because I think offsets on NXDN is the way to achieve the same channel capacity of a DMR system on a 12.5Khz license.

However my experience with tapped scanners (and I've tried a few) is that the precise tuning accuracy is much less of an issue as it is with a dongle or indeed a proper NXDN transceiver: this is in fact how I uncovered the 3.125khz spacing 'phenomenon' in the first place: I could decode stuff on my scanners ok, but not on my NXDN radio. I'm guessing selectivity on scanner is much worse than it is on a dongle.

My guess at john749's issue is:
sound card setup
signal strength too low
offset tuning
its data not voice
encryption

Hopefully we'll get the sample to have a look and help him out

Jim
 

BM82557

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Infrequently I've noticed the following message while DSDPlus is decoding a local P25 system - UNHANDLED IMPLICIT OPCODE: #2. At the time it is received there are no decoding errors and as it isn't received in other P25 systems I monitor I think it is something with that particular system. Audio for the system is great (thanks DSDTune!) so I don't think it is anything with DSDPlus, I'm just curious as to what it means. Any ideas?
 

john749

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Hi br0adband......you're spot on re the need for accuracy to decode many NXDN systems. Likewise I've never come across this 3.125khz offset on a DMR/P25 system, again largely because I think offsets on NXDN is the way to achieve the same channel capacity of a DMR system on a 12.5Khz license.

However my experience with tapped scanners (and I've tried a few) is that the precise tuning accuracy is much less of an issue as it is with a dongle or indeed a proper NXDN transceiver: this is in fact how I uncovered the 3.125khz spacing 'phenomenon' in the first place: I could decode stuff on my scanners ok, but not on my NXDN radio. I'm guessing selectivity on scanner is much worse than it is on a dongle.

My guess at john749's issue is:
sound card setup
signal strength too low
offset tuning
its data not voice
encryption

Hopefully we'll get the sample to have a look and help him out

Jim
Thanks Jim, and the others who have replied. Sorry, I've been a bit distracted since my initial post, but I will eventually get those samples uploaded for your analysis.
Thanks again,
John B
 

slicerwizard

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Infrequently I've noticed the following message while DSDPlus is decoding a local P25 system - UNHANDLED IMPLICIT OPCODE: #2. At the time it is received there are no decoding errors and as it isn't received in other P25 systems I monitor I think it is something with that particular system. Audio for the system is great (thanks DSDTune!) so I don't think it is anything with DSDPlus, I'm just curious as to what it means. Any ideas?
Link control opcode #2 on P25 voice channels is Group Voice Channel Update; it broadcasts information for two other site voice channels, indicating what talkgroups they are carrying. Sounds like it lets subscriber radios implement priority scanning.
 

racingfan360

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John

So I've had a play with the samples.....the CC wav confirms it is a NXDN4800 trunked control channel that you are listening to. But it wasn't as straightforward to decode as I might have expected: I had to force dsd+ to decode NX48 (ie run "dsd -fn") and not just rely on dsd to figure it out on its own. I my experience that smacks of poor/on the edge signal strength for the received signal.

Then trying the other samples I get nowhere. Just listening to them they sound really noisy and are just about audible over the noise floor. No decodes at all.

So I think you need to get a better antenna setup/better signal strength before we can crack this one. Does your scanner have a strength meter? How many bars is it showing? Can you get your antenna higher/up into clear space? Is your cable ok?

Also FWIW I've found an SDR dongle will give you significantly poorer signal strength capability than a scanner (but then what would you expect from a few dollars of kit).

Jim
 
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