DSP Speakers - Are they worth it for a scanner like the SDS100?

[Omega-TI]

I've been playing with my new scanner for about a month, and the local analog stuff sounds fine, the one digital trunking frequency sounds phenomenal, but on those borderline and more distance frequencies I get as much static and pop as voice. Would a DSP speaker make much difference? I found one on Amazon << HERE >> but I have to be honest, I don't like it's price.

Does anyone here use a DSP speaker on their scanner? If so, what kind of results do you get? Also, if these things do make a discernable difference, is there a more inexpensive alternative?

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[Trucker700]

I would think a better antenna would help you more than an outboard dsp speaker.
It sounds like you are on the fringe area of the system you are trying to listen to.
DSP at the audio out is more for things like background hiss and noise. Some receivers are noisy and outboard filtering can help.
I would try a better antenna first. More signal, clearer audio.
James

 

[Omega-TI]

I would think a better antenna would help you more than an outboard dsp speaker.

Thanks James, I do plan to install a good quality discone antenna this spring, in the meantime I'm "making do" with a W100RX, but with all the computer equipment I have in the den, it picks up some RFI on a few frequencies, so the external antenna is going to be a must.

 

[iball]

I went a different path.
Long ago I got tired of regular headphones wearing a dent into my head so I switched to Samsung Buds+ bluetooth earbuds and a separately-powered bluetooth transmitter that plugs into the headphone jack of my PC. Now this particular transmitter can pair to two different sets of bluetooth headphones so I got a second set of Samsung Buds+ and they both pair up to it just fine. The PC is hooked up to the bluetooth transmitter via the PC's optical-out port on the built-in soundcard.
I have my SDS100 powered via a standalone USB power adapter with a headphone adapter cable going from the headphone out on the SDS100 to the LINE-IN on my PC's sound card. Since I'm not powering the SDS100 via USB port on the PC, there's no "power hum" noise at all. The only time I plug it in to my PC is to change the programming on it or update the frequency database files once every week or two.
I don't use anything other than Sentinal for programming so don't need the SDS100 plugged in via USB for serial port access anyway.
With the SDS100 volume set on 10, the LINE-IN settings configured for "listen to" and set to 100 and the PC sound volume set to 50, I can easily listen to anything the PC is putting out with the SDS100 overlaying what it hears right on top it and easily heard and understandable.
I can freely walk around and do other things while still clearly hearing whatever the scanner picks up.
Since each set of Buds+ easily lasts for 11 hours I could theoretically listen for 22 hours straight but I never listen that long.
It sounds more clunky than it really is. The Bluetooth transmitter is an Aluratek Bluetooth Optical Audio Transmitter/Receiver, model ABCD54F.
If I don't need the PC powered up for anything then I just plug the scanner audio cable directly into the back of the bluetooth transmitter and it works fine without the PC.
The audio out from the SDS100 using this method is very, very clean with no distortion or noise at all.

 

[Ubbe]

but on those borderline and more distance frequencies I get as much static and pop as voice.

If it's a digital signal then the audio are already destroyed by the decoding process and cannot be restored. If it's analog with a background noise then a good noise filter DSP can help. The best DSP filters are those run on a PC as there are lots of computer power involved that doesn't exist in a cheaper external device. I have Icoms DSP in a receiver and when setting it to a level where it reduces noise it will also make voices more distorted to the same degree, making it pretty much useless. The human brain are the best filter you can get, but can give a headache and fatigue if it tries to filter noise over longer periods of time.

/Ubbe