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Muffled Digital Voice Quality

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salarazad

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Joined
Jun 8, 2020
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74
Hi everyone,

Recently we moved our MotoTRBO radios from Analog to Digital conventional channels, and now we are experiencing a bad voice quality, very muffled and hard to understand sometimes. Below are the main parameters that we implemented.

Intelligence Audio Response: disabled
Environment: default
AF Suppressor: enabled
Noise Suppressor: basic
Trill Enhancement: disabled
Mic Selection Rule: default
Digital Mic AGC: disabled
Digital Mic Gain: +9
Accessory Digital Mic Gain: +19

We've tried enabling the Digital Mic AGC feature but the voice became low and distorted so we had to disable it and increased the Digital Mic Gain as a temporary solution until we figure out a better configuration combination of the different parameters.

Please can you point me to some good practices for Digital mode and what could be the most recommended parameters to enable.

Note: we are using DP4601 and DP4401Ex radios, but the DP4401Ex atex radios have a much worse voice quality, especially when used with PMMN4067 RSMs.


Many Thanks
 

Tech21

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Joined
Oct 16, 2018
Messages
439
General/Accessories/Rx Audio Type/ Filtered Squelch
General/Accessories/Digital Accessory Mic Gain/ -3 - You are killing your audio with your gain set to +19
General/General Settings/Digital Mic Gain/ -7 - Again, +9 is hurting you, not helping you.
General/Digital Mic Gain/Enabled.
General/General Settings/ Audio Profile/ Digital AF suppressor/ disabled.



Digital Audio takes some getting used to and I would suggest putting a couple radios back to default audio levels and testing them out.

I would also suggest getting your radios run through a service monitor and having them auto-aligned to make sure the radios are working in optimal shape.
 

salarazad

Member
Joined
Jun 8, 2020
Messages
74
General/Accessories/Rx Audio Type/ Filtered Squelch
General/Accessories/Digital Accessory Mic Gain/ -3 - You are killing your audio with your gain set to +19
General/General Settings/Digital Mic Gain/ -7 - Again, +9 is hurting you, not helping you.
General/Digital Mic Gain/Enabled.
General/General Settings/ Audio Profile/ Digital AF suppressor/ disabled.



Digital Audio takes some getting used to and I would suggest putting a couple radios back to default audio levels and testing them out.

I would also suggest getting your radios run through a service monitor and having them auto-aligned to make sure the radios are working in optimal shape.
Thank you for your suggestions, enabling the Digital Mic AGC will disable the manual Digital Mic Gain and Accessory Digital Mic Gain, right?
 

salarazad

Member
Joined
Jun 8, 2020
Messages
74
Re-program them back to analog and enjoy Hi-Fi audio quality. Problem solved!
We are moving to Digital so we can add some of the digital features like GPS tracking and others, that is why we are trying to enhance the voice quality as much as possible and keep the users on Digital.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.
 

N4KVE

Member
Joined
Mar 1, 2003
Messages
4,103
Location
PALM BEACH, FLORIDA
Thank you for your suggestions, enabling the Digital Mic AGC will disable the manual Digital Mic Gain and Accessory Digital Mic Gain, right?
I set AGC to on for analog, & digital. Then the mic settings are bypassed. I set everything else, noise, & af suppressor to off. On Gen 1 radios, FW is 1.12.17, & Gen 2 radios FW is 2.6. Crystal clear TX audio.
 

N4KVE

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Joined
Mar 1, 2003
Messages
4,103
Location
PALM BEACH, FLORIDA
Fixing the TX audio simply requires a FW upgrade in these radios which is free. Gen 1 radios is 1.12.17. Gen 2 radios is 2.60.05. Mars had devised this fix, informed someone at Moto, & they used it in these FW versions. The $2.50/$5 fix is auto leveling which has nothing to do with TX audio, but levels the receive audio between different brands of radios. I don’t believe Mars had anything to do with that. Sadly so many CCR’s exist where there is no AGC, & people set their TX levels incorrectly, & the auto leveling EID can correct this. But if everyone used Moto radios with current FW, & AGC set to on, we wouldn’t need auto leveling.
 

RFI-EMI-GUY

Member
Joined
Dec 22, 2013
Messages
6,859
Fixing the TX audio simply requires a FW upgrade in these radios which is free. Gen 1 radios is 1.12.17. Gen 2 radios is 2.60.05. Mars had devised this fix, informed someone at Moto, & they used it in these FW versions. The $2.50/$5 fix is auto leveling which has nothing to do with TX audio, but levels the receive audio between different brands of radios. I don’t believe Mars had anything to do with that. Sadly so many CCR’s exist where there is no AGC, & people set their TX levels incorrectly, & the auto leveling EID can correct this. But if everyone used Moto radios with current FW, & AGC set to on, we wouldn’t need auto leveling.

I blame Motorola.

It is puzzling that Motorola let this get so out of hand. There should be standard factory defaults so that the radios work out of the box. I monitor a P25 system here locally and there are radios that sound great, almost wideband analog in fidelity, but for the most part the rest are muffled or extremely over or under modulated.
 

N4KVE

Member
Joined
Mar 1, 2003
Messages
4,103
Location
PALM BEACH, FLORIDA
I blame Motorola.

It is puzzling that Motorola let this get so out of hand. There should be standard factory defaults so that the radios work out of the box. I monitor a P25 system here locally and there are radios that sound great, almost wideband analog in fidelity, but for the most part the rest are muffled or extremely over or under modulated.
Agreed. It’s like they set up DMR to fail. If the audio was better, entities would not buy P25 radios, & go with DMR, costing Moto millions in profits. They don’t allow AES in the XPR Gen 2 radios sold in the US, & they don’t allow the Npspac freq’s in the XPR series, although there is an easy solution for both. And this is why I hope they don’t collect a penny from Hytera.
 

romanr

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Joined
Feb 15, 2009
Messages
153
Location
Cheese country
Agreed. It’s like they set up DMR to fail. If the audio was better, entities would not buy P25 radios, & go with DMR, costing Moto millions in profits. They don’t allow AES in the XPR Gen 2 radios sold in the US, & they don’t allow the Npspac freq’s in the XPR series, although there is an easy solution for both. And this is why I hope they don’t collect a penny from Hytera.

It doesn't cost Moto "millions in profits" if they are successful in getting customers to buy APX radios instead of XPRs. *THAT* is the motivation.
 

redrock2002

Member
Joined
May 10, 2016
Messages
30
Fixing the TX audio simply requires a FW upgrade in these radios which is free. Gen 1 radios is 1.12.17. Gen 2 radios is 2.60.05. Mars had devised this fix, informed someone at Moto, & they used it in these FW versions. The $2.50/$5 fix is auto leveling which has nothing to do with TX audio, but levels the receive audio between different brands of radios. I don’t believe Mars had anything to do with that. Sadly so many CCR’s exist where there is no AGC, & people set their TX levels incorrectly, & the auto leveling EID can correct this. But if everyone used Moto radios with current FW, & AGC set to on, we wouldn’t need auto leveling.

On our install we have 7550e's and 3500e's that we manage with RM. We came up with a common codeplug and spread it to all radios. Without the digital RAL, the person TX you could hear the first word or two then would drop off to a garbled mess. Enabled RAL and that one checkbox fixed alot of problems. Now we are struggling with our most senior employees that freaking refuse to talk into the mic the proper way. They are so used to the old way of having the mic on their shoulder and turning their head to talk towards the mic not into it. Aggravating lol.
 

salarazad

Member
Joined
Jun 8, 2020
Messages
74
So did this solve your issue?
I have read the document but didn't have time to test anything yet, I will try to purchase the 'Enhanced Noise Suppression' and the 'RX Audio Leveling' features as suggested and enabling both of them and also upgrading the radio firmware; and then I will try to test it while enabling and disabling the AGC feature and see which case would be better.

Any idea on what the appropriate values for the manual 'Mic Digital Gain' and the 'Accessory Digital Mic Gain' should be in case the 'AGC' feature was disabled? should I leave it on default which is '3'?
 

salarazad

Member
Joined
Jun 8, 2020
Messages
74
Amazing that Motorola charges $2.50 per radio to fix this quality issue. I think it may be up to $5.00 on MOL by now as I spotted a similar "fix".

Fo more info, The author of that write up can be found at Communications Support. His username is MARS.
Yes exactly these features like RAL should be free to use, since they are available on the radios manufactured after 2019 with the latest firmware.

I even tried to upgrade an older radio from 2018 to the latest version (R0220020002_202010) but this feature was not added, purchasing this feature for each and every radio might be the only solution in this case.
 

salarazad

Member
Joined
Jun 8, 2020
Messages
74
Fixing the TX audio simply requires a FW upgrade in these radios which is free. Gen 1 radios is 1.12.17. Gen 2 radios is 2.60.05. Mars had devised this fix, informed someone at Moto, & they used it in these FW versions. The $2.50/$5 fix is auto leveling which has nothing to do with TX audio, but levels the receive audio between different brands of radios. I don’t believe Mars had anything to do with that. Sadly so many CCR’s exist where there is no AGC, & people set their TX levels incorrectly, & the auto leveling EID can correct this. But if everyone used Moto radios with current FW, & AGC set to on, we wouldn’t need auto leveling.
I have tried before to enable the AGC but the voice become much worse, very low and muffled; but that was while using an older firmware version; so we had to disable the AGC and set Digital Mic Gain to 9 which made it a bit clearer to understand but very loud; I will try to upgrade the radio firmware this time and test it again.
 
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