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Question - NXDN and DTMF

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dapaq2

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I have been told that DTMF tones will NOT pass through using NXDN when working with remote devices or anything else that decodes DTMF signals, but doing some yahoo searching I have found a few results that state "NXDN will pass thru DTMF on limited testing" or worded somthing close to that. Anyone know exactly what this means? I am trying to find out if there is any truth to what I have been told. Using an NXDN system and pressing the dtmf keys, will a dtmf decoder receive those tones properly or will it receive no dtmf tone to decode?

Thank You,

Doug
 

n5ims

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It will receive the tones, but they may be distorted enough by the analog to digital and digital to analog conversion (audio to digital audio to transmit the tone and digital to analog audio on receive) that there may be too much distortion and/or frequency shifting to properly decode the tones. Chances are that they'll sound OK to a human (where the brain will piece together or modify the audio), but will be out of spec for the decoder.
 

dapaq2

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What signaling formats in addition to DTMF are affected by NXDN, and are there any other signaling formats that are NOT affected by NXDN as you describe the problem above?

Thanks,

Doug
 

Josh

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Unlike DTMF over P25, NXDN allows for DTMF tones to be passed through with surprising clarity on the receiving end. I guess the codebook used for AMBE has codes directly related to DTMF tones.

While the output on the carrier, however, is totally digital, the decoded audio is very clean DTMF.
 

ramal121

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DTMF is regenerated by the receiving radio and is cleaner and more reliable than tones going through an analog system. I have a phone interconnect hooked to a control station on a repeated conventional NXDN channel and it works great (at least as good as would be expected).

This is used with either the autodial feature of the radio or Kenwoods "smart" DTMF mics. What you cannot do is hook a generic encoder to the mic line and expect that to go.
 
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ramal121

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The transmitting radio does not send digitized DTMF audio out (as would voice be), it only sends control bits as overhead. The receiving radio in turn will say hey, I need to generate a DTMF 5 for audio output. This is done with the codec and DTMF is the only format that the radio will do. Why? Think cel phones, they would be pretty useless if they couldn't pass DTMF.

All other audio signaling formats would have to be digitized and sent with voice which would basically trash the heck out of them. If you look at the program software for a NXDN channel, you will see analog signalling ( 2-tone, fleetsync, etc) grayed out and unable to be used.
 

stevelton

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Apr 19, 2005
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359
It would be nice for those of us that use Alert Tones, for the benefit of getting the attention of users listening to their radio, but not really paying attention. We use 2 diffeerent 2-tones on our ham repeater, for mainly that reason. Now that our ARES is switching to IDAS, I will have to build a console, and add the tone ability externally. Right now, I can just do it from the radios buttons.
Steven
 
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