Really about to show my ignorance here LOL

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NWI_Scanner_Guy

SCANNING THE AIRWAVES SINCE 1987
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While reading various forums here on the RR, I keep seeing references to Discriminator Taps.

In a nutshell, what on earth is a Discriminator Tap??

I searched the wiki and it really didn't help shed any light for me.

I have a Pro96. What would a Discriminator Tap do for / to it?

SSSG

:)

( okay, y'all can stop throwing rotten eggs at me now LOL )
 

Caesar

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Thanks for the replies.

It's all still clear as mud however LOL :D

SSSG

:)

hit the unitrunker link on the link i posted. a disc tap in your scanner allows you to hear the baseband audio before the scanner messages with it for audio output. this allows you to hook it up to a computer which can read the "raw" data stream portion of the audio. when used with a program like unitrunker it will allow you to see all the frequencies on a site or system, all the talkgroups being used at a particular time as well as which voice frequency they are on. It is great for new systems or to figure out changes to an existing system.

hope that helps some...
 

JnglMassiv

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In a nutshell, what on earth is a Discriminator Tap??
The long and the short of it: Discriminator taps may be required to extract certain kinds of received data from the scanner.

They're required because scanners are sold as listening (like with your ears) instruments and filter the outgoing audio so that it sounds 'right' to our ears. Thus, a hardware modification may be performed that bypasses that filtering and taps that unprocessed/unfiltered audio line for use with an external device.
 

hfxChris

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And, the most important reason, which is why you would want to do a discriminator tap. It allows you to run a problem like Unitrunker and actually view what is happening on the trunked site you're listening to. It decodes the control channel and displays things like talkgroup IDs and radio IDs in real time, so you can see what radios are using what talkgroups in realtime, and what voice channel they're assigned. Remember, your scanner can only hit one thing at a time, this shows you everything happening at once. As well it shows you radio affiliations, so you know when a radio joins a talkgroup. It also lets you get other technical information about the system and site you're listening to.
 

qlajlu

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Yeah, UniTrunker is really cool for the information you can gain from it and it is almost indispensable for searching out what TGs are using the different systems and in helping to identify the TGs. You can't run these programs without a Tap.

Contrary to what hfx_chris said, UniTrunker is not a "problem" but a "program." :D

Go on the Trunker/Etrunker/Unitrunker Decoders Forum, look through some of the posts and you will probably see some screen shots showing what information you can get. Very cool.
 

N9JIG

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While reading various forums here on the RR, I keep seeing references to Discriminator Taps.

In a nutshell, what on earth is a Discriminator Tap??

I searched the wiki and it really didn't help shed any light for me.

I have a Pro96. What would a Discriminator Tap do for / to it?

The discriminator audio provides unfiltered audio that can then be used to feed a serial port for data decoding or to some other decoders. A few things I use discriminator audio for include decoding PL tones with CSI CD-1 and CD-2 decoders (displays PL and DPL codes on an LED display), trunked radio data signals with Trunker and other decoding programs as well as some various RTTY, packet and other data.

Scanners usually tend to filter the lower audio ranges so the regular record jack and speaker audio usually doesn't work for many of these objectives.
 

NWI_Scanner_Guy

SCANNING THE AIRWAVES SINCE 1987
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Thanks for the additional replies. I think I've got it now. Sounds like a project I may have to work on soon.

SSSG

:)
 
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