single feed, multiple frequencies

[hmburgers]

Soliciting a few comments... are feeds with multiple depts/freq feeds generally considered to be "better" or, "worse"?

I can easily pick up 3-4 towns worth of PD and FD activity which is not currently covered by live feeds, but I personally find that when scanning multiple dept's I have trouble following one line of calls if there is a break in chatter and the radio moves on. Worse, if there is chatter on multiple channels at the same time it's easy to lose entire calls or information that might be interesting to me. When I'm home I can simply hold the radio on a specific channel if something peaks my interest, but obviously that option is not available while listening via the live feed.

Currently I have a feed setup for my home town FD, no scanning, just 24/7 of that one channel. There really isn't all that much activity, sometimes hours between calls even during the day, so would it be more interesting/useful to people out there if I had it setup for the 3-4 FD's in my area including my home town?

Thx for your opinions.

 

[kendrik578]

All depends on how busy they are. As you stated, having multiple department's/frequencies can be very hard to follow and you may end up losing listeners. If you have a hard time keeping up than surly your listeners will.

I wouldn't do it if they are very busy, but you have to evaluate and make that call.

 

[hmburgers]

I think for now I'll stick to my plan of 1 freq. per stream.

Ideally I'd have about 6 radios and be able to hit the FD and PD of my three neighboring towns

The two near me--Stoneham and Woburn--have unfortunately been active on the PD in recent past for some major events. My town, Reading, has been fairly quiet.

Everyone is conventional and not trunked except for Reading which is APCO-25 digital. If I could find 4-5 cheap scanners I'd be all set

 

[W2PMX]

I listen to my PD when I'm home, and the sheriff when I'm going to be on the interstate (they patrol it). If something is happening I turn on another scanner for the fire department. That's enough for me. I spent too many years with more channels than I could shake a stick at (for a living) and sometimes I would have to actually know what was happening on 8 channels or more at once. No more. (I can still subliminally "grab" phone numbers and addresses, even if I'm concentrating on something else, but for fun 2 channels at once are the limit.)

But that's me. Some people want action all the time, whether they can follow one conversation or not. Others want to follow what's going on, even if it means hours of silence. And you're never going to satisfy everyone. If you have a second scanner, feed one side with your local PD or FD and the other side with a scanner that's scanning everything else. That way each listener can choose left (one department) or right (scanning). Or both.

 

[SDavis90]

The main reason I lost interest in monitoring streaming audio, and basically gave up - is because people have too many agencies in one feed. Especially when they have more than one law enforcement agency on the feed. If you're already unfamiliar with the area being monitored, it's like Chinese arithmetic.

Just my opinion though.

 

[jonny290]

One option is to run a stereo feed and input one scanner as your left and another as your right. That way if people just want to listen to one feed, they can pan to a side, but if they want an ear on both radios, pan middle. Or mix the two at any desired ratio.

 

[saleen49]

One option is to run a stereo feed and input one scanner as your left and another as your right.

Stereo feed is a good option. I feed multiple agencies on a single stereo feed. I use left side for Fire, and right side for Police. I set up the agencies I want to hear most so they are monitored in "priority" mode. The rest is just to fill dead air. I enjoy listening to my feed and I really don't care to hear long periods of dead air.