St. Charles County Fire/EMS transmissions very muddy!

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rbritton1201

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I notice transmissions from St. Charles County Fire/EMS dispatch to sound like their microphones are significantly over driven on a particular TGID within the system, causing the quality of their transmissions to be really muddy, and often difficult to understand compared to everyone else on the S.L.A.T.E.R system. Other agencies within the S.L.A.T.E.R simulcast system seem perfectly readable.

TGID 27035 sounds like the dispatcher has swallowed the microphone while dispatching calls. I notice it on TGID 27035, and there may be other TGIDs as well. I'm still sampling the TGIDs to see if there are other TGIDs on the St. Charles County Fire/EMS channels that are exhibiting the same distortion. I notice that it's most aggregious with one female dispatcher in particular, while other dispatchers, who are also female, don't seem to exhibit the issue as prominently as this one dispatcher in particular.

I think I recently resolved an issue of terribly garbled transmissions occurring from an analog agency within one of my favorites lists, and it appears that issue was related to what seemed to be the filter setting for that particular agency. I changed the filter setting from GLOBAL to IFX, and so far that seems to have eliminated the issue, although I am still testing whether the issue has resolved for the long term.

So, I don't know if what I'm hearing out of St. Charles County Fire/EMS might be a filter setting issue, or if the issue is on their end, and they've got their mic gain turned up so much, or maybe the dispatcher is hungry, and eating the microphone, so much so that their transmissions are so muddy as to be unreadable.

I'm just curious if other listeners on the forum are experiencing the same thing, so I can at least attribute the issue to the agency's equipment, the dispatcher, or whether my SDS200 filter settings need to be experimented with on that particular TGID.
 

TJX400

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Apr 26, 2020
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Central Virginia
Some agencies have "boom mics" (pictured below), others have headsets. Boom mics seem to have the effect you're describing here, especially if you speak directly into it. Headsets usually don't have this type of effect. I guess it's possible that it could be your scanner, but I very much believe that it's related to the microphone they're using

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rbritton1201

Captain1201
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Yeah, I'm not sure what type of mic they're using. Back in the day, when I was a dispatcher for a police agency, we used headsets, and I never heard what sounded like an over driven microphone using that kind of headset when I monitored our frequencies. I agree with you that it's more likely operator error. You would think the fireman would moan and groan about the audio quality. But, I never heard a complaint that they couldn't understand their agency's transmissions. But, their lack of complaint did start me wondering if my scanner was the culprit. But, on the other hand, dispatched calls to fire equipment doesn't really depend on audio quality as much as the cops rely on it.

Some agencies have "boom mics" (pictured below), others have headsets. Boom mics seem to have the effect you're describing here, especially if you speak directly into it. Headsets usually don't have this type of effect. I guess it's possible that it could be your scanner, but I very much believe that it's related to the microphone they're using

View attachment 125596
 

SirtifiedIdiot

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Franklin County - St Louis County Missouri
Some agencies have "boom mics" (pictured below), others have headsets. Boom mics seem to have the effect you're describing here, especially if you speak directly into it. Headsets usually don't have this type of effect. I guess it's possible that it could be your scanner, but I very much believe that it's related to the microphone they're using

View attachment 125596
This would be correct. They use boom mics.
 
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