This is a very fascinating and informative thread. Many thanks to all contributors. With the endless parade of complaints about crappy LSM reception on consumer-grade scanners, it's obvious that Uniden and Whistler know about their scanners' serious design flaws when it comes to LSM. Question is ... has anyone from Uniden and/or Whistler even ADMITTED the design flaws, or stated that they're planning to PROPERLY fix their circuitry? It would be nice if they do, but I'm not holding my breath.
The official "I want LSM to work properly in my scanner" thread
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RFI-EMI-GUY
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It would require them to retool the product. Meanwhile they can sell to an 85% satisfied customer base. If they made such a confession or the announcement of a new improved LSM receiver, sales of current inventory would slump. Better to get new product in the pipeline before admitting this.
I guess they also can't improve the audio quality overall, evidently that's another major defect they wish to perpetually ignore.
Who says it's a design flaw? They have never advertised support for simulcast sites. None of them have ever touted their ability to decode LSM / ??PSK. And I don't believe either company has ever admitted to "design flaws" with respect to the subject we are talking about, again most likely because they never claimed to support it.
Mike
Bring a tech, then you must know that one of the worst places to monitor a signal is directly below a vertically polarized antenna in its null, and that the remote sites are likely as strong or stronger than the local site - with or without the antenna. You do realize that, right?
KA1RBI
Member
What they have advertised / claimed is Phase II/TDMA support. The Phase II specs, as previously mentioned, specify the use of a differential QPSK-style demodulator in the receiver - not an FM-style FSK4/C4FM receiver...
73
Max
Fair enough. I'm not usually a defender of the manufacturers, but I got tired of hearing people incessantly complain about lack of QPSK support. We all know the manufacturers are aware.
You would know much better than I. I stand corrected, Max
Mike
KA1RBI
Member
The specs allow for differences to exist and the vendors also take advantage of what the specs don't specify as well as what they do specify. In the specific case of /\/\ LSM, the amplitude modifications are applied with a timing that places the troughs of the AM waveforms at off-peak times with respect to the symbol centers. The exact timing of these troughs varies according to the secret sauce formulas. The peaks of the AM waveforms are timed to coincide with the centers of the P25 data symbols. P25 receivers only care about the P25 symbols, and these are centered at the peaks of the AM waveforms.
In some senses the LSM waveform can be considered as a multiplex consisting of two separate data streams, one of which consists of P25 symbols and the other being a low-level modulation affecting only off-peak portions of the overall waveform. The composite signal is compatible with either vendor's receiver because it's normal for QPSK receivers to ignore everything except for the symbol centers.
It might be interesting to ask uniden and whistler this question (if you could get an answer)
Max
Boatanchor
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Did you actually read my post?
Since when would a site 20 miles away produce any received signal on a scanner, with no antenna connected?
You do realize what the free space path loss over 20 miles is, don't you?
Obviously not..
More to the point, why is my ignore list not working?
Oh for Pete's sake, please tell us you're joking. Good grief! (rolls eyes).
Mine does that routinely when I'm at a tower site that is not only line of sight, but right in the primary lobe of the transmitting antenna of distant sites.
But, the point was the COMPARISON of signal level. There is still plenty of signal left to interfere when the local signal is weak.
I bought my 1080 after research and under the impression it would decode the local digital public safety systems. Nowhere in the advertising or documentation did it say that the radio did not support the P25 systems used by many, if not most, major public safety systems. Retailers and manufactures are misrepresenting their product, and they are doing it to the extent that it would be interesting to see challenged in court (please don't, though, or that manufacturer will likely be out of the scanner business). I wonder if their attorneys actually understand the significance between the claims and reality.
Few product manufacturers and marketers have such a great and concise research tool (these forums) for their business. We subsidize them heavily in that regard.
It is disheartening that these forums are not true public forums. No telling what has been lost to society and the scanning community due to censorship, reorganization, and burying of pure speech. I suppose us members, even the premium members (which I guess aren't catered too, why do they even contribute?), must be trained and consume as designed by the cash cows of this operation. I LOVE that this operation spread the accessibility of government agency monitoring, I love the idea of having a forum, and I love the database, but it just seems like they know best and must control us in some instances, whether it is to "protect" their data, image, or relationship with their big accounts. I hope everyone will join in the spirit to help others, critique and improve communications technology, and advance very important causes that benefit society and the human condition. And there will still be plenty left to profit on.
If by "catered to" you have in-mind something other than the services listed on the Subscription page, please clarify.
If by "contribute" you mean "contribute financially by paying the premium membership fee", then I would suggest that the premium-membership fee is not a contribution, but a fee for services rendered -- the services listed on the Subscription page.
If by "contribute" you mean "contribute data" then I would guess that the reason for data-submissions by premium members is the same as by other members -- so that by creating an accurate data-set we can all enjoy the hobby more.
Edit: I would guess that the experts who are contributing to this thread are discussing LSM solutions for the same reason -- so everyone can enjoy the hobby more.
Just one opinion,
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Scanner Supply and Demand
Sure, I can download a pretty PDF, don't have to look at as many ads, and get to import into UniTrunker, but that's not why I pay or even worth the premium subscriber cost. I contribute (or, "buy" if you want) to the service because I want to advance the core offering, which is providing substantial transparency in our country. RR is amazing overall; however, it appears that premium subscribers are not always treated with the priority that they ought to be. The result might be lack of retention; however, perhaps good relations with bigger entities is better for the pocketbook. Either way, it's worth helping to keep afloat. I doubt anyone is making obscene profits from this venture.
At any rate, I want to contribute and clear up another aspect of the simulcast issue, and that relates to the economics of selling scanners.
On this forum, it is routinely (and incorrectly) asserted that professional radios are more expensive because they have "better stuff" (hardware, firmware, codecs, etc.). The cost of that improved equipment is minor and not the driver of the cost of professional radios utilized by government agencies (and pseudo-"private" entities like utility companies). Understanding the economics helps one understand the products available on the market today.
In the graphs I present below, the concepts are more important than the numbers. These graphs represent a finite yet undefined period of time.
Consider consumer scanner demand: The demand curve is incredibly elastic. If scanners were dirt cheap, tens of millions of people would buy them. However, at higher prices, the demand drops sharply since most people don't require a scanner for work or to live (and have other things, like food, they must buy within their budget). Sure, some people will buy a consumer scanner for an "outrageous" price, but it would be out of reach for the masses.
Consider consumer scanner supply: Pretty much everything physical about consumers is cheap. They are manufactured overseas and, after basic material and labor costs are covered, will be churned out pretty rapidly.
So, how does a scanner manufacturer make more money? They can't raise their price too much, because, based on the elasticity of the demand curve, the quantity sold would plummet. So what's left to do? Either make the scanners cheaper to produce or shift the demand curve to the right by convincing people to buy more scanners.
They make the scanners cheaper to produce by: not spending money on R&D (i.e. repackaging the same product 10 different times, not correcting simulcast problems), using inexpensive components, and limiting customer support and warranty service.
The consumer scanner marketers shift the demand curve to the right by making people think they are getting something excellent, that the new product is so great they just have to have it. The product doesn't really have to be any better, they just have to make people think it is. Additionally, there is an incentive for producers to hold out on improvements. If it takes just one or two improvements to sell another round of scanners, why lay all your cards on the table prematurely? Unfortunately, even most scanner consumers are not as knowledgeable as those in or reading this thread.
What we are left with is little incentive to make real improvements to the consumer scanners. The producers can't raise the price to accommodate R&D or new components or else an equilibrium point would not be reached (think raising the Y axis of the graph to $1,000); there would not be sufficient demand at such price point to produce the better scanner.
Now let's consider government and utility radio supply and demand.
Government radio demand is fairly inelastic, meaning the quantity demanded is fairly stable despite the price. Each government employee, vehicle, and dispatch center needs a radio. It's critical to the functioning of the agency. Additionally, it is not a competitive nor rational market. Decisions are based on politics rather than the free market. The decision makers are potentially naive, and, at any rate, they are spending someone else's money on someone else. And this isn't even getting into corruption or kickbacks.
Government radio supply is also inelastic due to several factors: government procurement processes, limited competition, collusion, and proprietary technology. Since the acceptable price of radios is known (open records) and the major players already have substantial infrastructure, there is little incentive to try to enter the market (provide competition and bring prices down) and the players in the market know how to price their bids to artificially increase prices. Since demand is inelastic, there is no incentive to decrease prices since equilibrium quantity won't increase much (profit = profit per item sold * number of items sold). It is not necessarily the cost to produce the product (i.e. cost of "better stuff") that determines the price, but the inelastic demand and the political rather than competitive market.
So how does a radio manufacturer make more money? They increase demand by convincing people to build out new radio systems or add features to justify an increase in price. In the graph above, it is apparent that the biggest gains for radio marketers is to convince governments that they must upgrade their radio system (whether or not they really need to or if it would even benefit their mission); this is the shift to the right of the demand curve demonstrated above. I won't wade into discussing the ethics of some of the techniques used to sell people new systems. The next way to make more money is to have special features that justify an increase in unit price (and provide cover for the public servants buying the more expensive equipment). For instance, the radio marketers might push an encryption feature to make more money off of the relatively fixed quantity of radios they sell. The most important factors for a radio producer are to play politics (keep customers happy, give decision makers gifts, etc.), push new features, and push new systems. There is no pressure to reduce the cost of equipment and radio systems since political rather than market considerations determine price.
So, in summary, consumer scanner producers have no incentive to make better scanners because 1) most people won't pay higher prices for them and 2) they can trick us into thinking "new" scanners are better without spending much money. On the other hand, /\/\ and "competitors" have no incentive to lower prices since it won't substantially increase the number of products sold; prices are set politically, not necessarily based on the cost of the components, overhead, research, labor, etc.
Sure, I can download a pretty PDF, don't have to look at as many ads, and get to import into UniTrunker, but that's not why I pay or even worth the premium subscriber cost. I contribute (or, "buy" if you want) to the service because I want to advance the core offering, which is providing substantial transparency in our country. RR is amazing overall; however, it appears that premium subscribers are not always treated with the priority that they ought to be. The result might be lack of retention; however, perhaps good relations with bigger entities is better for the pocketbook. Either way, it's worth helping to keep afloat. I doubt anyone is making obscene profits from this venture.
At any rate, I want to contribute and clear up another aspect of the simulcast issue, and that relates to the economics of selling scanners.
On this forum, it is routinely (and incorrectly) asserted that professional radios are more expensive because they have "better stuff" (hardware, firmware, codecs, etc.). The cost of that improved equipment is minor and not the driver of the cost of professional radios utilized by government agencies (and pseudo-"private" entities like utility companies). Understanding the economics helps one understand the products available on the market today.
In the graphs I present below, the concepts are more important than the numbers. These graphs represent a finite yet undefined period of time.
Consider consumer scanner demand: The demand curve is incredibly elastic. If scanners were dirt cheap, tens of millions of people would buy them. However, at higher prices, the demand drops sharply since most people don't require a scanner for work or to live (and have other things, like food, they must buy within their budget). Sure, some people will buy a consumer scanner for an "outrageous" price, but it would be out of reach for the masses.
Consider consumer scanner supply: Pretty much everything physical about consumers is cheap. They are manufactured overseas and, after basic material and labor costs are covered, will be churned out pretty rapidly.
So, how does a scanner manufacturer make more money? They can't raise their price too much, because, based on the elasticity of the demand curve, the quantity sold would plummet. So what's left to do? Either make the scanners cheaper to produce or shift the demand curve to the right by convincing people to buy more scanners.
They make the scanners cheaper to produce by: not spending money on R&D (i.e. repackaging the same product 10 different times, not correcting simulcast problems), using inexpensive components, and limiting customer support and warranty service.
The consumer scanner marketers shift the demand curve to the right by making people think they are getting something excellent, that the new product is so great they just have to have it. The product doesn't really have to be any better, they just have to make people think it is. Additionally, there is an incentive for producers to hold out on improvements. If it takes just one or two improvements to sell another round of scanners, why lay all your cards on the table prematurely? Unfortunately, even most scanner consumers are not as knowledgeable as those in or reading this thread.
What we are left with is little incentive to make real improvements to the consumer scanners. The producers can't raise the price to accommodate R&D or new components or else an equilibrium point would not be reached (think raising the Y axis of the graph to $1,000); there would not be sufficient demand at such price point to produce the better scanner.
Now let's consider government and utility radio supply and demand.
Government radio demand is fairly inelastic, meaning the quantity demanded is fairly stable despite the price. Each government employee, vehicle, and dispatch center needs a radio. It's critical to the functioning of the agency. Additionally, it is not a competitive nor rational market. Decisions are based on politics rather than the free market. The decision makers are potentially naive, and, at any rate, they are spending someone else's money on someone else. And this isn't even getting into corruption or kickbacks.
Government radio supply is also inelastic due to several factors: government procurement processes, limited competition, collusion, and proprietary technology. Since the acceptable price of radios is known (open records) and the major players already have substantial infrastructure, there is little incentive to try to enter the market (provide competition and bring prices down) and the players in the market know how to price their bids to artificially increase prices. Since demand is inelastic, there is no incentive to decrease prices since equilibrium quantity won't increase much (profit = profit per item sold * number of items sold). It is not necessarily the cost to produce the product (i.e. cost of "better stuff") that determines the price, but the inelastic demand and the political rather than competitive market.
So how does a radio manufacturer make more money? They increase demand by convincing people to build out new radio systems or add features to justify an increase in price. In the graph above, it is apparent that the biggest gains for radio marketers is to convince governments that they must upgrade their radio system (whether or not they really need to or if it would even benefit their mission); this is the shift to the right of the demand curve demonstrated above. I won't wade into discussing the ethics of some of the techniques used to sell people new systems. The next way to make more money is to have special features that justify an increase in unit price (and provide cover for the public servants buying the more expensive equipment). For instance, the radio marketers might push an encryption feature to make more money off of the relatively fixed quantity of radios they sell. The most important factors for a radio producer are to play politics (keep customers happy, give decision makers gifts, etc.), push new features, and push new systems. There is no pressure to reduce the cost of equipment and radio systems since political rather than market considerations determine price.
So, in summary, consumer scanner producers have no incentive to make better scanners because 1) most people won't pay higher prices for them and 2) they can trick us into thinking "new" scanners are better without spending much money. On the other hand, /\/\ and "competitors" have no incentive to lower prices since it won't substantially increase the number of products sold; prices are set politically, not necessarily based on the cost of the components, overhead, research, labor, etc.
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RFI-EMI-GUY
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Supply and Demand
Thanks AggieCon; Excellent comparison. And yes, the Govt consumer is often naive spending other peoples money and motivated by irrational doses of Fear Uncertainty and Doubt. May I ask what you do in your regular job!
Thanks AggieCon; Excellent comparison. And yes, the Govt consumer is often naive spending other peoples money and motivated by irrational doses of Fear Uncertainty and Doubt. May I ask what you do in your regular job!
I see someone mentions "censor" again.
I posted the below when this thread was in the Tavern and deleted it when I moved it here...I think it's time to revive it...
I see my employment was questioned. No, I don't work for Whistler...or Uniden...or even Radio Reference. I receive absolutely no compensation for doing this, no free radios, no discount on radios, no Premium subscription, no nothing.
So yes, I put up with all this crap for free.
I also have NEVER received ANY sort of directive to censor complaints for ANY company, be it Whistler, Uniden, Motorola, Kenwwod, AOR or whatever. I just try to keep discussions relevant to the topic and give members the best experience here.
I wish everyone could experience moderating. You have to walk a fine line between being impartial and not letting users disrupt a thread. Trust me, it ain't as easy as you think it is.
We gave people a place to discuss this issue intelligently and we are still accused of censoring.
I posted the below when this thread was in the Tavern and deleted it when I moved it here...I think it's time to revive it...
I see my employment was questioned. No, I don't work for Whistler...or Uniden...or even Radio Reference. I receive absolutely no compensation for doing this, no free radios, no discount on radios, no Premium subscription, no nothing.
So yes, I put up with all this crap for free.
I also have NEVER received ANY sort of directive to censor complaints for ANY company, be it Whistler, Uniden, Motorola, Kenwwod, AOR or whatever. I just try to keep discussions relevant to the topic and give members the best experience here.
I wish everyone could experience moderating. You have to walk a fine line between being impartial and not letting users disrupt a thread. Trust me, it ain't as easy as you think it is.
We gave people a place to discuss this issue intelligently and we are still accused of censoring.
^ That is called censorship. I like you. It's nothing personal; I hope you don't see it that way. I know that you're a volunteer. Deleting things, etc. disrupts progress and discussion. I understand starting new threads with some posts (probably half a dozen times I have requested posts to be moved). But I do it because I think the poster will be more likely to have someone find and help him with his unique issue rather than it being buried. Had you not deleted your post, I would have seen it yesterday :wink:. Don't pretend that some content isn't promoted on RR while other content is buried or even deleted.
Thank you for your time to help promote and advance scanning technology and scanning.
Hence why I threw in the moderator towel and enjoy things from the sidelines....
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
See, I can't win. If I don't delete offensive/off-topic/whatever posts we get complaints...If we do delete offensive/off-topic/whatever posts we get complaints.
Maybe we should ignore all post reports for a week and see how that works.
As I said, I have NEVER been directed/told/emailed/whatever to censor ANYTHING. But you seem to know otherwise.
And this is why posts get deleted...threads get derailed.
Let's get this back on the LSM/CQPSK discusion and not on perceived notions of censorship (I'm sure saying this is a form of censorship :lol
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