Does digital trunking make digital, only the channel selection? Or is the voice encoded digitally as well, meaning the chance to get higher quality audio? If audio is digital, is that not available with analog trunking.
I'm going to hit some trunking FAQs about now...
Digital trunking usually refers to the voice being digital, P25. Analog trunking usually refers to the voice being analog.
If the audio is digital and you have an analog trunking scanner you won't be able to listen to it cause you can't decode the audio portion of it.
I think the other confusing thing, at least from my standpoint, that new scanner users run into is the scanner itself being called digital. For example back in the day we used to have scanners with nothing more than a led for the selected channel, crystal controlled, then we had a two digit channel display, synthesized, and then the newfangled scanners came out with a LCD screen on them and everyone started calling them a Digital Scanner because they had a Digital Display. The older units were then being called Analog Display by most of the scanner crowd. Boy have times changed!
Now days Digital Scanner means a unit which can receive and decode Digital Audio, and an Analog Scanner means a unit which can only decode Analog Audio.
Does that help at all?
The main thing is what do you have in your area and want to monitor? If everything you want to listen to is Analog Audio/Voice then you don't need a digital scanner. But if you can afford a Digital Scanner i would say go for it even if you don't need it now, you might need it in the future, and the digital units have so many more features and options than the analog scanners do. Most significant is that they usually have more memory also. I have a TON of stuff in my 396T and i'm only using 13% of the memory! I remember my old analog scanners in the past i would have them filled up and buying another one to listen to more.
If you area has trunked systems look at the database, are any of them P25? Then you need digital to listen to them.