OT: Digital Trunked Radio: Audio quality

[Iain McFadyen]

I wanted to ask everyone's opinion regarding the audio quality of the
digital trunked radio networks in use by the public service departments.

I consider myself to be pretty good at picking information out of a
pile-up, or noisy radio conditions, but when I am listening to some of
these digital channels, I have extreme difficulty picking up the
information.

Wondering whether our public service staff are suffering the same thing or
whether perhaps;...
(i) the type of receiver being used to transfer the audio to the internet
is not faithfully decoding the digital audio?
(ii) the receiver is badly located, and I am hearing what is essentially
'packet loss' across the RF interface?
(iii) the IP path from the radio to my PC is congested. (i.e. the
degradation is related to the Internet portion, not the radio segment)?

To experience this, go to the following link, select by clicking once in
the left hand box, on either Fairfax Fire & Rescue, or Fairfax Police.

http://www.radioreference.com/apps/audio/?action=cwp&ctid=2848

My experiences are that Fairfax Fire dispatch is crisp and clear but units
responding are garbled.
Farifax Police is garbled and units responding are also garbled.

If they are on the same trunked network, how could FFX Police be garbled
and yet FFX Fire is perfect?

Iain   KI4HLV
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