[Scan-DC] Trunked Radio audio quality

[Alan Henney]

Hi Carl, and the list.

I share your thoughts exactly on digital audio.  My first experience with a
digital radio was "this radio must have old firmware or something."

For crying out loud, users should never have to be told that trying to
understand what somebody is trying to say is "something you have to get
acclimated to."

Arlington County is still analog and sounds great to my ear.  Which brings
me to my next point.  I can understand advantages of building an all-analog
or all-digital system, but why have several jurisdictions chosen to mix both
on the same system (Howard, Upper Eastern Shore, Worcester, maybe Charles)?
Either you intend to conserve bandwidth or not.

Had APCO digital systems existed when I started, and with this amount of
complication, poor audio..... I probably would be collecting baseball cards
right now!

With regard to the note that digital systems are intended to conserve
bandwidth, I would have to point out that APCO audio sounds significantly
worse to me than digital audio used by the cell carriers who also have
spectrum efficiency goals.  It's as if APCO is older technology.  Although
Nextel sounds pretty awful at times.

Alan