So you bought that fancy new digital scanner and while it usually works great, sometimes on certain digital systems it doesn’t seem to sound right. Sometimes it just drops words or phrases but sometimes it drops the whole conversation.
You try moving the scanner around or connect to a better antenna and it doesn’t help or even gets worse. Before you throw the scanner against the wall in frustration read on:
We feel your pain! The problem isn’t you or in or the programming. It is called “Simulcast Digital Distortion” or more commonly “Bit Error”. Our friends at RadioReference have a great technical explanation of this in their Wiki at http://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/Simulcast_digital_distortion
The 10 cent explanation of this is that you have signals from more than one tower arriving at your radio at ever-so-slightly different times. These signals compete with each other and tend to null each other out. This is why sometimes the radio will stop but you won’t hear any or part of it.
There are a couple things you can do to help get past this issue. If your radio has an attenuator function try that first. This reduces the signal and hopefully will force your radio to only be able to receive a single tower site. You can also try moving the antenna around the room to see if you can find a “sweet spot”. If you are using a telescoping antenna try adjusting it to different lengths or angles. Also try opening the squelch all the way. If all you are listening to is the digital system then this will not affect other channels.
If all of this fails then you may need to try a directional antenna. Commonly called “Yagi’s” these antennas will direct your reception in a single direction and hopefully force your radio to hear only a single tower.
This type of digital distortion usually is less prevalent with newer models of scanners and firmware updates usually reduce it as well. Make sure you have a current model scanner and that its firmware is up to date.
