DMR vs FM testing UHF and VHF 

Thanks! Field tests do make pretty reliably entertaining videos

Ringway Manchester Great test by the way

Ringway Manchester Thanks, and yeah it is the UK simple license.

Cheers for that.

If you were to get a UK simple license for range testing purposes would it still be permitted to do so? Or does it have to be for a "business" type application only.

UK Simple covers a specific frequency, 5w, mobile and portable. note 5w is ERP. You can talk about what you like, no politics, racism, music playing or re-transmitting someones voice. Get your M6, you can range test on VHF and UHF until your hearts content :)

Having a 4000series radio can confirm that they are indeed very robust, and have really good recievers. Programming them can however be difficult.

RF-halation Thanks. Yeah, it was very good sounding actually and had barely any noise. The antenna I was using on the Baofeng was a really good one though.

+14OA37 on air Thanks!

SE Scanner Yes, I agree with you on that. I would try it too if I had any VHF DMR equipment.

Yes exactly. There's a programming software and you set the frequency and other details yourself for each channel. Businesses can have their own repeater and choose different channels for each group of people like cleaners, security and so on.

He has his priorities right ;) lol

He ain’t a pu€£y his big man

DMR while clear, loses voice quality. Voice quality refers to “how understandable are you”. With improper usage, in my experience dmr will lose clarity (sounds muffled). However, DMR has a lot of pros including DCDM/TDMA (dual timeslot operation for both simplex and repeaters) and the ability to encrypt audio.

@@chamian1167 I think the occurrence of cheap Chinese DMR radios lowers the quality of DMR radios. When a Motorola DMR radio talks to another Motorola DMR radio, they literally will have no big problem; signalling features are compatible as well as voice is less robotic and understandable. But when other cheap Chinese DMR radios prompt out, the average quality is lower and signalling features are not compatible within brands. A correctly tuned DMR radio can sound as natural as other digital standards. It depends on how the user talks into the microphone, the audio profile of the radio and the brand of radio.

@@galax574 I find that a $30 dmr radio performs about the same as my $500 dmr xpr 7580is when used properly

@@chamian1167 Congrats! You've mastered the radio

@@galax574 I have a couple cheap Chinese tyt dmr radios, and just bought two used xpr6300s to replace them as I bought them for work and don't want to hand them to someone and they start pushing buttons. Less stuff to break with no keypad or screen too. I honestly don't hear much of a difference other than maybe the Motorola's speaker is a bit less tinny

Not quite sure why you said that. The baofeng performed very well in this video. It's hard to see much difference between it and the kenwood.

+radiosification I had headphones on when watching this yesterday and heard a ton of static from the Baofeng, though I went through it again just now and still say the same but I noticed the actual voice clarity did pare well in comparison to the Kenwood...once I got past the static and really listened. Still say the Motorola fared best.

I do agree with you anyway that the kenwood is a far better radio. We had problems (not shown in the video) with my baofeng receiving interference from pagers on a different frequency. I could hear Bradley absolutely fine with a good signal when the pagers were not transmitting, but as soon as they started his signal was completely wiped out in the baofeng. This is due to its direct conversion receiver whereas the kenwood probably has super heterodyne and we had no problems with that. The baofeng did actually sound better than in the recording though. I remember being really surprised at how little noise there was, and then disappointed at how much there was in the recording. I think maybe it's thanks to the AGC in the camera I was using. In real life it sounded excellent (when it worked).

+radiosification I concur. I did seem to notice once the signal changed from digital to analog all radios fared worse across the board. That may have just been line-of-sight and what you mentioned before with the pagers and whatnot. How did the Motorola sound in real life as opposed to this recording? Were there any quality issues or differences when switching from digital to analog or vice versa?

Just note that we did not use digital on VHF at all. Only the motorola radios were using DMR mode as well as FM. The baofeng and kenwood were only operating in FM. Digital seemed to work very well here. It seemed to get through slightly better than FM on UHF. There were no issues switching between the modes, because you just program them in beforehand with the motorola radios, then in the field all you have to do is change the channel. The motorola sounded good in real life. I can't remember it really well enough to comment on the difference between real life and the recording. I did have an audio enhancement mode on though which increases the treble. There are a number of audio profiles to choose from in the menu of the radio. I think the audio might have sounded slightly better with it off actually.

See this document: static.ofcom.org.uk/static/businessradio/BusinessRadioSimpleUK.pdf

Similar to how you have to get used to picking out words from background noise on analog, you kind of have to develop an ear for digital. Once you get used to it I feel like it's reasonably more comfortable to listen to as you don't get the fatiguing background noise

What licence are you planning to use?

Since you didn't answer my other comment I'm guessing you don't have an amateur licence or anything. I highly recommend it. I really enjoyed doing the foundation course at a local club and met some nice people. And then you can use all the amateur repeaters around you and chat to other people who are into radio.

@@radiosification I don't know where he is but I am in Canada and a commercial licence was easy to acquire.

+delboyonline Or if you want to reduce listener fatigue by not having to listen to a noisy signal all the time

Ex ter mi nate!

THIS DEBATE WILL LAST FOREVER...

No. Read the other comments if you're interested to find out more

@@radiosification it's ok. I have a 0 - 1300 MHz multimode transceiver

@@alexanderNorseCode that doesn't make it legal

+radiosification I need 3 Motorola walkie talkie can you please give them to me

Obviously I can't just give them to you. Go on ebay and buy them yourself.

Please you are my favorite RU-vidr

I need them

I work for lance and I need 3 please or I will get fired

500 MHz is unused in the US

Its a light licence frequency, 5 watts no base stations.

No it isn't using amateur frequencies.

+radiosification what frequencies are you using?

+radiosification what type

Also consider he is in London (band plans are different)

In the UK you can get a "Simple UK light" license which allows you to use a few channels including that one for a set fee. The channels are shared with many other users, however the VHF ones are often not busy and the UHF ones are usually full of interference from other users.

That depends on how much noise there is really, and how good or bad the microphone practises of the talker are.

No

I thought that DMR did better than analog in this video. You can't compare UHF DMR to VHF analog, because that's not a fair comparison.

Radiosification is correct. I've two Yaesu UHF/VHF units (2900 and 7900) and two Baofeng uhf/vhf units (F8 and 5RE+), but my "go-to" radio is my Tytera MD-380 DMR HT. Crystal clear, loud volume, and with just an FCC "Technician" level license, one can speak to folks in the United Kingdom from the USA. A third of the members of my radio club now have DMR radios, and their popularity is growing in leaps and bounds. Natalia, do you even have a license? I ask because it appears that you know little of that you wrote. N4ANO

The sound is better on the analogue. The sound quality is better on the analogue. With DMR we have a lot of problems at work. Traditional analogue was better :(

This is not a review

You should learn to use one properly then LoL