Is there a way to make the reception sound cleaner?

Sounds like post #7 is what your looking for but, in the meantime you can try turning your squelch all the way counter clockwise and use the RF gain to tune in only the more powerful (closer) signals. Start with RF gain all the way counter clockwise and turn it clockwise till all the hash comes in then back off until quiet, then only strong signals will punch through without all the weaker hash.

 

If only some operators are garbled I suspect the garbled transmissions are from radios that have been ruined to make them " louder"
cut limiters, super swing kits, power mics ect. I've heard some that sound like their mouth is full of marbles.
I'd rather be clear at 4 miles than garbled at 20 .
Unless all your audio is effected (IMHO) It's not your radio it's theirs.

 

I don't mean to dredge up a necro-post, but I agree with the suggestions above (for whatever *that's* worth...) For analog AM signals, it's really hard to improve the quality of a signal that sucks (technical term, but intuitive) in the first place. As has been already noted, echo/robo-voice/delay and other "enhancements" to peoples' voices. Go to a concert that has both voices and instruments sometime, especially where one of the band members is running the sound. When the singer needs to talk to the audience and the sound guy/gal *doesn't* turn off the vocal effects (typically reverb and/or delay), the effected voice sound (in this case, "effected" isn't a typo; it means "has effects added" sounds, well, mushy. That's because the spaces that *used* to be between the syllables, however short they may have been, help your ear & brain break down the voice into recognizable units that the language part of your brain uses to decode the sounds into words.

But fill up those spaces with, say, static from a weak signal that has engine noise mixed in, or the "You want fries with that?" guy/gal at the drivethrough, or, to stay on topic, with several repeats of the most recent syllable on your radio, or even just what sounds like echo from someone yelling in a large concert hall, and those spaces that your brain expects to hear, to match the pattern of familiar words, disappears.

It is for that reason that, with a decent sound guy/gal at a concert, the effects are turned *off* when someone has to speak between songs. That sound is typically referred to as "dry" (as opposed to when the effects are on, predictably called "wet"), and is done so that you'll be able to understand what is being said, like, "If you throw a frisbee, we're leaving the stage," (Jethro Tull), or "Please leave through the front doors, as the lobby is on fire," (I made that one up).

During a music performance, the effects are added in to help syllables that are sung end closer to where the associated chord or self-indulgent guitar solo finishes up. It can also help imprecise timing between voices singing harmony, by kinda stretching out the syllables, starts, stops, etc. And as a non-singing instrumentalist, I can attest that some effects are just plain needed to make your stage rig sound more more like the original did, if you're playing covers.

Many CBers insist that adding "just a little reverb enhances my voice". Nearly without exception (I believe), those same CBers are using talkback so they can hear for themselves just how awesome they sound -- at least to themselves. Without talkback, and without a critical listener who *also* thinks that more distortion equals better voice, it can be hard to dial in just the right amount of ....ummm..... effect.

My personal preference for noise toys is to wire them into the receive circuit, so that one's transmitted circuit goes out as clean as possible, and any desired awesomeness can be attributed to *everyone* that's being received.

Lots of other things can foul up the signals you hear. The aforementioned noise toys, alternator, fuel injector, wind noise at the mic, intermittent antenna system connections, transmitters that have been "tuned" by someone with no more test gear than a wattmeter and a screwdriver, unfiltered DC to their (or your) radio...... the list goes on and on.

A couple of suggestions above mentioned testing with an external speaker. Even though a built-in speaker can show on an ohmmeter as OK (an 8-ohm speaker should show about 6.5 ohms DC resistance, a 4-ohm speaker should show about 3.2 ohms DC resistance -- note that DC resistance is always lower than AC impedance, which is how speakers are rated. A warped frame on the speaker cone, or a speaker cone that was wet once and now dried out, can take a permanent "goofiness" in its shape and a corresponding bad sound. (Please forgive the use of the technical term "goofiness".) A simple substitution of a plug-in external speaker (of the right impedance) is a quick check to see if poor receive audio is attributable to a receiver malfunction or just a bad speaker.

The folks who purport to "tweak & peak" (notice how the terms are always used together, like "kit & kaboodle"; what's a kaboodle, anyway?) with no more test gear than a wattmeter and (maybe) a proper tuning tool for each slug, have been known to watch the wattmeter as they twist *everything* that looks like an adjustment. Some of those parts are for the i.f. stages, which ideally get tuned with a sweep generator. One or two adjustments (depending upon the model) can affect the synthesizer, either detuning or killing certain channels, on transmit AND receive. The receiver's RF chain makes the receiver more (or less, if done wrong) sensitive to weak signals. Some radios have squelch threshold controls that can make the receiver more or less usable with weaker signals. Most radios above the very lowest tier hat a couple of controls that can make the meter show higher or lower readings for the same signal level -- it's an easy way to make the user think that his/her/its "super tech" did an amazing job.

Schottkey component replacements in the receiver *can* make the receiver hear better with a lower noise level, but only if the right parts are used AND a proper receiver alignment is performed. Otherwise you're just putting in "wrong parts" that the receiver hasn't been tuned to use properly.

Radios with a noise blanker have adjustments that need -- you guessed it -- proper test gear; in this case, one of the items is a calibrated noise generator.

If the radio you're listening to has fallen victim to a quick & dirty "tweak and peak" without the use of a spectrum analyzer to see how much of his/her/its transmitted signal is outside of the channel that's dialed up, then *everyone* with radio range of that transmitter, either on nearby CB channels or on some harmonic of it (i.e., 54, 81, 108MH, etc.) will be hearing some of its energy. And since wattmeters show just the total amount of energy being transmitted, up to their upper frequency limit, a bare-bones "shop" will be incapable of telling how badly he/she/it has tuned the radio on his/her/its bench.

My suggestion would be to 1) plug in a known, good external speaker and see if it makes any difference (good or bad), and if it sounds equally crappy all the time (not just with very weak signals),
2) get it in to a well equipped shop (there are lots on the "CB shop white list" in another thread) and have someone go through it. Sometimes it's something as simple as a single failed component, but not everyone is equipped to find it. If it's a very old or very inexpensive radio, it may not be worth putting much $$$ into. Bench time, especially at a shop that may have over $50,000 invested in equipment (pretty easy to do) , ain't cheap. At some point, it's a better deal to just replace a 35-yr-old Audiovox or Sparkomatic with a $70 Cobra 25.

Sorry for the long post, especially when there were already so many good posts in the thread.

Guess I just needed to test my typing skills. FWIW, I've about worn out the printing on my "Backspace" keycap......

73

 

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