For education..... what was "Sound Tracker" ?

[nomadradio]

Still waiting to see the word "compander" in this thread.

The "Sound Tracker" chip was developed to improve the clarity of cordless home phones. Reduce noise, and boost the voice audio. Looked up the number on those chips when this feature first appeared.

Putting one of these chips in the phone's base unit and one in the handset is how it was designed to be used.

Pretty much what Cobra is telling you, that it works best when both radios have this feature turned on at the same time.

Or so they say.

73

 

[Rwb]

Man I feel old, we had things like dbX Dolby HX, Quadraphonic, Omnisonic imagers - all kinds of compression/Expansion technology for the effort of reducing the noise from the transfers' of Recordings to tape or other mediums that had inherited traits for noise floor problems Noise gates are about as close as you can come to understanding that.

The effort the technology did back then was more or less "transparent" to the end user if they did not have the proper equipment you still could enjoy much of the sounds and music of those recorded efforts - but without the proper de or pre emphasis equipment - you couldn't truly enjoy the effects of microphone placements and how the studio engineers put together such an effort.

It's although overdone now, the effort of Pink Floyds' Dark Side Of The Moon album as well as Billy Thorpes' Children Of The Sun - cheesy by todays standards but definitely a lot of the effects embedded in the tracks could be brought out by using that equipment.

dont forget quasar with his works in his drawers, opps tv sorry andy diffrent critter

 

[Mustang 131]

I should do a video on the Soundtracker. It works excellent on the receiver in my pickup.With the combo of a great tune, good antenna, Motorola speaker and the noise blanker. I can turn my volume to max and not hear any noise.
In fact I usually forget that it's maxed and get reminded when a local keys.
It was a great feature, too bad many didn't understand it.

 

[Handy Andy]

Still waiting to see the word "compander" in this thread.

Check Post #4, requoted per @LeapFrog for @loosecannon - reference - so since that came up - you now have mentioned it three times - post #16, Originally #4, and by using the OXFORD COMMA, this post...

I guess I'm number #19...​

 

[nomadradio]

Check Post #4, requoted per @LeapFrog for @loosecannon

Whups. Another opportunity to 'read for comprehension'. Missed that one.

73

 

[9C1Driver]

I should do a video on the Soundtracker. It works excellent on the receiver in my pickup.With the combo of a great tune, good antenna, Motorola speaker and the noise blanker. I can turn my volume to max and not hear any noise.
In fact I usually forget that it's maxed and get reminded when a local keys.
It was a great feature, too bad many didn't understand it.

It's only supposed to work when the other station you are talking to also has a sound tracker radio. Maybe you just have the receive properly aligned and a good speaker. Messed with several Cobra 29 ST radio's back in the day, with it turned on the receive had a warble or ocean wave sound to it. The only time it kinda worked was with two ST radio's. With all the radio's tested when you tuned that feature OFF they worked great.

 

[Handy Andy]

It's only supposed to work when the other station you are talking to also has a sound tracker radio. Maybe you just have the receive properly aligned and a good speaker. Messed with several Cobra 29 ST radio's back in the day, with it turned on the receive had a warble or ocean wave sound to it. The only time it kinda worked was with two ST radio's. With all the radio's tested when you tuned that feature OFF they worked great.

Many who tried to use ECHO - also encountered similar pulsation problems with audio in their receive...

The noise threshold and the expansion of it, trying to use AGC to help with this would only wind up with a "dead as a bed of nails" receiver or roaring conch-shell effects ...

​

Thank you Mrs...

Anyhoo, wanted to just add that the concept of the ST - if you still used it, even though others may not, you still had the expansion ability.

Again, expansion being that in a Cobra 25, or 29 that ST helped push down the noise floor.

Using it on top of the ANL, RF Gain and NB - ST added a level to the playing field that made quite a trio of noise fighters that really did help in hearing stations close by.

But in doing so, remember the adage above, the "Dead as a bed of nails" is just that - if it got a pumped up echo board driver using it hard over on all four corners keying up in the yard - it would "spike" your receive with a very noisy and distorted receive from the other operator forcing the expandor side, with that little amp in line (TR801 Graphic) after the ANL - to really punch the audio to a level that it has had been known to damage the audio amp and the speaker in certain cases of excessive volume.


You could tell the days of the speaker in those Cobras subjected to that type of abuse - their speakers were quite shot - pretty garbled up results.

 

[Mustang 131]

It's only supposed to work when the other station you are talking to also has a sound tracker radio. Maybe you just have the receive properly aligned and a good speaker. Messed with several Cobra 29 ST radio's back in the day, with it turned on the receive had a warble or ocean wave sound to it. The only time it kinda worked was with two ST radio's. With all the radio's tested when you tuned that feature OFF they worked great.

Thats incorrect. An expander will lower the sound of low sounds. And increase the sound of loud sounds. Thus less noise.

 

[9C1Driver]

I refer you to post #3 and #8 in this thread. This was what we observed 20 years ago when several of us tried this feature in a Cobra 29. With ST turned on the receive on the radio was really bad. I'm glad it works for you and you like it.