RTLSDR-Airband VS rdio-scanner

You're all correct, except there are not that many $30 SDRs out there. Also, most SDRs have clearly superior capabilities to the RTL-SDR, though those capabilities often are not required.

BTW, for simple AM/FM demodulation I cannot recommend enough the handy https://github.com/charlie-foxtrot/RTLSDR-Airband. For example most of LiveATC.net feeds run on it.

rtlsdr_airband, but again requires knowing the frequencies of interest ahead of time.

You may want to give RTLSDR-Airband a look. Its designed for analog AM/NFM voice traffic and can be configured to operate on any frequency your rtlsdr dongle can handle. It can also be configured to output to an mp3 file, in addition to other things like IceCast.

There’s an example service config file in the repo: https://github.com/charlie-foxtrot/RTLSDR-Airband/blob/main/init.d/rtl_airband.service

I have been streaming the output from RTLSDR-Airband (https://github.com/charlie-foxtrot/RTLSDR-Airband) with icecast2 for several (5?) Years now, and I have some time and inclination to look at reducing latency (currently best is 10s, but often much more.)

https://github.com/szpajder/RTLSDR-Airband Might be what you are looking for, although I don't know the performance requirements. It has a scan mode detailed here: https://github.com/szpajder/RTLSDR-Airband/wiki/Configuring-channels-for-scan-mode

If your area is P25, then https://github.com/robotastic/trunk-recorder with https://github.com/chuot/rdio-scanner makes a great setup.

This is the answer. I use this program and it works great. May also want to get https://github.com/chuot/rdio-scanner as this will let you pick and choose which of the monitored talkgroups to listen to, queue up the messages so you're not hearing a bunch of stuff at the same time (or missing things altogether), and lets you go back in time. It also has a great mobile app that you can setup if you want to listen when away from your PC.

trunk-recorder can do this https://github.com/robotastic/trunk-recorder while originally designed for trunked systems, it can handle conventional systems as well. Which pairs nicely with https://github.com/chuot/rdio-scanner which provides a nice web/phone app interface to listen to, that includes the ability go back thru a call archive.

Then use this as a front end with trunk-recorder. Both are in docker images and run 24/7 no issues.

https://github.com/chuot/rdio-scanner is a great alternative if you don't want to stream to one of the public options and it has a plugin for trunk-recorder and a mobile web app.

You can use Trunk Recorder to record signals and RDIO Scanner to play them as they are captured. That will only work if they are all in the passband of the SDR, but you can use more than one SDR with it.

Trunk -recorder and 2 or 3 RTL-SDR's will work well for P25 and analog trunked systems. Rdio Scanner is a good web interface for trunk-recorder that will let you stream the audio over the internet.