I've -got- to stop replying on my phone... sorry for the typos and terse response...
I'm a big guy and those buttons are -sooo- small...

I meant to say "I think using the usbradio channel driver, and letting the DSP software decode the pl would be better."

There was even some discussion a while back about using different PL's to allow different functions... ie: use one pl to access the repeater, locally, yet, another pl to access the repeater and it's linking.  That sounds pretty cool... driving around, talking to the local drive-time crowd, hanging out locally on the repeater, then you hear someone come on the machine from across the country... hmmm.. lemme change PL's and talk to -that- guy...
but... what about the locals?  
I think the better option there, would be to connect in monitor mode, have the monitor volume about half-muted so as to not interfere with the local traffic, and THEN, if something is of interest, connect fully to that node, and join in.

Or, you could use a second pl to secure access to sending command codes......

lots of options, when using the DSP portion of ASL.

-Geoff/W5OMR