The Baofeng question brings up a good point, the fallacy that you need to use usbradio to have good audio. This is just not the case in fact in many cases simpleusb offers much better audio. Whether you pre/deemphasize in the radio or in SW is really inconsequential. Both do the same thing. The idea that speaker audio is bad is a misnomer. Yes, speaker audio taken from the speaker would be problematic but taken from the high side of the volume pot or somewhere before that in the circuit after deemphasis would be no problem. The fact that the Acid release installs configured for usbradio means that most just use that mode. The simpleusb.conf file is not even in /etc/asterisk and one has to search for it and also the docs on using it. simpleusb would work just fine for most people and would probably be a good choice for newcomers to Allstar. You do need COS or CTCSS and PL decode in the radio but in most cases that is readily available and is no big deal. Some of the worst audio I have heard on the Allstar network is from usbradio. This is often detected as distortion in the audio caused by the DSP functions. I can only speculate on where it comes from but it seems to happen more often, but not always, when processor power is lacking. It is a very distinct distortion and when you hear it you can tell the node is using usbradio. And yes there are some features in usbradio like squelch tail elimination, etc. that are nice but personally I have never had a need for them. 73 Doug WA3DSP http://www.crompton.com/hamradio