What is the Difference Between Narrowband and Wideband on GMRS Radios?

As we all known GMRS 8-14 channels need to use narrow band but other GMRS channels use wide band and the GMRS repeaters are mostly use wide band. Today, let us talk about the the difference between GMRS wide band and narrow band.

But do not confuse bandwidth(wide band or narrow band) with channel spacing.

Channel spacing is how far apart each channel is from each other and bandwidth is the amount of frequencies that a channel occupies in the spectrum. a wider channel uses more frequencies in the spectrum and will allow the audio signal that you hear of the talking voice, the wider it is allow that talking signal to go up and down higher, it will give it more room to deviate. A wider channel will usually result in better audio quality.

In some situations, we may not notice the narrowband or wideband in the current channel, we just talk about it because a wideband radio is compatible with a narrow band radio, they can talk to each other just fine, but there will be some minor issues, and usually, the weaker your signal is between the two radios or the farther away you are from each other, the more pronounces those issues will become。 because a narrow band radio transmits a smaller more narrow signal and because a wideband radio is listening for a wider signal, the audio of the narrowband radio may sound lower when being received by the wider band radio， So the strength of the narrowband signal may be strong.
because the allowable volume of the wideband radio is more, the volume will only be occupying roughly half of that space, so the volume will sound lower similarly when the wideband radio is talking to the narrowband radio because that volume range that deviation a signal going up and down from the highs to the lows because it is wider on the narrowband radio, it may sound too loud or boomy or Clippy if you ever turn the volume up too high on your boom box and the music clipped or cut out it might sound like that because there’s too much volume trying to go into too small of a space. 

So when you’re talking from a wideband radio to a narrow band radio, you will still understand each other and if you are close you may not even notice the difference. But as the far between you two get further and further and more and more and as the signal becomes weaker and as the static level becomes higher you may begin to notice the issues more.