A digital recorder detrunks calls for logging prior to recording same. This allows retrieving what a radio monitoring a particular talkgroup hears and combines that with the best features of a detrunk-on-playback system, namely the ability to isolate those portions of all the system communications which are desired or specifically excluded. The fluid associations between talkgroup IDs, multigroup IDs, and supergroup IDs are used by the recorder to search for the audio which the user wishes to hear. The retrieval of audio heard by a particular, individual radio is made possible through the incorporation of radio affiliation information into a searchable database. A specified individual radio ID may be tracked with respect to its talkgroup affiliations, during a specified time interval, by an appropriate search algorithm. Those affiliations can, in turn, be further used with the talkgroup/supergroup/multigroup search algorithm to retrieve the audio heard by an individual radio user.