Hi Warren,
When Olivia first became somewhat popular, it was "mode of the month"... there was a lot of experimentation with tones and bandwidths. Operators found advantages for various conditions and needs, with extremes of each flavor. The 2000/64 is quite good for interference rejection. We used it on 40 metres to work through strong shortwave AM broadcast stations that used to be around 7105-7125 kHz. You can QSO with Olivia 2000/64 signals in the midst of S9+ broadcast music interference, without using a narrow passband filter. Just tune your VFO dial to about 500Hz above the broadcast station's carrier frequency. Not many digi modes are capable of that level of performance, even with a lot of help from narrow filters. But, the 500Hz 16-tone flavor of Olivia ended up becoming popular... not really because of its technical superiority over the other flavors... it is mainly because it is the best compromise for weak signal and fast enough keyboarding speed, and still fits within the IARU regions' bandplans 500Hz bandwidth segments. Operating near where RTTY/PSK/other modes are normally found increases the chances for random QSOs and responses to CQs. 73 Bonnie VR2/KQ6XA > K5WGM Warren wrote: > has anyone tryied to push the max tones to 256, > like 2000/256?> What is the SNR on that I wonder? ./