On 5/9/2014 1:26 PM, Wes (N7WS) wrote:
Likewise, after your glowing recommendation of the US100, I bought one.
Hi Wes,
I did my testing with JT65HF on he HF bands, with the K3 output feeding
both one Thinkpad internal sound card and the Tascam feeding a second
Thinkpad. I did the same comparison between the Numark and internal,
then between the Tascam and the Numark. My criteria was the number of
good decodes for each 1 minute pass. The Tascam and Numark boxes
consistently decoded twice as many signals per 1 minute pass. The
internal sound card rarely decoded a signal weaker than an indicated
-12, whereas the Tascam and Numark regularly decoded additional signals
down to -20, with occasional -22 decodes. I attribute that to better
performance near the bottom of the A/D. When comparing the two USB
boxes to each other, roughly once in ten passes, one would decode a
signal that the other would not, but neither was better than the other
-- on one pass the Tascam would miss a station that the Numark copied,
then 5-10 minutes later the Numark would miss a station that the Tascam
copied. This was quite extensive -- in addition to watching the nigher
bands, I even let them run overnight on 160, then compare decodes the
next morning.
I found performance "a bit better" with RTTY, but did no equivalent
testing to substantiate that, because I found the JT65 results far more
quantifiable and repeatable. So for RTTY contesting, the Tascam is on
one rig feeding one laptop, and the Numark is on the other rig, feeding
the other laptop. Now that we have 2Tone as an alternative to MMTTY,
I've been running three decode windows per radio, and the most I can say
to describe the result is that they are about equally good, but on
almost every pass, one of the windows will copy something that one of
both of the others missed, not no consistent advantage I've been able to
discern to one over the other. The real advantage is that you have three
looks at the same signal, so you tend to ask for far fewer repeats, AND
I have changed to not repeating the exchange. I notice W0YK doing the same.
73, Jim K9YC
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