[Flexradio] wireless MIC for use with Delta 44/SDR
I see where the Computer Geeks have extended the Mike Kit Buy until Tuesday, November 29th, 12 Midnight. Still listed at $6.99, plus Shipping ($8.00 in my case). 73, Carl, WN3DUG [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Thought you might be interested in this little gem. It will plug directly into a Delta 44 sound card and works great! It is a wireless MIC which has plenty of gain to drive the SDR [and for that matter any sound card; however, you may need to build an adapter.] The sound quality is nearly as good as a studio MIC- no kidding! The MIC is on sale for under $7. That's right under $7. I've used this mic with a variety of rigs and still can get over it's performance. just saw this at the Computer Geeks website and thought you might be interested: http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?InvtId=WM-603-Ncm_ven=Frooglecm_cat=Shoppingcm_ite=total http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?InvtId=WM-603-Ncm_ven=Frooglecm_cat=Shoppingcm_ite=total 73, John W5GI The Audio Doctor
Re: [Flexradio] Transmit muddy audio
Richard, No problems here either. I use almost the exact same setup except I have the PR20 and I connect the output to the 4-pin mic connector in order to get PTT control from my footswitch connected to the W2IHY EQ+. >From the EQ+, the shield and PTT ground are tied together. The mic- is not connected to ground. I am using the Hosa cables from the Delta44 breakout box. I have not experimented with this, but the Delta44 has no mic preamp, so you may be having issues driving the soundcard with a dynamic mic. That is one of the reasons why I chose to use the EQ+. The other was that I can monitor myself in real time rather than using the MON feature in PowerSDR. 73 de W4TME -Tim --- Tim Ellison ( [EMAIL PROTECTED] ) Integrated Technical Services ( http://www.itsco.com ) From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of ab7r Sent: Monday, November 28, 2005 11:48 PM To: Jeff Anderson; FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Transmit muddy audio Ive been using a PR40 mic via W2IHY EQ+ and get great audio reports. The cable from the EQ+ directly to input 3 of the soundcard breakout box has the mic ground and the shield tied to gether. I think on the ring but not sure, may be the sleeve. GL Greg AB7R -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]On Behalf Of Jeff Anderson Sent: Monday, November 28, 2005 4:10 PM To: FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Transmit muddy audio This may not fix it, but it's very important that the Mic's PTT ground *NOT* be connected to the Mic's analog ground, otherwise, you can get some strange audio effects. You need a true four-wire connection, not 3 wires (that is, do not tie the two grounds together). Also - if not already done, verify that the mics are correctly connected to the 4-pin connector. 73, - Jeff, WA6AHL richard brossard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello All , Am running a flex with d 44 sound card ,compact computer amd 64 3500 plus 512 mem and have tried all the software including the beta and have muddy mid range audio with leading edge keying spike that trips the amp instantly . I have tried several mikes a shure dynamic and an md100 to no avail . I notice the rf output also runs way up then way down in output . The mike's i use are perfect with my 1000 d , 1000 mp , ts 2000 , pro , and orion so they should be even better with the ability of the flex to eq . The reciever is fantastic much better to listen to than the orion . Any ideas what i'm doing wrong . [EMAIL PROTECTED] __ Yahoo! Music Unlimited Access over 1 million songs. Try it free. http://music.yahoo.com/unlimited/ ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz smime.p7s Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature
Re: [Flexradio] Transmit muddy audio
The situation may be different when using an external preamp. To get my unit on the air quickly after it arrived, I had grabbed an old hand-held mic from my "box-a-mics" that had the correct 4-pin connector and that keyed the radio when I pressed PTT. Although the mic's stock wiring "worked" (it's an old Drake hand-held model witha 4-pin connector), I hadproblems with echo, weird periodic"ticks" in the audio, etc., until I finally bit the bullet, disassembled the connector, and then wired it per the SDR1Kdiagram. Also, because of the low-signal levels of many non-amplified mics, digital noise that's introduced into the audio path due to the ground-loop formed when connecting the PTT gnd tomic(-)can benoticable when you increase mic gain to a useul level and then monitor the audio input at the SDR1K. At least, this noise was certainlynoticable on my unit, and disappeared when I seperated the gnds. And with the mic correctly wired, I've consistenly received very good audio reports. So, my recommendation is...if in doubt, first verify mic wiring. 73, - Jeff, WA6AHLTim Ellison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Richard, No problems here either. I use almost the exact same setup except I have the PR20 and I connect the output to the 4-pin mic connector in order to get PTT control from my footswitch connected to the W2IHY EQ+. From the EQ+, the shield and PTT ground are tied together. The mic- is not connected to ground. I am using the Hosa cables from the Delta44 breakout box. I have not experimented with this, but the Delta44 has no mic preamp, so you may be having issues driving the soundcard with a dynamic mic. That is one of the reasons why I chose to use the EQ+. The other was that I can monitor myself in real time rather than using the MON feature in PowerSDR. 73 de W4TME -Tim --- Tim Ellison ( [EMAIL PROTECTED] ) Integrated Technical Services ( http://www.itsco.com ) From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of ab7rSent: Monday, November 28, 2005 11:48 PMTo: Jeff Anderson; FlexRadio@flex-radio.bizSubject: Re: [Flexradio] Transmit muddy audio Ive been using a PR40 mic via W2IHY EQ+ and get great audio reports. The cable from the EQ+ directly to input 3 of the soundcard breakout box has the mic ground and the shield tied to gether. I think on the ring but not sure, may be the sleeve. GL Greg AB7R -Original Message-From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]On Behalf Of Jeff AndersonSent: Monday, November 28, 2005 4:10 PMTo: FlexRadio@flex-radio.bizSubject: Re: [Flexradio] Transmit muddy audio This may not fix it, but it's very important that the Mic's PTT ground *NOT* be connected to the Mic's analog ground, otherwise, you can get some strange audio effects. You need a true four-wire connection, not 3 wires (that is, do not tie the two grounds together). Also - if not already done, verify that the mics are correctly connected to the 4-pin connector. 73, - Jeff, WA6AHLrichard brossard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello All ,Am running a flex with d 44 sound card ,compactcomputer amd 64 3500 plus 512 mem and have tried allthe software including the beta and have muddy midrange audio with leading edge keying spike that tripsthe amp instantly . I have tried several mikes a shuredynamic and an md100 to no avail . I notice the rfoutput also runs way up then way down in output . Themike's i use are perfect with my 1000 d , 1000 mp , ts2000 , pro , and orion so they should be even betterwith the ability of the flex to eq . The reciever isfantastic much better to listen to than the orion . Any ideas what i'm doing wrong . [EMAIL PROTECTED] __ Yahoo! Music Unlimited Access over 1 million songs. Try it free. http://music.yahoo.com/unlimited/___FlexRadio mailing listFlexRadio@flex-radio.bizhttp://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz___FlexRadio mailing listFlexRadio@flex-radio.bizhttp://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
Re: [Flexradio] Transmit muddy audio
Jeff Anderson wrote: The situation may be different when using an external preamp. To get my unit on the air quickly after it arrived, I had grabbed an old hand-held mic from my box-a-mics that had the correct 4-pin connector and that keyed the radio when I pressed PTT. Although the mic's stock wiring worked (it's an old Drake hand-held model with a 4-pin connector), I had problems with echo, weird periodic ticks in the audio, etc., until I finally bit the bullet, disassembled the connector, and then wired it per the SDR1K diagram. Also, because of the low-signal levels of many non-amplified mics, digital noise that's introduced into the audio path due to the ground-loop formed when connecting the PTT gnd to mic(-) can be noticable when you increase mic gain to a useul level and then monitor the audio input at the SDR1K. At least, this noise was certainly noticable on my unit, and disappeared when I seperated the gnds. And with the mic correctly wired, I've consistenly received very good audio reports. So, my recommendation is...if in doubt, first verify mic wiring. I wired up an old, cheap CB desk microphone, according to the drawing, figuring I might get a better mike later. I used the Equalizer to cut down highs, and peaked aroung 1000 Hz. Anyway, I got OUTSTANDING audio reports. The guys on my MARS nets commented that my audio was better than they ever heard it. So I guess it works. -- _ _ _ _ _ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ John L. Sielke ( W ) ( 2 ) ( A ) ( G ) ( N ) http://w2agn.net \_/ \_/ \_/ \_/ \_/ CRUSTY OLD CURMUDGEON - AND PROUD OF IT!
Re: [Flexradio] laptops
Check to be sure that the laptop has a real parallel port -- few these days do. 73, Tom
Re: [Flexradio] Web site down.
Tim, I have to spend $20 here for the p7m viewer to open your posts. Do you know of any free of charge down-load watering hole? Best 73 Willi - Original Message - From: Tim Ellison [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: flexRadio@flex-radio.biz Sent: Tuesday, November 29, 2005 3:09 AM Subject: [Flexradio] Web site down. ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
Re: [Flexradio] laptops
Check to be sure that the laptop has a real parallel port -- few these days do. 73, Tom ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Mine does not have a parallel port. I found the USB to Parallel adapter a satisfactory solution. It even has a narrow enough plug that you can put in a second USB peripheral above/below it if it, too, has the narrow type plug (many things don't). But, do avoid USB hubs -- they don't work in the SDR context and they are all over the place, asking to be bought. I used a PCMCIA card to get added USB ports. Something called a port replicator (_not_ a hub) apparently also works.
Re: [Flexradio] laptops
Check to be sure that the laptop has a real parallel port -- few these days do. If you want to use a Cardbus/PCMCIA parallel port adapter, be *sure* the laptop supports 16-bit PCMCIA mode. The Dell 6000 and 9300 do not, for example. And not all parallel port adapters support parallel port bit twiddling. Don't ask... 73, Lyle KK7P
[Flexradio] THANKYOU
Just a THANKYOU to all those who responded to my laptop question. Much appreciated .. now all I have to do is decide how much to spend and on what.. hi. Regards Mike VE#BGE
Re: [Flexradio] laptops
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Mine does not have a parallel port. I found the USB to Parallel adapter a satisfactory solution. It even has a narrow enough plug that you can put in a second USB peripheral above/below it if it, too, has the narrow type plug (many things don't). I offered my caveat emptor based on our (N4HY, AB2KT, W2GPS I) experience in getting ANY of the USB = parallel widgets running in LINUX. For the testbed of the Software Defined Transponder (SDX), we used two SDR-1000s with LINUX based software tools for all the heavy horsepower DSP tasks. But we ended up needing to schlep two Windoze laptops just to handle the parallel port setup for the two SDR-1000s because we were spectacularly unsuccessful in getting the LINUX box to talk thru any USB widget we could find. I did manage to find a two-port Ethernet Print Server that Frank is trying to get working as a better solution to the problem. FYI -- Despite the frustration of needing to run three computers to make the SDX work (see the pictures at http://n4hy.smugmug.com/gallery/736793), the kludge SDX worked quite well. Audio from the first 3-way QSO can be heard at ftp://ftp.cnssys.com/pub/amsat/Eagle_SDT_1st_Contact.mp3. 73, Tom
Re: [Flexradio] Preview 6 - Audio anomolies...
Hello Jeff, I believe you're hearing the effects of the missing fast-attack path of the AGC. The slow-attack 'circuit' is in place, but the 'fast-attack' has not yet been implemented. (I've probably mangled the terminology here, but the bottom line is that the new AGC system has dual paths - one which responds to fast changes in signal levels, and one that responds to slower changes in signals. The second path is in place, but the first path, has not yet been implemented, so signals with fast and/or large leading edges will overdrive the radio until the slower circuit kicks in to reduce the level.) Back when the AGC was (partially) changed to the implementation suggested by Phil (VK6APH), we gained a beautiful decay action for the AGC, but lost control of signals that were large and/or fast in terms of rise-time. You'll notice that both strong cw and ssb signals sound very 'brittle' as a result. The higher the quality of your audio reproduction chain, (and the better your high-frequency hearing), the more noticeable the problem. I use high-fidelity headphones and a good quality audio amplifier, and it's too harsh to listen to, so I generally work with the AGC off - which isn't an ideal situation of course, but at least it's listenable then. It also helps to turn the 'treble' control down on the external amplifier. Try turning off the AGC all together, and you'll find that as long as you keep the "Fixed Gain" low enough to prevent the system from overloading, the audio sounds great with no brittleness. 73, Dale WA8SRA Jeff Anderson wrote: I was recently listening to a 40 meter SSB net out here on the west coast, and I noticed distortion on some of the audio coming out my speaker. I'm very familiar with audio degradation caused by AGC (e.g. pops on attacks, distortion caused by envelope modulation of the AGC signal, etc.), and it is one of the few things in that can really get under my skin (I've even modified my FT-1000D because I thought it had crappy audio due to its AGC action). On the SDR1K I observed this distortion occuring on voice-peaks of strong signals, and, when I monitored the signal from the SoundCard (Delta 44) to the speaker with a 'scope, I noticed that the signal peaks were sometimes clipping at about 2.8 vpp. I did a bit more investigation, and discovered a number of things: 1. Even continuous signals (from my generator) can be slightly clipped, if the volume control is set to 100. But - it depends upon the audio frequency of the tone. 2. Preview 6's audio passband is not flat. However, Version 1.4.4 has a flat passband. Please see attached waveform for V1.4.4: The passband of Preview 6 looks like: This waveform is of the signal to the speaker from the SoundCard. For both the 1.4.4 and the Preview 6 measurements the SDR1K RF Input was driven with a GR 1383 Random-Noise Generator, and it was in the following state: Freq: 7.241 Mhz. Mode: LSB BW: 4 KHz AGC: (not dependent upon AGC) Audio Level: 75 BIN: Off This measurement can also be replicated by sweeping (by hand, if using an 8640B) through the passband of the receiver. The frequencies at which the passband "peaks" is where I experienced slight clipping of the generators' (HP 8640B Fluke 6060B) signals when the audio level was set to '100.' Although interesting, neither of these measurements directly related to the audio distortion on SSB. I made some additional tests by driving the SDR1K with a "pulsed" RF input (actually, more of a step-function created by manually turning the Generator's RF On and Off) and observing the waveform of the signal to the speaker with a digital storage scope (Tek): 3. Using Preview 6, the audio envelope experienced a large overshoot on the leading edge of the RF step-function with strong signals (e.g. -50 dBm), and this overshoot would be driven into clipping. V1.4.4. had no overshoot on its leading-edge transition, and, in my opinion, looked great. 4. The overshoot experienced with Preview 6 worsens as one increases the AGC's "Attack" parameter, but is present also at its lowest value of '1'. (Unfortunately, the lowest value for this parameter is 1, not 0, so I could not test AGC overshoot with attack-time minimized to 0). On the positive side, the AGC decays nicely, which is an improvement over V1.4.4. 73, - Jeff, WA6AHL P.S. If you can't open the WMF files, I also have bitmaps, but they're quite a bit larger. ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
Re: [Flexradio] Frequency stability and calibration
Tom First let me say thanks for this message. I have already spent many hours following and reading much of the stuff on the links, you have provided with great enjoyment. I really like the cursor follower clock! Where can I get it for my local machine! Also thanks to you, Rick Hamby, Bob N4HY TvB, Frank Brickle and quite a few others for giving of your richness of knowledge and skill! It is a thrill to read! I wish I had been there for your presentations! I especially enjoyed the inspired design of the pic slaved to the 10 mhz time source! In a word Elegant! I am having trouble with your 2. below. I cant locate the files to defeat the calibration signals on the Jupiter. Where are they on gpstime.com? Thanks Eric2 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Tom Clark, W3IWI Sent: Thursday, November 24, 2005 1:30 AM To: Jim Lux Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Frequency stability and calibration Jim Lux wrote: There ARE actually sources with better close in phase noise than a quartz crystal, just in case you see one at a hamfest or surplus place (or, you're wealthy enough). A hydrogen maser, for instance (that's what we use at work, JPL, when we're concerned about such things.. but then we have an infrastructure to distribute the maser signal around, and a budget for the support staff). Actually, all H-Maser I know rely on a really high quality xtal for their short-term stability (and hence intrinsic phase noise); by high quality, I mean BVA xtal units costing in the $5k range. The transition from the BVA xtal to the maser is typically done at times ~30-100 seconds or so (see the AVARs in my tutorials I mention later, or http://www.leapsecond.com/museum/manyadev.gif to see that the BVA performance is better than the Maser up to ~30 seconds. The goal is to hand off from one oscillator to the next when their Allen deviation is equal). BTW -- we actually have a couple of amateurs that have both passive active H-Masers in their basements. One is Tom vanBaak (no call) whose efforts can be viewed at http://leapsecond.com/ and another is Jim Jaeger (K8RQ) (see http://www.clockvault.com/ if you can stand the music!). TvB offered a review paper on amateur timekeeping at the 2003 PTTI meeting, which can be fetched at http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/ptti/ptti2003/paper35.pdf. Also be sure to note TvB's Most Accurate WristWatch when you log onto leapsecond.com. I've said it before, and I'll repeat it now -- you are better off thinking in the frequency (and phase noise) domain when you are considering oscillators on time scales shorter than tens of seconds, and in the time domain for minutes and longer. If you are interested in these topics, you might want to fetch one of my Timing for VLBI tutorials at http://gpstime.com/ . In my past incarnation I ran NASA's Geodetic VLBI program and was responsible for H-masers as time and frequency standards. While I am on here making comments on this thread, I note that Alberto, I2PHD is using a circuit similar to the one I developed for locking an xtal to the 10 kHz output from the Connexant/Navman Jupiter-T receiver. A couple of notes on what I found: My initial effort also used 74HC390 dividers as a ripple counter to get from 10 MHz - 10 kHz. But I found that the propagation delay thru these dividers varied strongly with temperature, amounting to a couple of hundred nsec in a day. I fixed this problem by using a simple, but elegant circuit developed by Tom van Baak (see http://www.leapsecond.com/tools/ppsdiv.zip) which uses a PIC with its clock input driven by the 10 MHz signal and a finite state machine that executes a fixed number of instructions to generate lower frequencies. Not only is it a very stable synchronous divider, but also it need only a couple of $$ worth of parts. I did a lot of work to optimize loop time constants to try to achieve performance at the couple of nsec levels. Most of the time, the Jupiter-T steered the oscillator very well, but about once per hour, the 10 kpps (and 1pps) output sawtooth goes thru a zero-beat, with a fixed bias error spanning intervals of 10s of seconds. You can see some of these sawtooth hanging bridges that really screw up the locking in my tutorials on gpstime.com. And you can see the fix that Rick (W2GPS) is using in his latest CNS clock using the M12+ in the latest of the gpstime.com tutorials. 73, Tom
[Flexradio] FlexRadio Website down for maintenance
Dear Customers, We apologize but our website will be down for 12-24 hours while our new server address propagate tothe DNS servers worldwide. This was caused by a screw up at our ISP in switching to a more powerful server. There is nothing we can do about it because the DNS system is automated. We are sorry for any inconvenience. Regards, Gerald Youngblood K5SDR
[Flexradio] Big Power Spike with Preview 7
This has probably been reported and I missed it, but I had a very unpleasant, if brief experience last night. On preview 7, I set the PWR control to about 23, where I customarily had on 40 meters, and instead of putting out the 25 to 30 watts I normally get, it put out max power. As far as I know, the PA setting is fine and the same as on 1.4.1 where this all worked. I can drive my amplifier properly with a setting of 8 (the Harris has a two stage amp). Is there anything I've overlooked? I'm back to 1.4.1 on digital until I understand this, but I'm reluctant to do experiments that are driving output at 100 watts by the SDR's forward output. Larry WO0Z
