Hello, All, This email is directed to those members of this list who are potentially interested in what Linrad has to offer. It is in response to some earlier comments/complaints about Linrad posted to this list. If you are not interested in Linrad, or are not willing to spend some time learning it, then delete this message now, so I don't waste your time.
Leif made Linrad to be an extremely versatile, powerful SDR tool. Many, many of us have found Linrad to be without equal for demanding tasks like 2 meter EME, weak signal UHF/microwave work, etc. And it has many users, most of whom likely don't subscribe to [or if they do, don't post to] this particular forum. Linrad's versatility and power come with the price of a steep learning curve to learn how to best apply its tremendously powerful and exceedingly flexible capabilities. I suspect that Leif is more interested in spending his limited time to improve the capabilities of his powerful SDR tool for those who are sufficiently interested and adept to learn it well enough to use its power than he is in spending this time to produce "an SDR for the masses" [to steal a phrase, with no disrespect intended], a "dumbed down" version of Linrad, if you will. The time spent in "dumbing down" the user interface would greatly reduce the amount of his time that is available to him for improving the engine that determines the performance of his software. I've been using Linrad since prior to 2001, and I have tried Winrad and every other software platform that has come down the pike that doesn't require a proprietary hardware platform [as well as some that do], and I have found that nothing else out there equals Linrad's ability to pull out weak signals, remove noise, etc. for the extremely demanding applications to which I apply it. That is not to say that these other programs are not very good; several of them, like Winrad, Power-SDR [and its dttsp base], are very good. But Linrad stands by itself in terms of its noise reduction and weak signal extraction capabilities. Others have come to the same conclusion. But not everyone needs Linrad. For many folks, easier to use programs like Winrad provide more than sufficient performance, and with far less effort / thought required on the part of the user. If you don't have the patience or fund of knowledge to use Linrad, or it you don't need its powerful signal extraction capabilities, by all means use your [other] software of choice. Linrad is not for everyone. If you can't or don't want to spend the time to figure Linrad out, it may well be that you are simply not a part of its intended user base. As I noted above, many casual SDR users have no need for the powerful signal extraction capabilities that are unique to Linrad. Other programs will suffice for them, and there is no reason they should spend their time learning Linrad. To those who complained as they did about the Linrad user interface, and to others who are potentially interested in Linrad, I suggest that you consider doing one or more of the following, IF you think you DO need the power of Linrad: 1. Read the Linrad source code or look at some of the references on the web that discuss Linrad and then write some additional code to provide the enhanced GUI yourself. Many of us have written add-ons to Linrad and Leif has incorporated some of them into Linrad. Linrad is open source. Help the community! 2. Check out the Linrad cheat sheet at: http://physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/K1JT/Linrad_On-Screen_Controls.pdf by K1JT [author of WSJT, who finds Linrad very useful and who has written MAP65, which essentially couples Linrad and WSJT to create a CWSkimmer-like application for JT65 EME]. 3. Check out some of these articles that contain a bit about earlier versions of Linrad, and which are still useful for learning about the current version: http://www.nitehawk.com/w3sz/w3szdsp05FINAL.pdf http://www.nitehawk.com/w3sz/figure1.pdf http://www.nitehawk.com/w3sz/w3szdsp05tablesFINAL.pdf http://www.nitehawk.com/w3sz/linradbase.html http://www.nitehawk.com/w3sz/DUBUSLinrad2002.pdf 4. Take the time to read and learn from Leif's own webpages on Linrad. http://www.sm5bsz.com/linuxdsp/linrad.htm http://www.sm5bsz.com/linuxdsp/linroot.htm 5. Join the Linrad group and ask questions. The group has more than 150 active members. http://groups.google.com/group/linrad?hl=en 6. Check out the Linrad Users Data Bank http://www.nitehawk.com/linrad_dat/ 7. Check out the Linrad Keyboard Commands Help page http://www.nitehawk.com/linrad_dat/linrad_help.html 8. Check out the Linrad Parameters Help page http://www.nitehawk.com/linrad_dat/linrad_params.htm 9. Read the QEX articles that Leif wrote on Linrad. They are available online at: http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/pdf/021112qex037.pdf http://www.sm5bsz.com/linuxdsp/qex/030102qex041.pdf http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/pdf/030506qex036.pdf http://www.sm5bsz.com/linuxdsp/qex/030910qex029.pdf http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/pdf/040102qex020.pdf 10. Search the web and check out some of the helpful User's pages available. If you Google "Linrad" you will come up with more than 20.000 hits. http://users.skynet.be/on7eh/Linrad.htm http://www.vhfdx.radiocorner.net/LinradSDRIQ.html http://home.att.net/~geobra/sdrSoftware.html etc. Note that many of the above resources have been graciously hosted by Rein, W6/PA0ZN, at: http://www.nitehawk.com/rasmit/ If you are unable to find any satisfactory solutions in the above, then I suggest that you find another program besides Linrad that more nearly suits your time constraints and/or abilities, but still accomplishes what you need. I hope that the above helps those who are interested in Linrad get started. Those of us who have taken the time to learn to use Linrad have been greatly rewarded by its unparalleled performance. Have a great week all, and 73, Roger Rehr W3SZ http://www.nitehawk.com/w3sz/w3sz.htm ----- Original Message ----- From: Leif Asbrink<[email protected]> To: soft radio<[email protected]> Sent: Sat, 26 Sep 2009 21:34:17 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [soft_radio] Re: Wish List for SDR software Hi Chuck and Jim, Chuck: Linrad does not have a single piece of text on the screen to explain what the various numbers mean. Can you name another program that has absolutely no text to explain what all the numbers are? So you do not accept having to press F1. That is kind of interesting and it tells me I should stop trying to create an interest among DX-ers and HF operators. You should not need user feedback to tell you that labels are needed, Oooh! I am so stupid that I actually needed your feedback to understand this. I am not capable of putting labels on everything and still make Linrad useful on a single screen computer and I actually thought that the F1 help system would be acceptable. nor to tell you that the user community has found Linrad extremely difficult to use. Hmmm, difficult to learn to master in full. Yes. But nobody has ever given a hint about something that is difficult to use. I can't say that your newcomer page in any way resembles a manual. Where does this page tell me what the numbers mean on the screen? It pedantically informs you about the F1 help and tells you to use it. That is the way numbers on the screen are explained in Linrad. I now know that it is unacceptable to most people so I will stop sending mails to this and other lists to try to attract interest from users from other communities than my own (VHF, EME and weak signal.) Where does it explain how to make all the correct choices for setup? What is "correct"? Anything for which there is something that is correct (and everything else wrong) is not a user option. Every choice is correct if the user wants to do the particular processing that would become the result. Another thing is sliders. They may be incorrectly set like zero or maximum volume or a too low threshold for one of the noise blanker parameters. I have written many pages about how to set parameters to do particular things, and then of course a particular setting is correct and the other ones wrong. I view Linrad as a wonderful engineering effort, but almost a zero as a useful program. From what I hear from others in the HF / MF / LF world (hams and DXers), that is unfortunately a unanimous opinion. OK. Thanks for telling me clearly. I will not spend my time on it any more. It's a conclusion I did not want to make, because I would love to be able to take advantage of some wonderful Linrad functions. You will have to wait until someone else brings them into some other software.... Jim: Note: You can't make a program TOO easy to use ... you can't provide TOO much OBVIOUS help. Leif, if you have 100000 users of Linrad and they all have to spend MANY HOURS or MONTHS to learn how to use it, just think of what additional things could have achieved if those hours were NOT spent learning an difficult program/operating system ... If YOU spend one man year and improve the user interface to be as easy to learn as say WinRad ... it would an HUGE savings of VALUABLE time ... Well, I always thought that the problem was the need to understand some of the physics of radio receiving, not actually controlling the Linrad or understanding what the graphs are (with dots not joined by lines etc.) It means that in my mind the time spent in learning how to master Linrad is very well spent and gives knowledge and skill that can be applied in many other contexts. Both of you send me the same message loud and clear. I actually did not understand before. Thanks:-) 73 Leif
