开云体育

开云体育

开云体育

That's very interesting and informative, and explains why the signal I hear from my transmitter sounds so odd. But, I have two questions:?

1. Why does the return connect tone from the RMS node sound so different; it's much more "musical"?

Because the other end is not over-driving their transmitter audio-in and clipping/distorting horribly. And they may be using a "data port" connection instead of a mic jack.?

Well, when I hear other stations connect to the RMS node, the audio sounds exactly the same as when I was able to connect earlier. Also, my service monitor shows that I'm not clipping the audio - the wave patterns look pretty smooth. As far as "data port", isn't the signal ultimately audio? My sound card interface (AIOC) is actually a sound device that outputs audio to the radio and takes audio from the radio and sends/returns digital data. I would think any system would be similarly configured, although obviously the audio might not come through a mic jack. But again - everything was working perfectly, then suddenly it wasn't.

2. Why, after multiple successful connections over several days, with the same hardware, would the connection process suddenly stop working?

1)? VHF/UHF signal levels over a not totally literal line-of-sight path can vary wildly day-to-day with changes in air temperature, humidity, and air pressure (barometer reading).?? If you were just barely making it on a "good" day, these weather changes could push you over the edge to failure.? It's just like modern digital TV where you either get a perfect picture or nothing - you don't get a snowy picture on a marginal signal.

I am 4 miles from the closest RMS node, and have a good gain antenna on the roof. Earlier connections were made with a rubber duck, and no problem. The signals I hear from the node when someone else connects are full quieting. I'm pretty?sure marginal signal is not the problem.

2)? Windows stupidly assumes you want to make the newest-added device DEFAULT for everything.? If you have done anything else with the computer besides ham digimodes,? such as causing error beeps, playing music, etc, it will fiddle with the audio level settings of that device, messing up the carefully-set levels you wanted for VARA or other digi-modes. ??

Access the Windows audio settings as I described in a previous post in this thread .? Look at your list of record and playback devices.? Most likely you will see green check marks on the interface audio device.? This means Windows has designated it the default device.?? Right-click on any other device (presumably the one that drives your computer speakers) and choose "Set as Default Device".? Then right-click again and choose "Set as Default Communications Device".???

This should keep Windows from messing with your interface device audio settings -- at least until the next forced update of Win 10 or 11!

I know for certain that the AIOC is selected as the VARA FM output device, because that is what I can hear on my monitors. The default setting is irrelevant, as VARA FM is specifically set to work through the AIOC system. I also made sure that no enhancements were set on the AIOC output to the radio.?

At this point I'm just waiting for my new sound card to come?in. If that doesn't?work, then I'm back banging my head against the wall!

开云体育

That's very interesting and informative, and explains why the signal I hear from my transmitter sounds so odd. But, I have two questions:?

1. Why does the return connect tone from the RMS node sound so different; it's much more "musical"?

Because the other end is not over-driving their transmitter audio-in and clipping/distorting horribly. And they may be using a "data port" connection instead of a mic jack.?

2. Why, after multiple successful connections over several days, with the same hardware, would the connection process suddenly stop working?

1)? VHF/UHF signal levels over a not totally literal line-of-sight path can vary wildly day-to-day with changes in air temperature, humidity, and air pressure (barometer reading).?? If you were just barely making it on a "good" day, these weather changes could push you over the edge to failure.? It's just like modern digital TV where you either get a perfect picture or nothing - you don't get a snowy picture on a marginal signal.

2)? Windows stupidly assumes you want to make the newest-added device DEFAULT for everything.? If you have done anything else with the computer besides ham digimodes,? such as causing error beeps, playing music, etc, it will fiddle with the audio level settings of that device, messing up the carefully-set levels you wanted for VARA or other digi-modes. ??

Access the Windows audio settings as I described in a previous post in this thread .? Look at your list of record and playback devices.? Most likely you will see green check marks on the interface audio device.? This means Windows has designated it the default device.?? Right-click on any other device (presumably the one that drives your computer speakers) and choose "Set as Default Device".? Then right-click again and choose "Set as Default Communications Device".???

This should keep Windows from messing with your interface device audio settings -- at least until the next forced update of Win 10 or 11!

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My experience is that the volume setting for incoming and outgoing?is very finicky. In Windows there are many gotchas. One on the Microphone (output) there is voice enhancement, I found it in Windows?11 by running the audio?mixer once I turned it off I was never able to find it again, on the output, there are audio enhancements?and AGC. All of these must be turned off. Squelch on the radio must be turned off if you are using VOX the settings must be set properly on the radio.?

I swear no one at Microsoft has ever actually used audio controls in Windows - they go out of their way to make accessing them (especially the record / receive] controls) needlessly difficult.? You can bypass all the user interface obfuscation, cruft and useless "user friendliness" in recent version of Windows, and drill down directly to the actual audio controls which haven't changed much since Windows XP.??

1) Right-click the desktop and choose "New", "Shortcut" .

2) In the resulting dialog, enter the following string (copy/paste it from this email):

??? %windir%\System32\rundll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL mmsys.cpl,,1

3) Click "Next" and enter a label for the shortcut such as "Audio Controls".?

4) Click? "Finish" and you are done!

You now have direct access to the Windows sound controls in a multi-tabbed interface that lets you select either the "Record" (receive controls) or "Playback" (transmit controls) for ALL the audio devices in your system.? On the "Record" tab, the small vertical level meters let you see which sound devices in your system are actually present and receiving audio input.? Set the receive levels for your interface device correctly - set the audio level controls for about half to two-thirds of full scale on the bar graph. The graph should bobble up and down a bit on random background noise.

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I have used both squelched and unsquelched with the radio, no difference. The RMS never responds to my connect attempts, so there is nothing to receive. I'll know more when new sound card interface arrives. Hopefully, that will confirm an issue with the existing sound card, but that one works just fine for packet, so why would Winlink not work? Who knows?

VARA has a far far more complex audio waveform than classic packet.??

Classic packet transmits only a single frequency-shifting audio tone at a time.? VARA uses 52 (!) simultaneous close-spaced audio tones at the same time.??

As a result, it is far far more sensitive to inter-modulation audio distortion in the transmitter and receiver audio path, if the audio levels are not very carefully set to avoid clipping of the audio. Especially in cheap hand-helds where the audio channel is optimized for low battery drain rather than minimum distortion.

Single-tone-at-a-time modes such as RTTY, classic packet, SSTV, CW, MSFK, etc are not very difficult to get going on touchy audio channels since with only tone present at a time, you CAN'T have inter-modulation distortion.? (IMD is by definition the mixing of two or more tones creating new ones that are the sums and differences of the original tones.)?????

Digi-modes that use simultaneous multiple tones at the same time such as MT-63, EasyPal, "digital SSTV" and VARA are far more demanding of the audio channel both at the TX and at the RX.? [Note that MFSK, Olivia, etc use multiple tones but NOT at the same time.]

Pass 52 tones, as VARA does, through a high-distortion audio channel at the same time, and you will get a nearly infinite number of new unwanted audio frequencies generated.....

This is a simplified diagram of the audio spectrum of VARA. This shows only 10 tones -- in reality, VARA uses 52!