Win-11 help desperately needed!!!

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N2EIK
Posts: 57
Joined: Mon Nov 16, 2020 10:58 am

Win-11 help desperately needed!!!

#1

Unread post by N2EIK »

SDR-Console, wjst, VAC.
Everything ran fine on win-7, ran fine on win-10....Win-11 I have nightmares. I have "a high school science project" going on here with my audio settings. What works one day, does not work the next. Any setup help would be appreciated.

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Simon G4ELI
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Re: Win-11 help desperately needed!!!

#2

Unread post by Simon G4ELI »

I use W11, not a problem!

Exactly what is the problem you have?
Simon Brown :shock:
www.sdr-radio.com

Do not send me direct e-mail, thank-you!

N2EIK
Posts: 57
Joined: Mon Nov 16, 2020 10:58 am

Re: Win-11 help desperately needed!!!

#3

Unread post by N2EIK »

Simon,
I can take screen caps of anything you want if needed.
I have to fuss around with audio settings, once I get xmit working I lose signal levels going to wsjt...OR... I get sig into wsjt then I lose xmit... I have been hacking at this on and off ofr a few weeks and i'm frustrated. Everything worked great with win-7 but that pc died.
Perhaps if you shared screenshots of your audio settings, audio properties, VAC control panel, wsjt settings, it would help me out a great deal.

Max
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Joined: Thu Aug 13, 2020 9:47 am

Re: Win-11 help desperately needed!!!

#4

Unread post by Max »

No issues here with Win11 and VAC to WSJT-x or any other digi program.

Send some full screenshot of SDRC with audio input section of TX DSP showing, and of course also the RX DSP audio selector. Also screenshots of the Audio and Radio settings panels in WSJT-X.

What is the radio you are using with SDRC? When you say you lose TX, do you mean you lose TX Audio or you lose the control to put the radio into TX from WSJT-X?

It's certainly odd that "what works one day does not work the next". Personally I find Win11 very stable but I know that comment does not help!

Max

N2EIK
Posts: 57
Joined: Mon Nov 16, 2020 10:58 am

Re: Win-11 help desperately needed!!!

#5

Unread post by N2EIK »

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N2EIK
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Joined: Mon Nov 16, 2020 10:58 am

Re: Win-11 help desperately needed!!!

#6

Unread post by N2EIK »

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Max
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Re: Win-11 help desperately needed!!!

#7

Unread post by Max »

Sorry to say I don't see anything critically abnormal with those settings. The only thing that possibly looks a little odd is that on VAC1, assuming screenshot was taken at same time as the radio shot, that you have what looks like very high level audio on it, when from the SDRC radio settings screengrab you don;t seem to have any active signals (just noise) so I would expect a very audio low level on VAC1. I see you have VAC1 set as the default recording device. I wonder if it's possible another app open on the PC is sending audio to VAC1 and "polluting" the audio stream. I wonder if it could possibly be Mic audio getting in there via some route? Or browser audio?

There is one other setting to check on Windows that caught me out, although I've actually tried it in the wrong position and it does not actually affect FT8 decodes, but worth a check anyway. Somehow when I fresh installed Win11 I found the "Stereo/Mono" audio setting had defaulted to Mono ON, when obviously it should be OFF (see attached pic). This setting in the wrong place (MONO ON) does affect some other decodes, specifically CW Skimmer. Of course it also makes all audio on the entire Windows system mono! But I digress.....

So out of that, maybe check that no other audio source can accidentally be getting in to the VAC1 stream by it being set to default? Failing that, if as I say there was only low level receiver noise being piped to VAC1 then the level is far too high. I do note you have a few sliders in the audio path set to 100 or close to. Like SDRC Audio Out you ave set to 100, and Mic Input you have set to 93. You don't show the RX audio level meter from WSJT-X in the screengrabs. Make sure the green level bar in WSJT-x is around showing incoming audio around the 60 mark when receiving decodes.

Another issue with decodes for FT8, goes without saying is to be 100% sure your PC clock is fully synchronised with atomic time. Have you checked that is the case?

Regarding the unreliable RX /TX cycles, you didn't say if WSJT-X is correctly switching the radio into/out of TX reliably? I do note that you have VOX selected on the TX DSP panel. I guess you COULD use VOX to do the switching but I think a better system would be to use hard PTT switching via virtual serial ports and CAT. I am also attaching a screengrab of my Radio settings panel from WSJT-X to see f that helps at all?

73

Max
Attachments
MonoAudio.jpg
CAT.jpg

N2EIK
Posts: 57
Joined: Mon Nov 16, 2020 10:58 am

Re: Win-11 help desperately needed!!!

#8

Unread post by N2EIK »

Thank you for the response. The last two times I was on wjst everything was working, No idea why because I did not do anything different. The only thing I see wrong now is:
(1) low drive. I dont know why. The audio gain going into console is about half the volume it should be. I cant get the gain into "the yellow".
(2) if i "multi-task" and open a browser while I am using wjst, I will immediately have no audio drive going into console.... I often multi-task :(

Max
Posts: 859
Joined: Thu Aug 13, 2020 9:47 am

Re: Win-11 help desperately needed!!!

#9

Unread post by Max »

N2EIK wrote: Tue Mar 28, 2023 8:27 am The only thing I see wrong now is:

(1) low drive. I don't know why. The audio gain going into console is about half the volume it should be. I cant get the gain into "the yellow".

(2) if i "multi-task" and open a browser while I am using wjst, I will immediately have no audio drive going into console.... I often multi-task :(
Regarding low audio input to SDRC TX DSP, SDRC does in my experience require a lot of audio "drive" so I operate with +20dB of "Boost" in the SDRC mic settings and that goes across the board, whether I'm using a mic (into USB soundcard) or line in (VAC) from WSJT-X etc. So I suggest you do not be afraid to add plenty of boost here to get sensible signal levels, then monitor the spectrum/waveform scope on the SDRC TX DSP panel to make sure that the audio is not going into clipping at the input. You can then adjust the audio input gain in SDRC to bring ALC meter on TX DSP to at least 100. If you cannot do this then you need to add more boost. As I say mine is fully maximum at +20dB. ALC meter on SDRC is not really an ALC meter in the conventional sense. It's more of a drive meter, so for the audio to peak the ALC up to the red zone 100 and even a little over is entirely normal.
Boost.jpg
Regarding (2) (disappearing audio) only thinking I can think of is that you have the VAC audio that's connecting WSJT-X output to SDRC input set to allow exclusive control of the VAC. Sorry, no time to look back as in a rush, but think I saw you had VAC set to "default" audio device. I'd maybe not do that either. No real need. Means your browser may be pulling the routing of the audio to that VAC when you open the browser. So make sure that neither VAC is the "default" audio device in Windows for either recording or playback. No need as you are setting these devices inputs/outputs by the setting in SDRC and WSJT-X.

For Playback default, it's often the case that the default audio device in Windows is set to be Speakers.
DefaultPlayback.jpg
Good luck.

Max

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