CMASIO in HL2

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Scott Strehle

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May 21, 2024, 11:02:34 AM5/21/24
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Does anyone know if CMASIO will work with the hermes lite 2.?  I installed the latest beta 4 hl2 version of thetis with the same regular thetis version and tried to implement it and have not gotten it to work.  I am not sure if I am activating the wrong driver in the registry or if it will just not work with the HL2.

I am trying this to try and help with vac1 overload problems that occur at strange times when I start things up.  I have done the networking changes in windows and all the other tricks mentioned, but sometimes the vac1 just does not like things. and other times it works flawlessly.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated
Thanks
Scott
KJ7RHP

"Christoph v. Wüllen"

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May 21, 2024, 1:38:50 PM5/21/24
to Scott Strehle, herme...@googlegroups.com
In my view, this has little to do with the HL2 and everything to do with your SDR software,
which seems to be Thetis.
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Scott Strehle

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May 21, 2024, 8:30:35 PM5/21/24
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well everything I can find about CMASIO in thetis has to do with the non hl2 version of the software and I can not find any reference to anyone using it with a HL2.  I thought I had read somewhere about it working with protocol 2 and from what I can tell HL2 runs on proticol1.  I have not found this information again someone please correct me if I am wrong.  

It sounds like it takes some of the sound card functions away from the pc sound card and relies on the external audio adapter to do the work, helping to reduce latency. once again correct me if I am wrong.  I  have a a focusrite solo 3 that I am using now but it feeds everything through the vac1.  I was under the impression CMASIO makes a more direct connection between the two. 
Anyone have any thoughts?
Scott
KJ7RHP

Ron Lewkowicz

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May 22, 2024, 12:51:28 AM5/22/24
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The stuff I've seen about it they were talking about using it to bypass (divert perhaps) from the onboard audio codec on Anan SDRs to the ASIO driver to enable better latency performance when doing inter-application  audio routing and yes they mentioned it only is for protocol 2.  HL2 does not have onboard audio codec and runs on protocol 1 and not 2. So not applicable to HL2.  Anyway, watching this stuff makes me sit back and scratch my head in wonderment and reminds me why I don't do audio production in Windows.

do1kl...@gmail.com

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May 22, 2024, 9:32:28 AM5/22/24
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cmASIO only works with prot2. It has nothing to do with the audio codec on the ANAN boards.
HL2 runs prot.1 and therefore no cmASIO.
Sigi
DH1KLM

Scott Strehle

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May 22, 2024, 12:03:13 PM5/22/24
to do1kl...@gmail.com, Hermes-Lite
Ok, thanks for the clarification.  I am still learning how all this works and trying to wrap my head around how the system operates.  I truly am excited about this project and radio.  I love to tinker with things and try to make them better.  I suppose that is the beauty of this hobby.  Can anyone explain what the difference between protocol 1 and protocol 2 is.  All I have found is that 1 uses 100mb ethernet connection and protocol 2 1000mb ethernet there must be more to it.  The latest HL2's have 1000mb ethernet connection on them correct? 

Since I have been using the HL2 I have been upgrading my network parts to gigabit connections, routers, switches and an improved wireless bridge..  All reducing the latency and jitter in the network and making things work better and better.  Now I can remotely run thetis on any computer in my network either in the shack or across the wireless bridge in the house with good results other than some random vac1 overload. that I can not track down.  It usually gets resolved with either restarting thetis or restarting the database.  I still can't wrap my head around those problems.  

The next step is to jump my remote connection out to another location where I have the opportunity to install an antenna on top of a grain elevator with another local HL2 at that location, run over a zerotier vpn tunnel.  Results at this point have not been great. I can establish a pretty good connection to the remote location with an average ping time of 24ms or so but there has been so so results operating my existing radio in the shack from that location.  I was hoping that this cmasio might be a way to smooth things up but that does not seem to be true.  I am getting to the limit of my understanding of the system at hand.
Thanks
Scott
KJ7RHP.

Ron Lewkowicz

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May 22, 2024, 2:26:07 PM5/22/24
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OK, that's good then as none of the things the youtube experts have to say about cmASIO make any sense to me.  I don't know if audio latency should cause issues dropping TX as I believe the SDR software pads audio bits into the buffer in this case.  Network latency certainly will. 

Something that may help in your case is the TX buffer software. https://github.com/jimahlstrom/HL2WifiBuffer

Scott Strehle

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May 22, 2024, 3:46:57 PM5/22/24
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I need to change my wireless bridge over to some newer ac radios. That should bring things up in speed considerably,  But the computer sitting right next to HL2 will occasionally have vac1 overload problems too and the ping between it and the HL2 is <1ms so I am wondering if there is a problem with something else other than network speed.

The wifi buffer is something I was going to try but with the ethernet version. I have not dove into that yet. too many things going on at once.
Scott
KJ7RHP

Ron Lewkowicz

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May 22, 2024, 10:10:05 PM5/22/24
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I noticed  today that Sanny Sanoff is working on baseband compression in the SDR++  server with HL2.  Some very dramatic reduction in the bandwidth required.  He posted a demo of RX. I'm not sure if that also works on TX.  The goal as I understand it is to be able to remote with your phone over cell data. 

PiHPSDR also appears to  have partially finished server/client code.  

Ron Lewkowicz

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May 22, 2024, 10:12:13 PM5/22/24
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Oh and of course Quisk I believe can remote the HL2 with very low bandwidth.

Graeme Jury

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May 22, 2024, 10:46:44 PM5/22/24
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I can hotspot my phone and connect my laptop to operate quisk and HL2 remotely. I have also written an app to turn on the gear in my shack and operate my tuner etc. and can run the radio internationally or around NZ with very modest data usage.

73, Graeme ZL2TE

Heiko Amft

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Oct 2, 2024, 5:13:34 AM10/2/24
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Of course work cmASIO with Thetis and the HL2. ASIO is a driver model for direct(!) communication between Software like Thetis and a hardware sound device. I work here with cmASIO and Thetis too by using an YAMAHA AG03 and my ARTURIA Minifuse 1. Both devices have ASIO driver from the manufacturer.
In the case of HL2 the audio is only prcessed by the SDR software e.g. Thetis and has NOTHING do to with the HL2 itself. The HL2 has no audio interface, only the known as HL plus extension has it. So the meaning from Christoph was the correct statement.
I switched off VAC1 and VAC2 in Thetis if using cmASIO, because cmASIO don't need it. Thetis is processing the AF audio stream to/from the sound interface at lower level as VAC1 or VAC2 do. This decrease the latency in the audio chain perceptible. We checked here some cases and as result we had bring down the audio latency to a value between 50-100ms. With APIs like WDM or MME we have values around 300-500ms. Thats the reason in professional audio processing like using DAWs in music production using not a cheap 10$ soundcard rather audio interfaces with ASIO support.

73 Heiko, DL1BZ

Heiko Amft

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Oct 2, 2024, 5:50:13 AM10/2/24
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No, cmASIO has nothing to do with the protocols 1 or 2 at network level. cmASIO works very good with Thetis and the HL2.

do1kl...@gmail.com

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Oct 3, 2024, 3:47:55 AM10/3/24
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You are referring to an old posting of mine.
In the beginning, cmASIO was definitely only functional or activated for protocol 2. This restriction was based solely on the assumption that protocol 1 was not powerful enough for this and might cause problems in the ANAN user community and was therefore not implemented by Richie.
After a few experiments in May and a few emails with Bryan W4WMT (developer of cmASIO), cmASIO worked over protocol 1. The changes were sent to Reid, who then released the first beta with cmASIO activated in June.

Heiko Amft

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Oct 4, 2024, 6:14:32 AM10/4/24
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Ok, thanks for correction - I'm study the souce code of Thetis not so deep up to now, but per default ASIO is a pure AF audio interface or API for a direct communication between application and sound hardware without using the operating system audio layer like MME or DirectSound/WDM, developed by Steinberg Media Technologies (today part of YAMAHA). Maybe there are depencies, if HPSDR protocol 1 or 2 has not only the I/Q datastream included and transfer additional audio data between SDR application like Thetis and the SDR-TRX hardware itself (if there is an audio interface included) or vice versa. Otherwise I see no correlation to ASIO itself. ASIO can be docked on only at the audio layer of the application. ASIO is used for a long time by the most pro audio apps like DAWs for music or audio production in the ProAudio segment and there a kind of standard - there it is also importent for low latency audio processing. The pure Hermes Lite 2 hasn't a audio interface at its hardware side, only the HL2 with called "HL2 plus" extension has it.
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