Thumping and popping

[khei...@sbcglobal.net]

Got my Hermes II this afternoon and got it up and running (receive only) in about an hour.  I'm using Windows 10 Pro,  PowerSDR, and audio via VAC1.

I'm hearing an intermittent popping or thumping noise in the audio and it seems to be worst in the CW or digital portions of the bands.  It is not external or manmade noise as I do not hear it on my Omni VI.

What have I not configured properly?  Am I overloading the front end?

Thank you,

Karl - W5QJ

[Joe LB1HI]

Hi Karl,
among other things, you can try to adjust the sampling rate and audio settings to the PC capabilities.
73, Joe

[Steve Haynal]

Hi Karl,

It is good advice to check all your sound sampling rates. I would try to use 48kHz audio everywhere so very little rate changing occurs. This includes the radio audio settings shown by Joe as well as any Windows OS specific sound card settings. Note that you can run the radio at other sample rates, 48, 96, 192 or 384kHz, it is just the sound and VAC that should run at 48kHz.

This doesn't sound like overload, but you can check for ADC overload by observing the two 75 and 100 LEDs. If they are constantly on then you are overloading the RX ADC.

 https://github.com/softerhardware/Hermes-Lite2/wiki/External-Connections#leds

73,

Steve

kf7o

[khei...@sbcglobal.net]

Thank you Steve and Joe.  I did move everything to 48  kHz audio and that seemed to help a bit.  I also tried SparkSDR and SDRConsole and they seemed to work fine.  Had no luck with Quisk though.

Now I've configured WSJT-X to speak to SparkSDR and have made a dozen or so QSO's, including one to OK1FED.

With SparkSDR "audio input" and "audio output" configured to use Line 1 (Virtual Audio Cable) which is needed to work with WSJT-X, I can no longer hear the Hermes.  If I change the "audio output" in SparkSDR back to "Speakers", I can hear received audio just fine, but WSJT-X no longer has a signal to decode. 

I know absolutely nothing about VAC, so what I am asking may not even be possible.

Thanks again,

Karl - W5QJ

[Joe LB1HI]

Hi Karl,
If you set mark in "Listen to this device" the you will be able to listen at the same time as audio goes to WSJTX via v. cable.
 

Acc. audio 
Try to play with ( reduce ) sampling rate  and buffer size.

PS. Don't pay attention to the values in the fields in the screenshots from the previous post. I only marked the fields that can be taken into account. 

73, Joe

[khei...@sbcglobal.net]

Thank you Joe.  I finally found it in Windows settings and all is fine now.

Karl - W5QJ

On Friday, January 15, 2021 at 12:17:30 AM UTC-6 softerh...@gmail.com wrote:

[Kristofer Danner]

Hi Karl. With SparkSDR you don't need WSJT-X running, no need to route any audio to it. SparkSDR just uses some of the WSJT-X binaries in the background for decoding. That's one of the best things about SparkSDR, no dealing with virtual audio cables at all.

KD