[Elecraft] [OT] PCI Express sound card for digimodes

[Wes Stewart]

Julian,

I don't know yet whether the following is going to work out but here is my story.

After being licensed since 1958 I just last August decided to try RTTY with my K3. My station computer is a Lenovo T400 laptop running WIN XP and I used an older version of DXBase for logging.  One of the supporters of DXbase wrote a shell program, AXETTY, that uses the MMTTY engine and reports QSO info to DXBase.  I used two straight cables from the K3 Line In/Out to the built-on sound card on the laptop and used VOX. This worked fine for casual operation, except for the occasional times when the sound card would fail to output any sound.  This usually (of course) happened in the middle of a QSO and required a quick closing and opening of the program, which would cure the problem for a time.

Recently I decided to try some casual S&P during some contests.  My logging setup was clearly, not up to this so I looked at alternatives.  Trying to learn N1MM the day before a contest was a stretch although I got a good enough handle on it to try it, but the sound card drop out problem was horrible, and made it unusable. So I wound up using MMTTY standalone and it worked *almost* flawlessly. I suspect some timing issues between the "hooks" in the logging programs and the MMTTY engine that upset my built-in sound card.

To test this idea, I took the M-Audio Firewire "card" that I was using with an LP-Pan before I gave up on that idea, and used it for the RTTY programs.  It works flawlessly with any of them.  Now the point of this rambling is that having decided that I need an external card, I've just ordered a Signal Link USB, which hopefully will fill the bill.

As I said I can't personally recommend this at the moment, but it might be an option for you.

Wes  N7WS

--- On Sat, 1/30/10, Julian, G4ILO <julian.g4ilo at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Julian, G4ILO <julian.g4ilo at gmail.com>
> Subject: [Elecraft] [OT] PCI Express sound card for digimodes
> To: elecraft at mailman.qth.net
> Date: Saturday, January 30, 2010, 8:37 AM
> 
> Apologies for the OT question but I'm at my wits end. I
> just bought a new
> computer for the shack and find that I can't install my SB
> Live 24 card that
> I kept from the old one because it doesn't have PCI Slots.
> Instead, it has
> what I've been told are PCI Express slots. Even my local
> computer shop
> hadn't heard of a PC without PCI slots, and said PCI
> EXpress is only for
> graphics cards. But that can't be right as the computer has
> 4 of them, 3
> short ones which are PCIe x1 and one long one which is PCIe
> x16.
> 
> The built in Realtek sound card has all kinds of controls
> for special
> effects, karaoke etc. but I can't find an option for "look,
> just convert it
> to digital as accurately as possible and don't mess with
> it." In any case, I
> really want to use the internal board for normal audio as
> it has front panel
> sockets for headphones etc. which is why I had the second
> sound card.
> However when I search for PCI Express sound cards they are
> all pretty
> expensive. The cheapest seems to be an Asus Xonar DX 7.1. I
> admit the DX
> part sounds promising, but it still has these special
> effects features and
> outputs for subwoofers and so on none of which I need.
> 
> What's a guy who just wants to work digital modes to do? A
> few years ago you
> could buy a 16-bit ISA sound card for 15 quid. Surely we
> don't all have to
> go out and splash £200 on a RigExpert or MicroHam now?
> Someone suggested I
> got a "cheap USB audio device" but how cheap is OK? You can
> buy these things
> on eBay for $2, I kid you not, but I bought one once and
> tossed it after 5
> minutes it was so bad.
> 
> I'd appreciate hearing from anyone who has had this problem
> and solved it
> satisfactorily because I'm getting withdrawal symptoms not
> being able to
> work digimodes. Is it just me, or is technology getting way
> too complicated?
> 
> -----
> Julian, G4ILO. K2 #392  K3 #222.
> * G4ILO's Shack - http://www.g4ilo.com
> * KComm - http://www.g4ilo.com/kcomm.html
> * KTune - http://www.g4ilo.com/ktune.html
> 
> -- 
> View this message in context: http://n2.nabble.com/OT-PCI-Express-sound-card-for-digimodes-tp4485694p4485694.html
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