Snap, Crackle, and Pop

Ed, K0KC

I upgraded to v 1.2.1 as soon as it was released on Wednesday and it installed without issue. I have been using the rig on the JT modes with no apparent problems but when I fired-up on CW this morning, I started hearing "snap, crackle, and pop" noises that seemed to be random. I played with a lot of settings including BW, APF, AGC Threshold, etc. but could not narrow down the source of the noise. This radio operated fine before the upgrade.

I was wondering if anyone else has experienced this problem and, if so, were you able to resolve it?

Ed, K0KC

Andrew VK5CV

Ed,

The first time with 1.2.1 there was some snap crackle and pop but none since I closed all the panadapters and started again.

Andrew VK5CV

Ed, K0KC

Andrew,

My 6700 had been on several times since I installed the new version. I do think it was the first time on CW, however. If I am recalling correctly, I had two panadapters open with one on 15 meters and the second on 40 meters where I was operating CW.

Ed, K0KC

Tim - W4TME

Ed - do a cold boot of the radio (shut down and completely remove the power momentarily).  Let me know if it is still doing it after the cold boot.

Ed, K0KC

Tim,

I will give that a try today if I get a chance and report back to the Community.

Ed, K0KC

Ed, K0KC

Ok, I found some time to do some testing this morning. The 6700 and computer had been powered-down (power supply off) all night. When I turned everything on this morning (cold boot), SSDR came up with a single panadapter and a 15 meter slice just as I had left it last night. I then created a second panadapter and set the slice to 40 meter CW to duplicate the conditions that caused the noise problem yesterday. I started tuning around 40 meters and it seemed that all was well.

I then went out to the kitchen to toast a bagel and make a cup of coffee which probably took about 10 minutes or so. When I returned to the shack and started listening to 40 meters (audio was off on the 15 meter slice) and the "snap, crackle, and pop" noise was back. I then shut down SSDR, but not the 6700, and brought it up again...the noise had apparently stopped. I will try again later in the day to see if I can re-create the problem.

My computer is a Dell Quad-Core Optiplex 780 (2.66 GHz) with an AMD Radeon HD 6570 video card. The operating system is Win 7/32. The CPU usage is about 25% and the memory usage is about 57% with two panadapters open and several other programs running, so I do not think that the problem is related to a shortage of computer resources.

Thanks in advance for any guidance.

Ed, K0KC

Michael - N5TGL

Ed,

You wouldn't happen to be using WiFi on that computer for connection to your Flex?  I've been connecting that way as long as I've had the radio and just switched over to CAT5 today...what a difference!!  I had laggy problems and some occasional dropouts/pops, crashes on startup and missing features (the preamp and AF input boxes were famous for missing on startup).  After switching, all that went away.  Even with a very strong wifi signal to the computer (it was about 4' from the router) I wasn't able get rid of the problems until I switched to CAT5.

Ed, K0KC

Thanks for the suggestion, Michael, but I am using a CAT 5 cable to a Cisco switch, but I wonder if I might be challenging my network with two panadapters running?

Ed, K0KC

Michael - N5TGL

Hm, well, must be something different at work here there.  Two panadapters shouldn't stress the network that hard.  Oh well, just a thought.

Stan VA7NF

What is not being reported is the speed of the network.  On heavy load (Panadapter DAX + 2 receiver DAX outputs drive my network to around 3Mb) a 10 or 100BaseT network will/may drop packets where 1 Gigabit network will be fine. 

You mentioned CAT5 cable which is OK for short lengths on GigaBit, CAT5E is better, and CAT6 is great for 1 and 10GigaBit services.

Tim - W4TME

Interesting that shutting down SmartSDR for Windows cleared up the issue.  I have entered this into our bug tracker for further investigation.

Ed, K0KC

Thank you, Tim!

Tim - W4TME

Ed, have you tried clearing the persistence database?

Ed, K0KC

No, I have not. I will give that a try the next time that the problem appears.

Ed, K0KC

Tim - W4TME

Thanks Ed.

Ed, K0KC

Ok, Tim...it took a couple of days for the problem to re-appear, but sure enough it is back. This time I did clear the persistence database and everything is good so far. I will keep checking periodically to determine if it returns again.

Ed, K0KC

Tim - W4TME

Ed - RRR

Jerry Gardner

How can dropping packets affect the audio? Isn't the network connection to the PC just used to transfer FFT data to be displayed on the panadapter, with the audio generated entirely within the radio itself?

I have had problems myself with crackles and pops in the audio. I often hear audio artifacts when I tune a slice up and down the band with the mouse or FlexControl. At other times, the snap, crackle, and pop described in the original post to this topic crops up as well and goes away if I exit SmartSDR and restart it.

Art KA4M

Ed,
Did it eventually return after you cleared the persistence database?

Art KA4M

Ed, K0KC

Art,

Thanks for jogging my memory regarding this problem. I have not been on the air a lot lately, but the problem has not "reared its ugly head" since I cleared the persistence database. I cannot say with certainty that action this took care of the problem, but so far, so good.

Ed, K0KC

Art KA4M

I to experience “snap, crackle and pop”. Running a Flex 6700 using Windows 7 Pro (32 bit). Usually this happens on the panadaptor that is connected to Ant 1 or Rec A. It may take from 10 to 30 min to start. The cure is to knock down the SSDR client and briefly turn off the radio (not necessary to turn off the power supply). Bringing the radio back up and restarting SSDR alleviates this problem until the next session.

I also found out that it isn't necessary to wait for the popping to occur. If I turn the radio on. Start SSDR Let it run for a few seconds. Terminate SSDR and shut down the radio. Then start again by turning the radio back on and starting SSDR I will not have this problem during this session.

Lastly I tried resetting the radio. (holding okay while turning on the radio) This had no effect.

Art KA4M

Forgot to say that I'm running 1.2.1

w1smc

I'm finding that I usually get the snap, crackle, & pop if I leave my 6600M running for an extended period (over night) ...

I perform a reboot, not a cold start, and it clears this up ...

WX7Y

On my station (6700 here) it hardly ever happens maybe once a month of being powered on all the time, I run my SmartSDR from about 8:00AM until 11:00PM most every day. When it occasionally happens to clear it here I just restart SmartSDR or reboot windows. I have done this for YEARS.

I really think this is NOT a SmartSDR issue but rather a Windows Hardware Driver issue for the specific drivers and hardware your computer may have on it. Being SmartSDR is Highly reliant on the Ethernet and graphics that one or the other and possibly both of these device drivers are NOT functioning correctly.

Here's why

I DO NOT let windows (OR ANY OTHER SOFTWARE) update my hardware drivers at all anymore because a year or two ago there was a Intel video Driver update included in a windows update and it made the radio pop and crackle until I went in and manually restored the previous good driver that lucky enough was still in the Driver list. Problem corrected immediately and NO other changes to SmartSDR or the computer other then reboot the computer to use the new video driver.

So if your audio IS Popping and crackling I would try to update one device driver at a time. Use ONLY a Hardware Driver from the Device's Manufacture and see what happens.

Hope this helps someone out and once you get it to run without the popping and crackle DON'T do any driver updates and as long as it's working don't fix it.

Mike-VA3MW

@wx7y Makes some excellent points!

For me, I was hearing this from time to time when using my Maestro or PC on SmartLink, but I also have the advantage of having a RemoteRig connection that I use when I need to test direct MIC connections. BTW it was much worse when using iOS or my MAC for some reason. The PC was always better for network communications.

I also heard clicks as well on the RemoteRig connection.

Overall the clicks weren't horribly annoying, but I just accepted them as something that I will have to deal with while running a remote station. YMMV vary and 1 click might be too much.

This confirms with me that the problem was packet loss on the network. This may be by Internet design due to buffering issues.

I discussed this with Tim and he suggested 2 things. One, my pfSense (home grown) Router was using Realtech NIC cards and 2, I might need a better switch.

I switched out my router for a pfSense SG-1100 router which does not use Realtech NIC cards.

I changed out every LAN cable for new CAT8 cables.

I also upgraded my TP-Link switch to the TP-Link TL-SG1024DE managed switch.

Having the managed switch allowed me to log into it and now I can see (RxBadPkt column) the devices on ports 1, 2 and 3 are having issues (not critical). I can see that auto-negotiate is an issue or it could be that those are old LAN cables.

Ports 21-24 are connected to the Radio, PGXL, TGXL and AG and they are flawless.

But, now, I have to say my Remote SmartLink connection is silky smooth. I can truly hear the difference.

What I learned here is that you really need to look deeper. The symptom of the problem (receiver clicks) was not part of the actual root cause of the problem.

A remote operation looks like this and every piece of technology between the operator and the antenna could be the root cause of a problem.

73, Mike va3mw