Distorted Audio Out Of K9DUR's Voice Keyer Program

Gary Robertson - KY5R

For some time, I have attempted, without success, to use K9DUR's excellent Voice Keyer Program with my Flex-6500 and SmartSDR 1.3. It worked fine when I was using PowerSDR and my Flex-3000.

I used a microphone directly into the computer to tape and compose a WAV audio file using Audacity 1.3. It sounds great when I listen to the WAV file in my computer. However, when I use K9DUR's Voice Keyer to play this WAV file through my Flex-6500, other hams tell me that my transmitted audio of this canned message is badly distorted.

Has anyone successfully used K9DUR's Voice Keyer program with the Flex-6000 series and SmartSDR? Does anyone have a suggestion for how I can correct my problem and send un-distorted audio using this application?

WX7Y

I had this issue the other day and it turned out to be a DAX problem, I shutdown SmartSDR a couple times and NO change in the distortion I then shut down DAX and restarted DAX and the problem went away.  
Also make sure your not over driving DAX with K9DUR's Voice Keyer in the settings.

For me this only started after I updated to SmartSDR 1.3.0 so maybe there is a memory hole in this version of DAX. 

another thought I see you recorded your audio using "Audacity" if I remember right Audacity has several different audio formats, the format may NOT be correct using Audacity with the settings you have there now.

Just a couple of thought's 


Hope this helps in your station
73's
Bret
WX7Y

Gary Robertson - KY5R

Thanks for responding. I have a couple of questions. What program do you use to tape your audio files and create a WAV file for use in Voice Keyer? What audio format did you use? When you are talking about over driving, are you talking about the volume setting in the Voice Keyer Setup Hardware screen, or are you talking about the TX Gain sliders in DAX. Sure appreciate your help.

WX7Y

I use Audacity and it looks like the file format is Stereo 96000Hz @32bit that are on my files here.

The audio of the sound file on the recorded file in Audacity have the peaks no Higher then + or - 0.5
on the wave form peaks.

I have my DEFAULT sound on my Windows Audio settings ALL set at 48000Hz instead of the default of 44100Hz which doesn't convert down very well to what I have DAX channels set for.

Audio levels ALL need to be check, Audacity, VoiceKeyer and DAX.
My settings are close to the defaults of DAX set at  about 50%, and K9DUR Voice Keyer set at the default of MAX.  

Remember VoiceKeyer audio out goes to DAX Audio TX Gain internally.

Hope you figure it out  

73's 
Bret
WX7Y

Ken - NM9P

I record with Audacity right from my Heil PR22 and Behringer 802USB mixer. But remember that what goes into DAX doesn't get processed with the EQ or Processor. So before I export a recording, I use the Equalizer function to shape it about the same as my TX EQ settings, then I use the compressor to even things out and limit the level to 0 dB. Then I export it as a WAV file to the directory I am using for Voice Keyer. The same recordings work well on N1MM+ also. Before I started doing this, my recordings were very bassy and did not sound good at all. Now they sound very close to my voice on the Mike through the BAL input line.

When playing them back, be sure that the levels on both Voice Keyer and the DAX lines are set properly and do not overdrive the transmitter. Also, it is important that you are not overdriving Audacity in the first place. Use their recording level meters carefully. There is no processing that can fix an overdriven, bad recording!