WSJT-X Deaf on DAX

Rob Fissel

All,

Hoping someone out there has experienced this problem, and can help. I don't believe this is an SSDR/DAX/FRS issue at all. 

Flex 6300 running SSDR 1.4.16 since it came out with no issues. Last week I upgraded mobo/CPU from AMD to an ASRock Z97/i5-4690k, and used Macrium Re-deploy to do so. All digi modes worked fine since HW upgrade last week.

Out of nowhere last night, WSJT-X 1.5 goes silent on any DAX channel I select for RX. It shows audio levels when selecting other audio devices (mic input, for example), but when I choose DAX 1 or 2, it sits there deaf.

DAX is working as expected with FLDigi, as well as Adobe Audition (I use this to record stuff off the air on occasion). Waterfall is just fine in FLDigi. 

Yes, DAX is selected in SSDR. The appropriate DAX channel is selected when I try either DAX 1 or 2 inputs in WSJT-X. DAX TX works fine - I can hit "Tune" and it sends a carrier via SSDR with no issues. 

Remedy steps I've taken, with no solution found. 

Uninstall WSJT-X, reinstall. 
Uninstall WSJT-X, delete appdata folder, reinstall.
(Longshot) Uninstall SSDR, reinstall. 
Uninstall SSDR including DAX drivers, reinstall. 

Windows Update (no major driver updates noted). 

Disable DAX Audio RX 1 & 2 in sound devices, re-enable. 

Rename DAX Audio RX 1 & 2 in sound devices to "DAX RX 1" - thought maybe renaming the device would potentially help in WSJT-X. I cannot figure out how to refresh available soundcard inputs in WSJT-X as it is still showing the original DAX Audio RX 2 input. 

Disabled Realtek HD Audio Manager to avoid any potential conflicts. 

The only "solution" I was able to find was to use DAX Reserved Audio TX 2 for Input, which gives me signals, with a bunch of crud on the waterfall from 0Hz through 1200Hz or so.  Makes no sense to me.


Any ideas?

George KF2T

Is DAX enabled in the slice pulldown? And selected in the DAX Control Panel?

Rob Fissel

Yessir. Picture include for verification.

Ken - NM9P

I have sometimes had luck in a program that "lost" the DAX channel by telling the program to select a different DAX channel and then re-selecting the desired one (in both receive and transmit setup tabs).  it is almost as if the audio device lookup table in Windows gets scrambled or something.  (not a technical answer, but a layman's observation)   it is worth a try...

Ken - NM9P

Rob Fissel

Thanks for the reply, Ken. I've tried that several times. Switched to DAX 1, hit ok, and then reverted. Nothing. Switched to my primary sound card (Digidesign MBox 2), hit ok, and then changed it back to DAX 2, no dice. 

I do think that it may have something to do with the audio device lookup table, because when I renamed DAX in sound devices, the name didn't change in WSJT-X. Even after a reboot. I have no idea how to force WSJT-X to essentially refresh available audio sources. This would be a step I would love to take, but have no idea how to make it happen. 

George KF2T

I can't see in your photo, but are the audio channels in WSJT-X set to Left, Mono, or Both? Try cycling through those options - I've seen that cause a problem before, too.

Rob Fissel

Thanks, George. I've cycled through all of them a few times to no avail. I'm still working through a number of troubleshooting procedures as we speak. Restarting audiosvr didn't have any effect on the problem. 

DaveC

Have you got your receive equalizer on? You may be attenuating your audio.

Rob Fissel

I seem to have found a temporary fix. When changing the correct DAX channel (in my case, DAX Audio RX 2) to the default device via the Sound control panel, and then point WSJT-X to use the Default Device, it works. If I switch back to DAX Audio RX 2, no audio again. 

I am almost positive that this is an issue where WSJT-X is looking for a previous DAX sound card device with maybe a hardware ID that is different from what's now currently installed. I'm going to try and email Joe Taylor and see if he knows a way to force WSJT-X to refresh available sound card devices. 

Rob Fissel

Thanks for the reply, Dave. Even if I did have EQ on, DIGU would prevent EQ from affecting the audio. 

Burt Fisher

I stop DAX on Task manager and restart. Why do we have to do all of the above?

DaveC

you are correct. Do you get no audio at all or just no decode? just curious.

Rob Fissel

No audio at all. Nada, nothing. I have found a temporary fix, which I described below. 

Rob Fissel

If it was as simple as that, it would have been fixed last night, as that is troubleshooting 101, and is practically the first thing I did trying to resolve this issue. The computer at this point has been through dozens of reboots as I work through troubleshooting the issue. 

Also as mentioned, DAX is still sending audio with no problem to FLDigi and other recording software that I use. 

Rob Fissel

A few other things I've done in an attempt to troubleshoot:

A complete uninstall as detailed by Tim in the Troubleshooting section. 
A complete uninstall and reinstall of DAX drivers as detailed by Tim in the Troubleshooting section. 
CCleaner to repair Registry issues. 
Turned off and restarted audiosvr (admin cmd: net stop audiosvr, then net start audiosvr)

None of these have helped. The temporary fix as listed above is where I'm currently at. At least I have WSJT-X back in action, although I like to find out the root cause and fix it at the source. 

DaveC

Rob, sounds like you can work then. sound like a smartSDR bug

DH2ID

Rob, I have had no issues here with WSJT-X 1.5 on 3 different Notebooks, a ThinkPad X-60, a Toughbook CF-52 and a VAIO i7. WSJT-X does not need a default soundcard, as EasyPAL does. I wonder if your problems are Windows and/or soundcard driver related.

Jim KJ7S

I may be missing something, but I didn't see where you did a "complete" uninstall of wsjt**, a restart, then install wsjt** agn, then restart. To my knowledge, if there are no other stated methods of "re-discovering" sound devices, perhaps that is a last ditch effort for the specific offender.
     OK, I can now see where you did at least did some of that... sorry...One thing I have done in most cases with a new system or OS install is, make sure that you have gone through the newly installed sound devices and disable ALL of the devices that you cannot access with the programs in question, for example when you install SSDR, you get the default devices 1 through 8 of RX,TX IQ, Reserved, etc.  I disable all of the devices that my 6300 has no use for. That caused the digital or other software to only see the devices that the 6300 (for example) can use, simplifying selection and lessening the confusion.

DH2ID

Did you try to recreate your issues on another PC or a notebook?

Rob Fissel

It very well could be. However, DAX is delivering audio to all my other software (FLDigi and Adobe Audition) with no issues. It seems to be isolated to just WSJT-X. Quite perplexing. 

Rob Fissel

I would consider trying on my MacBook Air in bootcamp, but I can't even begin to imagine how I could try and recreate it. It was seemingly random. All of a sudden, the DAX Audio RX 1 & 2 sound devices stopped delivering audio to just one program - WSJT-X. 

Rob Fissel

Thanks, Jim. I've always disabled unused ones (I'm on a 6300, so DAX 3-8) just to keep things neat and tidy. 

George KF2T

One other thing to check is to make sure that DAX hasn't been assigned as your default audio device. It "shouldn't" be a problem, but...

Rob Fissel

George, the only way that I could get it to work was to make DAX Audio RX 2 my default audio device, and then select default audio device in the WSJT-X settings. Ironic, right?

DH2ID

Yeah, that IS crazy, you're right :-(

I use this program to control my soundcards:

http://audioswit.ch/er?utm_source=client&utm_medium=direct&utm_campaign=client_1_6_6_85





As you can see, the default soundcards I always use with my
Flex-6500 are the usual microphone and speaker settings for
my VAIO notebook. I only have to change these settings for
EasyPAL.

VE6KWA

Alex, thanks for the Link !  I've never liked Windows Sound Mgr.  Audio Switcher works a charm... and is free. B^)

Jeff Eli

Probably one of the first things you tried but just as a reminder is have you restarted your Flex radio? Recently I could not get my DAX to work and after trying multiple things with no luck I turned my Flex 6300 off then back on and everything started working again.

Rob Fissel

Yup. Restarted quick, no good. Shut down, cut DC for 2 minutes, and powered back on, same problem. Reset radio to factory defaults, same problem 

Brian - K6BPM

I have all kinds of problems with WSJT-X. I have experienced this problem as well as another more frequent issue where WSJT-X stops sending audio after doing a JT9 contact. I came up with a solution that always works for me.

WSJT-X seems to write something to its INI file that causes failures of various types. My guess is that they write a value somewhere that raises an unhandled exception. That in turn causes parts of the INI file to be skipped. 

So what I did was to make a copy of a known good version the ini file.

First, make sure all your settings are correct, everything works, close WSJT-X and make a copy of this file: (your UserName will vary)

C:UsersUserNameAppDataLocalWSJT-XWSJT-X.ini

I save it as:

C:UsersUserNameAppDataLocalWSJT-XWSJT-X.good

Then I created a batch file called Repair-WSJT-X.bat in the same directory as follows:

del WSJT-X.ini
copy WSJT-X.ini.good WSJT-X.ini
C:WSJTwsjtxinwsjtx.exe

Note: Your installation directory may be different. Mine is C:WSJTwsjtxin

Create a shortcut for the saved batch file and put it on your desktop. 

When WSJT-X starts acting flaky, close it and launch it from the Repair-WSJT-X.bat shortcut. For me, this restores everything every time with minimal inconvenience.

There is also a problem when you run the beta's and then reinstall the production version and your frequency list disappears. This also fixes that problem. 

Hope this helps someone.

Rob Fissel

I would imagine this to work very well...if only I had an old .ini file that I could restore to. 

FWIW, I am still experiencing the same issue despite hours of troubleshooting at this point. I am running FB on WSJT-X by selecting the appropriate DAX RX channel and making it the default sound device within Windows, and then changing the audio source in WSJT-X from the appropriate DAX channel to just "Default Sound Device." 

Brian - K6BPM

I don't know if this would help you find some clues, but you could load WSJT-X like this assuming you can get it to write a stable INI.

del FileComp.txt
fc WSJT-X.ini.good WSJT-X.ini >> FileComp.txt
del WSJT-X.ini
copy WSJT-X.ini.good WSJT-X.ini
C:WSJTwsjtxinwsjtx.exe

This would create a file called FileComp.txt that would contain the differences in a "good" INI file and one it is using. 

I am pretty sure that WSJT-X writes to the INI file throughout the session, so you could capture a "good" INI file while it is running.

Maybe you can get an idea or two doing this. Just FWI, I am sure you already know this, but the INI file is plain text so you can look at it any time with a text editor. 

73