Dirty distorted transmit signal

Phil M0VSE

The problem only seems to affect 6300s, maybe a subtle hint for me to upgrade?

DH2ID

Maybe, Phil ;-) My XYL still believes I have a 6300...

Frederic HB9CQK

I have a 6700 (1.5.0) currently using it mostly with WSJT-X on WSPR. Yesterday I realized that I got multiple spots from the same station in one transmission. I looked at my WSPR signal and realized that it was distorted. I do not yet have a screen shot, but it was easy to reproduce - just click the Tune button in WSJT-X and the distortion is obvious. I could make it go away by rebooting the PC (Win 10) and the Flex 6700, but the distortion re-appeared today. I never had this with preceding versions.  I do not yet know what triggers the distortion. This is serious, so I will dig in further and let you know what I find out. I thought that it may be important to know that the 6700 may be affected as well.

73, Frederic, HB9CQK

clint yates

I have windows 7 ultimate and does the ame thing.has nothing to do with windows

Jay -- N0FB

Steve, VP Engineering at Flex Radio said earlier in this thread that the issue is not tied to an operating system version.  See below:

 Steve - N5AC, VP Engineering

• As Tim says, we are investigating the issue and will let everyone know as soon as we've found the problem. This was not seen by any of the Alpha group (50+ FLEX-6000 owners). If you experience the problem, it would be very useful for us to have a screenshot of your panadapter in SSB and CW during TUNE when the problem occurs (as Marco mentioned earlier). The issue is not (can not be) Operating System related for the reasons that Walt mentioned earlier so I wouldn't spend time trying it on different PCs, etc. Thanks for your reports.
  

Kilroy

As of now I still have the problems with distorted signals.  After turning on and off it will sometimes clear for a while but always comes back. I am switching back to 1.4.16 until Flex is able to find the problem. It seems to work fine.

Bill -VA3WTB

This will be most interesting to see what they find out, as Tim said 100+ testers along with their own testing in the shop never seen this happen.

DH2ID

Hello Frederic,
can you describe what you see as distorted or post a screenshot?
My signal looks like this when I tune in WSJT-X:


From this signal I would deduce that the signal is distorted, but my
audio signal on the monitor and my signal on my spectrum analyzer
both show a clear signal without distortions and without undue
harmonics.

My system: Flex-6500, SmartSDR 1.5.0.65, WSJT-X 1.6.1-devel,
Win7 hope premium 64bit.

73, Alex DH2ID

Frederic HB9CQK

Dear Alex

I am using exactly the same configuration with the 6700. Your tune signal does not look distorted from my point of view. Mine was A LOT worse.  I have not seen the problem since I did a reset of the 6700. I will update you if I find it again.

73, Frederic

DH2ID

Thank you, Frederic. Let's hope that the problem was solved by your reset. 73 Alex DH2ID

Bill Roberts

Question...  Are there any Flex 6300 owners/users who are successfully using SSDR 1.5?

My '6300 is one day away from being delivered after a trip to Austin.  I currently have 1.4.63? installed on my I7 PC running Windows 8.1.  I'd like to install the new release but wonder if it would be wiser to wait.  Thanks in advance and good luck to all those dealing with this problem report.

VE6KWA

My 6300 is working great on 1.5  Audio is good and all seems well. Only using it on SSB but so far so good.

Phil M0VSE

It looks like it isn't a universal problem with the 6300 then which is interesting. Is anybody also experiencing my zero watts output power problem on SSB? I haven't had the issue since downgrading. Lets hope that FRS can reproduce the problem!

K3SF

i have 6300 and running V1.5 with no problems both on cw and ssb.
I run it both in Win 7 and Win 10 in VMware running as a guest OS under osx 10.10.5 on mac mini with i7 processor, 16gb ram and 1tb SSD.

Also have have used the same setup on my macbookpro (i5) while sitting in my livingroom, with cwskimmer.

no issues here with 6300 and ssdr v1.5

have run the WNB and found it works but finicky to tune to get best effect.  I need to better understand a proper procedure for tuning it.


Paul K3SF

clint yates

i don't understand how the 100+ testers missed it because it is happening to me more often than not.

Rick WN2C

Well I had the same issue...well at least I think I did. My Transmit signal looked like the ones that were put up on this thread but after shutting off the last 2 nights it has not come back.
So is there a un-me too button? 

Cal N3CAL

Just noticed the issue while Transmitting my CW ID at the end of a JT65 QSO using WSJT-X V1.5.0.  The JT-65 signal is clean but the CW ID sounds and looks terrible.  I'm using DAX Audio Stream 1 in the DIGIU mode.  (Windows 10 64 bit machine). 

this is the CW ID: (Sounds very distorted)


This is during the JT-65 TX (Sounds Good)

Cal/N3CAL

Marco

6300, right?

Cal N3CAL

Yes,  6300

Ross W8TZ

Some screen shots of different transmit modes of 6300 when the problem is occurring. CW mode looks almost normal.


CW



JT65



USB SSB



TUNE

Phil M0VSE

Hi. I decided to try installing 1.5 again after a factory reset of my 6300. The problem was exactly the same! I have done a quick video to demonstrate, sorry for the shaky picture but I was balancing my phone and a pair of headphones connected to another HF transceiver!

The audio really does sound this bad and I am not off-frequency. There is a loud pulsing background noise apparent as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CdfOS6lEnE

Bill -VA3WTB

you have opened a help ticket right?

Bill Roberts

Just installed SSDR 1.5 on my PC (Win 8.1, I7 Gen 4, 12 GB RAM and mediocre Nvidia video card driving two monitors) and 6300.  All is well and there is great rejoicing!  CW is clean on the panadaptor as is SSB.  Playing around very briefly, it would appear that the notch filter works better and has far less side effects.  Played around with the WNB and noticed no ill effects (even at 100).  At midnight, I hear no correlated noise on 40.  Time for bed :-)

rich

Is it possible that what is described in this thread is related to the "DAX Distortion & JT65" thread that I started last week.  Some of the photos of the distorted signals appear similar.  73, Rich, K3VAT

Bill -VA3WTB

Steve at flex just posted it is not software related. Only a handful of people are having problems.

 Steve - N5AC, VP Engineering

There is an intermittent issue in the transmit audio and the vast majority of the complaints are on the 6300, but it is a small group of FLEX-6300 owners that have the issue.  We take this kind of issue very seriously and we have a team looking at this in the lab trying to determine the cause.  If you are having the issue, I would recommend downgrading to v1.4.x until we solve the issue.  As soon as we have news, we will post an update here.

We have a good team of dedicated testers that have been running v1.5 in various forms for months without issue.  The software we released had been in our Alpha team's hands for about three weeks without incident.  As anyone in the electronics or software industry will tell you -- we all wish that things would either always work or break hard.  The hardest issues to find are ones that appear rarely or are selective about where they appear.  Unfortunately, the luck of the draw on this one was that no one on the Alpha team experienced the issue.  But we will find it and get everyone an update just as soon as we can.  The good news is that downgrading is quick and easy.

As has been mentioned here and on the other post about this, the computer and computer OS is not and can not be involved.  The FLEX-6000 radios do all of their signal processing inside the radio -- at no time did your samples leave the radio ;-)  This means that a computer issue will not cause this to happen so my recommendation would be to not alter your operating system, reinstall Windows, etc.  We used to do a test in the early FLEX-6000 days where we would get the radio on frequency and in the right mode and start a QSO and then shut off the computer in the middle of the QSO.  It works just fine and you can complete the QSO, etc.  We got some feedback that the loss of the computer (especially in the remote case) should stop transmit so you can't do this today, but it does illustrate the point that the computer is not involved in your on-air signal.  These things will help other SDRs that depend strictly on the precise timings, buffering, jitter, latency, etc on Windows, but not the FLEX-6000.

Cal Spreitzer - N3CAL

My 6300 was sent back to Flex in Mar of this year for a hardware issue related to poor audio / noise on the microphone input.  Some type of hardware change (ECO 75-1006)was done by Flex related to internal grounding?   Is this new issue somehow related to my previous issue?  

Cal/N3CAL

Ken - NM9P

I wouldn't think so, Cal, otherwise it would be messing up with v.1.4.16 as well.
If I understand it, the ECO 75-1006 change had to do with a grounding issue in the mike input line.

Bill Roberts

My 6300 was sent in for the same issue & treatment.  Thankfully, it handles V 1.5 very well.  Part of my overall Flex audio problems were resolved by bonding all my grounds together with 6 gauge copper (house ground, lightning arrestor ground, shack ground).  Wonder if these problems might be related to local ground loops?

Phil M0VSE

If the radio didn't work perfectly with 1.4 then I would be looking for stray RF or grounding problems but I can't see how it can be?

Ed.G

@Phil can you explain how you are listening to your transmit audio? Is it another receiver?