FLDigi vs MMTTY

Ken - NM9P

Having used both MMTTY and FLDigi, I am interested in any testing results about which program has the most effective demodulator for RTTY. I ran MMTTY for last weeks CQWW RTTY Contest because it was a little easier to set up with N1MM+ software. I ran FLDigi a lot last year when hunting the W1AW portable operations. Does anyone have any data comparing the two? Thanks, Ken - NM9P

Andrew O'Brien

I have no data but I think you will find that MMTTY , in recent versions, has some settings that can dig out weak signals slightly better than RTTY within Fldigi.
Andy K3UK

Glenn

I worked the CQWW RTTY contest with four decoding windows:   two MMTTY (with different decode settings), one 2Tone and one fldigi.   (I have three large 4K monitors with lots of real estate....)

fldigi was the least inaccurate decoder of the three.  2Tone correctly decoded a call only twice that MMTTY had difficulty with.   MMTTY was by far and away the most accurate for decoding RTTY consistently!   In fact, I deleted the fldigi & 2Tone windows after 24 hours, as they caused more distraction and except as noted, were quite inferior to MMTTY.

Your mileage may vary, but I can only report what I saw.

The new RTTY in Version 1.5 makes for incredibly fast and accurate tuning of an RTTY signal.  Please don't tell anyone of our new secret weapon!!!

Glenn W0GJ

DH2ID

I can't say much about MMTTY, which I have used extensively with PowerSDR.
I had no problems with the VAC then, but for SmartSDR I just can't get the right
soundcard settings, because I have too much of them to be displayed in MMTTY.
If somebody thas a workaround for that, I would be glad to use it, as I don't want
to change the DAX channels every time I want to use MMTTY
(I could use DAX RX/TX 2 as you can see)



I normally decode with DM780 of Ham Radio deluxe, which is sufficient for strong
signals, if signals get bad I use fldigi, which decodes just fine and is easy to setup
(see my tutorial)

Alex DH2ID

Off topic:
One who is glad about me using digital modes on PC is my beloved
ham friend and wife Beatriz, DD5JZ. She had to put up with two Siemens
teleprinters and their assorted paper tape readers and punchers for full
duplex teleprinting on 2 meters, using a repeater at Frankfurt.
They were located in our kitchen at Heidelberg, where we were both
students. Luckily this kitchen was very big... I remember that I got back
one day to find the police at the door, who got called because our landlady
was afraid of burglars. She heard typing in our flat, when she knew that
we were at lectures.
There was always a fire extinguisher nearby, because the oil in the printers
sometimes caught a bit of fire with all the electrical sparks...

Ken - NM9P

Thanks, Glen.  That is exactly the kind of feedback I am seeking.
I found MMTTY to be pretty accurate most of the time.  In fact, on the higher, quiet bands, I could get a decode on signals too weak for my 100 watt station to work, even with the new antenna.

What were the two settings you were using on MMTTY?  The two I found most effective were IIR & FIR.  I never found the PLL decoder to be that helpful in the midst of interference.  Perhaps I didn't have the tuning parameters set correctly.  Did you modify any of the extra parameters?  I am still learning about that part of MMTTY.

Thanks again,

Ken - NM9P

Glenn

I kept one on PLL and varied the other with IIR & FIR, depending on flutter.

Chris DL5NAM

Glenn

You probably need to select another DAX option, like DAX Audio RX 3 for receive and DAX Audio TX 3 for transmit.....so they use the same DAX channel for the same slice.    Don't use anything with "IQ" or "RESERVED AUDIO" in the selection.

Glenn W0GJ

DH2ID

Yeah, you're right Glenn, that is what I do, but I'm just too lazy to always
want to change my DAX settings, therefore I'm using fldigi, which decodes
just fine. Of course TRUETTY is another option, one of the best decoders IMHO: http://www.qsl.net/wm2u/truetty.html

Alex DH2ID

Glenn

I agree....TrueTTY works FB and is very easy to use, in fact, probably THE easiest digital program to use!  

To be perfectly honest, I forgot to put that up for decoding during the contest, as I had "so many others" working.

73
Glenn W0GJ

km9r.mike

The latest version of MMTTY that I know of is V1.68A which was released in Sep 2010. It is open source but I do not think it has been updated since then.

DrTeeth

That is correct. IMHO it is effectively abandonware but some people say it is still being developed. That must be in secret as the last release was over 5 yrs ago. 2-Tone is still under active development.

Walt

The nice thing about MMTTY is that it is consistent - and I not sure there could be a lot of improvement of the just-plain-decoding function. (which is all I need for contests - the GUI is built into the logging program)

And MMTTY seems to have weathered every OS I have run it on.  It is working perfect with WIN 10.  A big tribute to the code writing of 5 years ago - so many other programs seem to **** up at every OS / version change.

Big thumbs up to JE3HHT.

Cheers

Chris DL5NAM

... and you can run MMTTY 2 times or 3 times at same time, each with different params for better decoding. Contester doit!

Ken - NM9P

Make no mistake.  MMTTY worked very well with my 6500 and N1MM+ in the CQWW RTTY Contest.  It seems to be very versatile, and most of the parameters in the decoder are adjustable.  But if there is something that decodes better, I want to know it.  I want every advantage possible.

The answer may be, "It depends upon band conditions.  Brand 'X' works better on 80 with lots of noise, but Brand 'Y' works best on quiet bands with weak signals, and Brand 'Z' works best when there is lots of QRM."   Which is perhaps why many ops use multiple decoders simultaneously.

Thanks everyone for the feedback so far.  I plan to check out TrueTTY next.

Ken - NM9P

Andrew O'Brien

MMTTY is still being developed.  I was part of the original test team and still maintain communication with some of the original group.  Dave AA6YQ of DX Lab fame was given permission Mako to work on some of the MMTTY code  and there has been a tweak or two within the past couple of years. Mostly to the filters. Andy K3UK

DrTeeth

Hi Andy, I would suggest that the last modified date or version number is changed to reflect this...at least it would shut me up, LOLZ.

Seriously, leaving things as they are gives the wrong impression.

Andrew O'Brien

FYI, from 8/8/13  
"Mako JE3HHT, the author of MMTTY, MMVARI, and MMSSTV, has released these applications to open source development under the LGPL
license. This license enables developers and companies to use and integrate MMTTY, MMSSTV, and MMVARI, while ensuring that all
improvements to source code are made publicly available. 

The MM-Open organization has been established to encourage and facilitate open source development. Anyone may create public or
private branches of these applications. A set of Committers will maintain a master branch for each application; the initial
Committers are Bob N4HY, Eric KE5DTO, Oba JA7UDE, and Steve N5AC. Packaged versions of MMTTY, MMVARI, and MMSSTV assembled from the
master branches will continue to be available via web pages administered by Ken VE5KC: 

<http://hamsoft.ca/pages/mmtty.php>

< http://hamsoft.ca/pages/mmvari.php>

< http://hamsoft.ca/pages/mmsstv.php>

Source code for these applications is available via GitHub, courtesy of FlexRadio. 

Existing Yahoo Groups will continue to be used to convey defect reports and enhancement requests.

For additional information about the LGPL license, MM-Open governance model, and development process, see

<http://mm-open.org/>

73,

Dave, AA6YQ (Secretary, MM-Open)

DrTeeth

That does not mean there has been any programming activity. It just means that things have been set up for it. If one follows the MMTTY link from the page above, the last version of that program is 1.68A dated 29th Sept 2010. FWIW, MMVARI is on v 0.45 and dated 5th Oct 2010 and MMSSTV is on 1.13A dated 29th Sept 2010. One can only draw one deduction from those dates and version numbers. The only thing missing from the text that you posted from http://hamsoft.ca/ is the date you posted - 8/8/13 does not appear on that page AFAICS.

The changelog for MMTTY stops short of the last modified date and v number.

Andrew O'Brien

see http://www.dxlabsuite.com/dxlabwiki/AA6YQ-FIR-512   for info about the AA6YQ-FIR

Takeshi Yamada

Request!
  For those lazy operator like myself, would you give us MMTTY setup guide?
  I am using FLDIGI with some frustration.

73 de JI1BNU

Andrew O'Brien

Try http://www.dxlabsuite.com/dxlabwiki/FlexSignature since Winwarbler uses MMTTY

DrTeeth

Andy, Mni, mni tnx fer that Flex Setup link. It should prove very useful, especially as Flex has released their new RTTY mode and there are few Flex-specific setup info sheets around.

73 de Guy

Duane_AC5AA

Rather than a DXLab suite specific setup, can anyone point to a general MMTTY setup guide? AFter 1.5, for some reason, FLdigi is not working for me, but I was planning to move to MMTTY anyway. Now, I can receive, but I can't get transmit to key other than VOX. A nice step-by-step would be handy!

Rick Hadley - W0FG

It's pretty straightforward.  If you're already receiving, just check a couple of things:  in "Options, Set up MMTTY", on the Soundcard tab, make sure you have the proper DAX TX channel chosen, then go to the TX tab and set the PTT COM port (I use '5')  to the one you have presumably already set up in CAT.  You should then be good to go.

DrTeeth

Andy's link works very well - got decoding on MMTTY and 2Tone decoding  (mni tnx agn Andy). But I have not come across many RTTY signals that I can decode cleanly. As I have not used RTTY before, I am unsure as to how strong a signal has to be to ensure a clean decode. What does not help is that the RTTY contacts I have come across have vy short overs so it is not easy to tweak a constant signal.

For an MMTTY setup try http://www.aa5au.com/rtty/. Pls let me know how you get on as that is my next 'project'.

Andrew O'Brien

FYI.. RTTY is not as "robust"  as other digital modes like Olivia, MFSK16 or even PSK31.  So weak RTTY signals can be expected to contain 30% or more errors in a typical line of transmitted text. RTTY is mostly used nowadays for contests or brief signal report exchanges in a DXpedition scenario.  So, people mostly only care about the RST and callsign.  RTTY will generally allow the callsign and RST to be received in a short burst of RTTY where the call sign and RST may be repeated 2-3 times.  Many RTTY contesting applications include a database of known RTTY stations to further help in getting the call sign correct when encountering a weak signal. If you want reliable rag-chew copy you need a stable strong signal.  As Guy has discovered, a RTTY  law appears to be that the signal must stop just when you managed to tune it in!
Andy K3UK

Duane_AC5AA

I've used RTTY for years using KAM, HAL DXP-38 and microHam TNC's. (No, I don't go back to the green key days!) But for some reason the MMTTY setup with the Flex is giving me fits. Works one time, won't work the next, etc. Need to spend more time trying to figure out what is going on. One real reason for this is that WriteLog (my contesting software of choice) uses the MMTTY engine, so if I can get it working natively, WL should be able to use it. Or, so the reasoning goes! So far, no joy.

DrTeeth

Duane,

Just come across some specific WriteLog/MMTTY info here; http://www.rttycontesting.com/ towards the bottom of the right-hand column.

73.

Duane_AC5AA

THanks, Guy - Wayne sent me that link yesterday afternoon, and I have it working great with WriteLog. Problem now is that, against conventional logic, it still isn't working with MMTTY alone! Wayne's code works differently and accesses the FLEX directly rather than thru CAT. It works fine. Now to try to find the problems that I have between MMTTY and CAT and SSDR! I appreciate the pointer! 73, Duane

Duane_AC5AA

Progress. MMTTY is working with the exception of keying the FLEX. If I turn on VOX, it keys. Now to figure out why COM7 which works fine under WriteLog/MMTTY doesn't work in MMTTY alone. This certainly isn't "falling off a log!"