Maestro internal speaker

Norm - W7CK

This may have already been covered elsewhere so forgive me if I'm repeating.

There seem to be a number of people using their Maestro in their Shack along with or in union with their desktop PC.  The Maestro providing control and a more than adaquately sized screen for the panadapter and the PC providing logging, digital programs, etc.

The PC in my shack stays on all the time.  It serves a wide assortment of functions besides just radio.  In an effort to minimize clutter on my desk, I only have a single set of speakers and unfortunately they are a little older and only have a single input on them.  In other words, I can only plug one input device into the speakers and that device is my PC.

When I got my Maestro, ran it for a short time using the internal speaker and quickly realized a headset was the way to go when I wasn't in the shack with it.   While in the shack, I simply run a 1/8" stereo cable from the line-out of the Maestro to the Line-in on my computer sound card.  The sound is then routed thru the sound card and out the speakers.  Works great and no clutter.

For those of you who have been using the internal speaker or tied to headphones, give it a try.

Norm - W7CK

Martin AA6E

You can do all this without any wires -- even less clutter!  Assuming you have SSDR installed on your PC, along with DAX, the PC can take the DAX audio out of the radio via Ethernet and play it on your speakers. This is all while Maestro is controlling the radio, and SSDR for Windows is not running.  You can turn down the Maestro audio and turn up your PC volume as needed.

You need to set up DAX 1 for Slice A (for example) using SSDR for Windows or Maestro.  (But Maestro itself is unable to receive or send via DAX as far as I can tell.)

Note that you need to tell your PC to play DAX input audio on your PC speakers.  You do this by going to Sound setup (recording), selecting DAX Audio Rx 1 (or whatever number you're using), then going to "properties" and "listen" tab, and finally selecting the "Listen to this device" box.

[It's not entirely clear to me how the DAX connection is managed between the radio and a PC.  If you have more than 1 PC, how does it know who is receiving DAX?  Can more than one PC receive DAX at once?  Etc.]

This is also the best way to run digimode software on your PC while controlling with Maestro.  You just set it all up with SSDR for Windows, the shut down SSDRW and fire up Maestro.  It just works. 

73 Martin AA6E

Norm - W7CK

Thanks Martin.  I use DAX for running digital modes off of the PC while controlling the rig via Maestro now.  I just never thought of piping the audio thru a DAX channel and then setting the Listen tab.  Somehow I never thought DAX was really tailored for audio but more so for digital data.  I'm pretty comfortable with the way I have things set up right now.  I can listen to the audio from two different slices at the same time.  I often do this by having one panadapter on 40m and the other on 6m waiting for an opening.  The way I have it set up now works without having to make any DAX changes when I switch panadapters or working digital vs ssb, cw etc...  Pretty seamless.  Another thing to keep in mind is that grabbing audio via a DAX channel doesn't let you take advantage of the RX EQ, or the recorder / playback that I know of.   Good suggestion though.

Norm