Is ANF Working Better in V3 ?

Russ Ravella

I've gotta feeling I'm in for it by posting this but I've just got to ask if other folks are seeing the following.

Since purchasing my 6600 several months ago, I've gone from thinking the ANF worked OK to being pretty unhappy with it.  I've found it intermittent at best and sometimes totally ineffective.  I read the manual about it and have paid attention to the "amount" setting but finally concluded it's pretty useless and rarely even bother with it.  I've read several others on the forum who feel about the same way.

I continued to ignore it after upgrading to V3 because Flex didn't list it as an item they'd worked on.  But long story short, I've just started noticing it actually seems to work pretty well now?  Is anyone else seeing that?  Is it possible Flex actually fixed it but hasn't especially advertised it for some reason?  Since it was intermittent in the first place I could just be getting "lucky" I guess but I've been trying it all day and it seems to work now ...

Jim Gilliam

The ANF has always worked for me when no one is speaking. As soon as someone speaks I can hear the offending  carrier modulate up and down. I found it very annoying and stopped using it. I haven't tried it on version 3.

Russ Ravella

Hi Jim,

Thanks for the response.  Yeah, that was one of the things I didn't like about it as well.  Also, it seemed to replace some of the offending carrier with a weird distorted mix of the in-band signals and the carrier it was trying to notch out sometimes.  I'm noticing very little of that all of a sudden.  Like I said, maybe I'm just getting lucky hitting cases it always handled better than others (whatever those would be...).

N8AUM

Good question Russ, currently running V3 but I will enable it than reload 249 and see if it responds in the same way. Will let you know if I notice any difference between the 2 versions. Guess I wont get much sleep tonight lol 

K5ROX

ANF on every radio I have works great.....except the flex.

Dan KG0AQ

I remember my old SDR-1000 and early software revisions of my Flex-5000 working great. I think when they went away from the AF based ANF it went to ****. Has not worked since.

Mark K1LSB

What is "AF based ANF", please?

Scott N8UMW

Yes sir. ANF and NB need much work.

James Whiteway

Mark, AF based means the filter is working in the audio domain, instead of the digital domain. AF filtering was common in a lot of radios before DSP came along. Some worked quite well. Others not so well.
James
WD5GWY

Mark K1LSB

Thanks James.

For comparison, HDSDR and SDR Console both have very effective (and virtually transparent) ANF, and they're both free so it's not like it takes a team of professionals to get a proper job done.

James Whiteway

Don't go there Mark !
:-)

I will say this though, writing an effective Digital Notch Filter is not trivial. But, it obviously can, and has been, done.
Noise Blankers on the other hand, are not so easy. What works great for one person's noise issues will be useless for another's. In the case of Noise Blankers, one size fits all does not apply.
  I have no doubts that FRS's developers can get a handle on the ANF issues I and others have had issues with. It's simply a matter of when, is the issue to me.
I am hoping that v2.50 comes thru with the improvements to ANF that's needed.
If so, I'll be getting v3 at that point as I like to pretend I'm a programmer and want the multi-client feature so my GUI app will run alongside SSDR at the same time.
James
WD5GWY

Bill -VA3WTB

I am not a Flex employee


I would not expect any changes to the DSP in V2.5. I have not heard anything about it being worked on.
The DSP has not really been worked on since it was first introduced a long time ago. 
Imagine, even without some of those filters not working so well, the Flex is still a wonderful receiver, I wonder how that could be?

James Whiteway

Bill, why would you think that the DSP functions will not be addressed? I would hope with all the various posts made on this forum, that FRS would see how important these features are to a lot of their user base.
 I cannot imagine with hardware that can be leveraged to the level that FRS has so far, that they cannot or will not get back to the basics for a while and address those issues.
I understand things like the Noise Blanker not being able to handle every single situation, but, it can be improved. And the ANF can be improved as well. Along with other bugs and features that don't work as well as their counterparts from other manufacturers.
  I agree that the 6000 Series radio receivers are great. But, there is a lot of room for improvement. Even the 1500 I had with PSDR had an ANF that worked great.
Other SDR radios have better ANF than the 6000 Series. To me, that is sad.
Not every ham needs remoting or multi-client. But, to capture the rest of the market, FRS needs more of the basics that work, and work equal to, or better than the competition.
   As far as the receiver being wonderful, it is simple, it has a lot to do with Direct Conversion and not having several stages the signal has to travel thru like older analog receivers do. No phase noise, and a host of other reasons.
But, interference fighting tools that work are standard on all radios now. And are the expected norm. Not something that "might" be fixed added someday.
Since you have a disclaimer stating you "are not a Flex employee" (are you an Alpha Tester?) how do you know or expect to hear that the DSP functions are not being worked on?
I have had actual Flex employees (including their head of engineering) tell me that by v2.49 things like the ANF and other issues would be looked at and  corrected. That didn't happen. Instead, v3.x came out. So, hopefully, v2.50 will be the version that finally fixes things. If not, I expect there will be a LOT more posts like those of last weekend.
James
WD5GWY




Bill -VA3WTB

I am not a Flex employee...

James, this has been a discussion so many times, so I will not say much more. Nothing new has been said and everything has been well documented.

V2.5 as far as I know is not about noise mitigation, and Flex has never suggested that it was. Pehaps your correct in thinking it is about DSP, but I don't expect it.

One reason I see for this, is that refining the DSP in SSDR is in itslf a large project and will take most if not all the company resouces to work on. So I really don't think it will be in  update 2.5 coming up.

It is true there are things that other radios do a better job on, but bye the same tocken there are things the Flex does that other radio don't.

The real magic of the receiver in SSDR is the AGC-T something other radios don't have, a big advantage for Flex.

I say when I post that I am not a Flex employee because there have been a few on the community slaming me for acting as an emplyee,,so now I make it very clear so these people will not continue to be confused.

Mark K1LSB

Bill, it's the way you talk about things that only a Flex insider would likely have any in-depth knowledge of, that misleads people.

For example, your statement above, "refining the DSP in SSDR is in itself a large project and will take most if not all the company resources to work on", implies that 1) you're a programmer who also happens to be intimately familiar with the SSDR source code, and 2) you know the current size of Flex's software team and and the depth (or lack thereof) of their capabilities.

In fact, you don't know any more about those things than any of the rest of us. You're nothing more than a Flex apologist, as is evidenced by your typical gushing pro-Flex statements such as the one above, "Imagine, even without some of those filters not working so well, the Flex is still a wonderful receiver, I wonder how that could be?"

It's not my intent to beat up on you, Bill, I just grow weary of seeing you so incessantly post stuff that only an unabashed (and uninformed) fanboi apologist would post.

HDSDR and SDR Console are both one-man efforts, yet they both got a very firm grip on the ANF issue years ago. Simon Brown listens to his users thru his very active groups.io page and has a "release early, release often" philosophy to his software (I often wonder how he even finds any time to program, given all of the attention he devotes to his users). If even one user finds something wrong with his software, he typically fixes it pronto. He may also be working on other things in the meantime, but he'll still post up and comment, "the problem is fixed, it will be in the next release". Contrast that to Flex's management's continued silence after how long a time of people complaining about the ANF?

And per James' strongly voiced advice, I'm done.

Craig Williams

Guess I don't understand. My ANF works fine on my 6400 with V2.9.x

Bob G W1GLV

Read the "mitigating noise" on the Flexradio website.

Bill -VA3WTB

I wish both of you would not make things so personal, if you disagree with me that's great,,does it matter? but the constant attacks?

Kevin, how much clear can I be, I don't work for Flex.
Did you hear anything about update 2.5 being about DSP? did you? Not me, is what I said. So I would not expect anything on it.

Mark, my comment is from comments Gerald made a long time ago about the man hours and testing needed to introduce the noise mitigation, It was something they worked on for a while.

example":
Gerald...
The current noise blanker does work but not as well as we would like.  As announced in the prior Flex Insider, the theme of v1.5 will be noise and interference mitigation.  We don't plan to go for just parity with other radios but to raise bar in this area just as we did with the Panafall.   We have several "science projects" on tap with a few PhDs contributing to the effort.  No promises yet as to what that will look like but it will be the main focus of v1.5.


Many many times Flex has said that the problem has been fixed in the next release, did you miss all of them?

And it matters nothing to me if either of you aprove of my comments. They are simply my opinions based on comments made from Flex in the past.

So please show more respect, if you don't like what you read,,please turn the page.

DL4RCE

Craig, it does not work fine, maybe fine enough for you but compared to what is possible with other rigs it simply does not the job even

DL4RCE

Craig, it does not work fine, maybe fine enough for you but compared to what is possible with other rigs it simply does not do the job even with simple single tones. I do not use it so I don't care too much. Volker

Lionel

ANF seems okay to me but I mostly use CW.  When you say compared to what is possible with other dogs, what does that mean?  I really want to know because I have no reference in the shack to compare the Flex ANF.  What is it that other mfg ANF does, or does better, that sets the bar for Flex? 

As I said, it seems okay to me and maybe its because I have not used any other ANF.

Burch - K4QXX

As others have said, the ANF works fine assuming you don't use it over a moderate or strong signal.  If you do, at least on my radio, you will get the ringing from the birdie or carrier you are trying to suppress on the signal's voice peaks.  Very annoying.  If you use it on an offending noise that isn't on top of a signal, it works fine.

Neal Pollack, N6YFM

Guys:   Can you define a little more specifically what you mean, rather than
"works great except the Flex"?

If engineering in ANY company was going to act on the complaint, it helps to know
a little more specifically and verbosely what the issue is?   Can you describe what the Flex does with ANF that the other rigs do not?

Without more detail, your comments are without use.  It's like calling Microsoft and
yelling at the support person "I GOT AN ERROR MESSAGE".   They ask, what did
it specifically say, and the response is usually something like  "I DON'T KNOW, BUT
IT DON'T WORK AND I'M ****".   Um, how would you take action on THAT software bug?  :-)  :-)

Cheers,

Neal

Lionel

Agreed Neal.  

Craig Williams

Really, really, boring conversations not bring any useful information on using and enjoying Ham Radio.

Bill -VA3WTB

This is why I never use the ANF. what I do is creat a TNF and park it just out side the pass band, then if a signal comes up I simply grab it and slide it over the signal ,,all done.

Till they look into this again.

Mike W9OJ

"If you use it on an offending noise that isn't on top of a signal, it works fine."

But that's the only reason to use it in the first place.

Mark K1LSB

Neal,

Here's a screenshot of HDSDR with a half dozen manual notches I've defined (there aren't any actual birdies in the received signal, I've only defined the notches to illustrate the way the notches operate on the received audio):

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1nyaac_2Bp1MbsdpN3f2rSmS2KbdOfpf3

Notice how each of the narrowly defined notched lines are completely removed from the audio stream while nothing else in the audio band slice is affected at all. A casual listener would hardly notice any degradation in the audio stream at all, because the removed lines are each so narrow that the human ear can hardly discern the loss of any audio "substance" from any individual notch.  Even the presence of multiple notches would only become audibly apparent if they were all clumped closely together.

Now here's a screenshot of the AutoNotch feature of HDSDR acting on an actual birdie in the audio stream:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1VYacDEEO62Q4VYr0UVuPFRu4W7VV8oxQ

Midway through the audio waterfall window I turned on the AutoNotch. Again, notice how only the offending birdie is automatically detected and removed, with absolutely no adverse effect seen (or heard) anywhere else in the audio band slice. The listener would be completely unaware of the presence of a birdie if he weren't looking at the waterfall, and would be equally unaware of the on/off status of the AutoNotch if he didn't notice the color of the ANotch button. That's what I meant by my use of the term "transparent" in my earlier post.

I've used HDSDR for years before acquiring my Flex 6300, and the notch filter in HDSDR is one of the most impressive features I've ever seen in any SDR software. It is 100% effective at filtering out birdies while having absolutely no effect on any other aspect of the audio stream. If there aren't any birdies in the audio, the AutoNotch can be turned on and off with absolutely no deleterious effect on the audio stream - it only acts on (completely removes) any birdies found in the audio bandwidth. It's so un-intrusive I always just left it on. NOTE: The AutoNotch in HDSDR is not adjustable, it's either simply on or off.

Now contrast that with the behavior of the auto notch filter (ANF) in Flex SSDR. Whenever it is engaged, even at the least intrusive slider setting (when the adjustment slider is at the far left), the audio is badly distorted regardless of whether there are any birdies in the audio stream or not.  And the ANF is far less than 100% effective at removing any actual birdies that are found in the audio stream, if there is any other activity (such as voice) also in the stream.

In short, the ANF function seriously degrades the audio in SSDR any time it's engaged. Do this simple experiment yourself: tune in to a strong ragchew QSO on any band and then engage the ANF function, and you'll certainly see what I'm talking about. Many other users have posted the same observations in these fora.

I can't recall ever having seen so basic and glaring a flaw in any software go so long without having even been acknowledged by the software author, let alone having been fixed. For Flex to remain so profoundly mute on this very pointed topic, with it having existed as a user-noted problem for so long, is simply beyond my ability to fathom. Flex devotes large amounts of resources to adding new features into the latest $200 upgrade while ignoring glaring defects in previous releases.

Mark K1LSB

"This is why I never use the ANF. what I do is creat a TNF and park it just out side the pass band, then if a signal comes up I simply grab it and slide it over the signal ,,all done." -- Bill VA3WTB

Lol, an open admission from Flex's biggest fanboi that the best way to use the ANF is to avoid using it at all!

Mark K1LSB

Then to borrow a quote from Bill VA3WTB (wow, who ever thought I'd ever say that!?), "if you don't like what you read, please turn the page."

Craig Williams

So, I am not allowed to have an opinion?