Thinking of purchasing a 6600.

John Chmielewski

Hello my name is John N2XD and I am thinking of trying a Flex 6600. Is it possible to use a digital audio interface such as a Presonus 192 Mobile, DAW, and Voicemeeter Potato with the Flex units. I have been a Apache labs user for the last 6 years. But I am thinking of going to Flex.Thanks.

K3SF

The flex radio already has digital audio interface exchange (DAX channel one for each slice).  and a DAXIQ for IQ data. 

Since the audio digital interface already exists for flex radio, why would you need  Voicemeeter Potato  and Presonus s/w?

My 6600m provide 4 DAX channels and 4 DAXIQ channel. the DAX interfaces with such digital mode s/w as wsjtx and fldigi and DAXIQ works with cwskimmer

Paul K3SF

  

Mike-VA3MW

Hi John

I use Potato all the time.  You would set up one of the B1 or B2 outputs to the DAX TX Audio line in.  I haven't done it, but there is no reason why it wouldn't work.

Mike 

John - AF3K

Hi John,

Below is a diagram of the setup we had using  Flex DAX, Voicemeeter and Audacity to record Rx and Tx audio for 3,000+ QSOs during the 48 hour 2019 CQWPX SSB contest at VP5P.  It could all be done on one machine of course, but we didn't want to additionally burden the computer running N1MM with other tasks.

BTW, we submit our logs within minutes of the contest ending, and of course do not adjust them from the recordings which is against the rules!

One limitation I believe is that CW Tx does not appear on a DAX channel.

Hope this helps.

73 and GL!
John AF3K

K3SF

awesome...

as usual i learn something new every day here

paul k3sf

John Chmielewski

Thank you all for the replies. I'm a somewhat confused about the software. When I get the new 6600 what software do i have to load and what is the cost? Thanks again.

John N2XD

Robert Lonn

John, the Flex 6600 comes ready to go. All you need is to load Smart SDR onto a windows computer. If you get the 6600M then it is a fully stand alone radio. Most 3rd party type software will run on your home or laptop computer regardless of what version of the 6600 is running. The Flex comes with the latest software loaded on the radio. Most 3rd party software is free.
Flex has a lot of Videos posted on their web site. If you have not looked at those  I would . They help explain a lot of things about the Flex family of radios.
Before I purchased my Flex 6600M I called up their engineers in sales and asked a lot of questions. They are very friendly and helpful. After the call I was 100% sure that is was a Flex and "NOT" a ICOM IC-7610 radio!! Never looked back.

Clay N9IO

@John AF3K. Guess I should experiment more. My question, Laptop number 2 I assume SSDR must be installed in order to have DAX available but I was thinking once installed for the purpose of recording can DAX be the only program running on number 2 or must SSDR be running on number 2 as well? Clay N9IO

John - AF3K

Hi Clay,

Yes,  we had to install SSDR for Windows on both laptops so DAX would be available, however..... once everything was installed we didn't run SSDR on either laptop - just DAX and N1MM on laptop 1 and DAX plus Voicemeeter plus Audacity on laptop 2 .  We used the knobs on the front panel of the 6600M for tuning, etc. as shown on the diagram.   Of course we could have used a Maestro, or run SSDR for Windows on one of the laptops, but we opted for this setup to optimize for our preferences when contesting as well as to spread out the processing for better performance.  We also felt that by having independent machines, fixing glitches in one wouldn't bring the whole thing down during the contest.

73,
John AF3K