CW Contesting Sidetone for CAT Virtual Winkeyer ports

Asher - K0AU

Reposting since the original post is on a thread with an answered question

Flex 6700 / SSDR 3.1.12.51 / Maestro (sometimes)

Contest season is about to start again. For contesting I use N1MM+. For CW I use the internal Winkeyer on a CAT COM port. I run the radio LAN remote with 1ms of reported RTT.

Why is there still no Winkeyer sidetone on PC Audio? This is a well-documented use case by now. My workaround is I'm still using a pair of RemoteRig boxes to carry audio and local keying.

Two missing features for CW contesting:

1. There have been so many requests to carry CW sidetone on the PC Audio channel that it seems reasonable to add it. Sure there are situations where it won't work very well, but there are also situations like my N1MM+ example where sidetone is essential. I need to know what I'm sending and when the transmission is over. I don't care about monitoring my transmit waveform, but I need to know what symbols I'm sending. I feel like there's a philosophical blockage here, and it's time for a customer-oriented product manager to step in and put the feature on the roadmap
2. Please add audio and keying to Maestro in SmartControl mode. That way I can still run SSDR + N1MM+ on the computer, use the knobs on the Maestro and finally take the Remote Rig out of the configuration. It would be really nice to get the same sidetone for WinKeyer keying and local paddle keying, but the big picture is it removes another pair of A/D and D/A conversions in the signal path. It harmonizes audio/PTT/paddle connectivity between SmartControl and other Maestro modes. My goal in contest configuration is to remove all nonessential hardware and software since each element is another potential failure point or source of unpredictable interactions.

Is there a working group somewhere that Flex relies on for contest configuration? I'd sure like to see what others are doing to address LAN and SmartLink remote for CW contest operation. A useful solution may also need a low latency Windows audio path... which may involve custom audio drivers. But all doable. As my engineers used to say "It's a simple matter of programming."