8400 Rx audio disappears

ka9ees

This has happened a couple of times now. Having a conversation on 75m and Rx audio just goes away. It drops at the end of a transmission. It's still receiving. You can see the signals on the panadapter. Restart SmartSDR and it comes right back, but this is a problem. I am using 3.8.19, which was loaded on my computer when running my 6600M.

Is anyone else having this problem?

KD0RC

Hi Ed, I think I would submit a help desk ticket.

VE7ATJ_Don

Hi Ethan… have you checked the squelch level? It's now activated for all modes on all bands and set by default (I think) for about mid-level. Maybe that's causing the drop outs??

ka9ees

@VE7ATJ_Don I don't know who Ethan is. I have the squelch disabled.

VE7ATJ_Don

Ed… my apologies… I THOUGHT I typed Ed, but apparently it came out Ethan :-(

Hmmmm… don't have any other suggestions other than as Len said, submit a Help Desk Ticket.

Is the sound completely muting, or just gettting really low? Are you using Headphones or a powered speaker? Is PC Audio activated?

ka9ees

@VE7ATJ_Don Hahaha! NP Don. I just had to dig you a little bit. I am using the same profiles and software I was using with my 6600M. One thing I notice last night was that CAT and DAX weren't shutting down when I closed SmartSDR. So I shutdown those and restarted SSDR. We'll see if that cures it.

ka9ees

I thought I had this cured. With Ken Wells' help I got the rig reset. Built a couple profiles. It went away for a couple days.

It came back. I now have a cause and effect. If I activate the ANF, on my next transmission the audio drops out. Again SmartSDR has to be restarted to get it back.

Trucker

I would add that information to your support ticket so that the Flex Radio developers can fix it. ( hopefully, sooner than later)

James

WD5GWY

ka9ees

@Trucker they are aware of it. I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced this. It's not happening with my 6600M.

VE7ATJ_Don

hmmmm… it's interesting this is happening on an 8400… I wonder if it might be something not quite meshing between the new hardware and the software….

In any case, great to hear that you can now reproduce the problem reliably. That makes diagnosis MUCH easier :-)

ka9ees

They are telling me both squelch and ANF have to be on, but I only have ANF on. They have assigned it a number and declared it a software defect. I hope that they get it fixed soon.

VE7ATJ_Don

Are they saying ANF and Squelch have to be on to recreate the problem? Or that you must have ANF and Squelch on in order to have RX audio??? In either case, that's really weird, and definitely not the behaviour I see on my ancient 6700 :-) (I have Squelch purposely turned off as I don't wnat/need it) and I don't think I've ever used ANF…

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. Maybe we'll see a 3.8.20 in the near future, however Mike has already made noises that there's a 3.9 being tested….

G2YTpeter

Hi Ed, I am having what appears to be the same problem with my 8600… it works fine for sometimes up to 4 hours of use, but if I am using NR, then the audio just disappears after unkeying. If I close the slice and open a new one, the audio is restored, but if I use NR the problem of loosing audio (but, like you, I am not loosing the waterfall or metering) comes back.. If I don’t re-engaged NR the audio never drops out.

View the post by N8WRL ‘Strange new 8600 NR behaviour’… it sounds like the same issue. At first I too closed SmartSDR and re-opened it, but then realised that I could just close and re-open the slice. I wrote a more full explanation on a reply to the post by N8WRL on the community forum.

Regards,

Peter

G2YT

IMG_0099.jpeg

n8wrl

I just stumbled across this thread after submitting a ticket for my NR-related muting problem. I'm in the process of reorganizing the shack so when I turn the radio back on I'll play with ANF and squelch. I was definately using ANF, lots of stray carriers on 75M. I didn't touch sqelch though, so I don't know if it was on or not.

73 and HNY all!

-Brian n8wrl

G2YTpeter

Hi Brian and Ed,

It looks as though we have the same or identical issue. I opened a Help Desk ticket when this first happened and it was closed on 19th December, really because I had taken my 8600 off the desk and replaced it with my old 6400M because I am away from home for 4 weeks and wanted to be able to operate Remote reliably. I could no longer reproduce the problem as its obviously intermittent. At the time I raised the issue I had put the following info on a request to the Help Desk….

Dear Tim,

Since I last heard from you I believe that I have found what triggers the continuing drop-out of audio when switching from TX to RX with the 8600. It does not happen every time I un-key the PTT, but when the Noise Reduction is turned off I have not been able to get a single instance of it happening. However, when I am using Noise Reduction… particularly during a prolonged period of use (I think this might be significant - is a buffer getting full?) I can get it to drop audio every single time I un-key the PTT from a SSB transmission. By huge contrast, If I turn the NR off it never happens at all. I assume that this is probably a strong indication of what is causing it.
It definitely is not loss of RX because the waterfall and meter continues to run. I have to close the slice, open another one to resume RX. I would comment that on one single occasion (maybe the very first time I saw it) I am pretty sure that the waterfall and metering stopped too, but now it is always just the audio on the slice with everything else fine.

…does this sound familiar?

I will not be able to reproduce this until near the end of January when I will be home, but in the meantime, It seems that we have found a bug.

Regards,

Peter

G2YT

n8wrl

I can make it happen with ONLY NR - ANF or squelch not necessary.

I'v'e updated my ticket.

G2YTpeter

Ed,

This is almost certainly the known issue which has been allocated a fault number by Flex SMART-10697. You will see that Brian N8WRL has the same problem with his 8600. It seems to be identical to the audio drop-out problem that I am having with my 8600. No doubt there will be more people who own Flex 8000 series joining this 'club'.

Tim Ellison has told me that it is now classed as a "known software defect". Most likley a 'race condtion' which is probably going to take significant resources to resolve.

Regards,

Peter Fox

G2YT