Problem: WSJT-X Tx audio disconnects from Flex DAX after sitting idle

Many of the features in Windows 10 v 2004 are intended for the "Greater Population" of Windows users, as such Ham Radio applications are not the normal population so as each new update comes along you may need to reset your setting (or at least check to make sure they didn't change).

If you use a "Normal" security setup (One Administrative Account and one Standard User Account) make all of your System settings in the Administrative Account. You should not need to use an Administrative Account for any "Normal" computing needs.

"Stale" connections usually occur when your computer senses no activity. Normally this will cause your monitor to turn off the video. This in turn will cause a series of unintended actions that Windows "thinks" are required. All user processes are automatically lowered in execution priority, power conservation measure are invoked, the system shuts down the hard drive power, and depending on your individual settings, the CPU might even go into a state called "Hibernation". This state will save a memory image of the current state of the memory and save it to disk, then actually shut down the processor. When the system awakens from "Hibernation", the disk is powered up and the "Hibernation file" is reloaded and the system returns to its previous state - ALMOST.

Remember that the system has stopped the CPU while in Hibernation mode! This means that all virtual connections to your audio devices was shut down before entering the Hibernation state! Those devices also include DAX and any other software drivers. Now comes the interesting part, if the drivers were Hibernation Aware (in the actual coding of the drivers) the driver would save the state of its connections when it received the Hibernation signal from the system (known as the Kernel). Upon receiving the "Wakeup" signal, a properly coded driver would reload the previously saved state of its connections and then "wake up" each connection. This would result in the system actually returning to the functional state it was in before the system initiated Hibernation.

There are mutliple names for the various levels of Hibernation which some folks might know as "sleep states", but each level sets various circuits and functions to a low power state to conserve energy usage. You as the owner and administrator of your system should become familiar with each of these state and what timing and triggers both cause it to kick in and what brings it out of the "sleep state". Most of these settings can be found under the settings for "power" in windows. Be advised that the Administrative account should be used to set and control the power settings for all users.

As you can see, the idle state of a user level computer has many variables and every system has a different mix of applications and drivers, and to make things worse, every computer has different hardware settings that control all of these! The best method of troubleshooting any of these is to disable all unintended power control including your screensaver, hard drive power, CPU sleep states, and monitor power. Many drivers for certain hardware are not fully compliant with the software applications interfaces, so various low power modes will result in "Stale" connections failing in any of a number of ways.

SmartSDR and other software for Ham Radio sound card modes depends on all of the software to be fully compliant with the power control specifications. Unfortunately this is easier to say than actually to put into the code that makes everything play together nicely! Finding and resolving all of these issues is not a trivial task, testing its functioning correctly is an even larger task. The only way to eliminate this type of "stale" operation is to turn OFF all power controls wherever you find them. Usually the best utility for this is the Device Manager. Your goal is to be able to walk away from the computer and have the computer continue to function with no automatic power controls being triggered. This is not easy for the beginner to accomplish and even for those more experienced in System Administration, it can be difficult. If you are not going to use something, turn it off (disable the control). Ideally in the future, we will have access to "keep alive" utilities that will prevent the computer from getting "sleepy".

This is happening to me also on NON flex radios (VAC not DAX installed on the PC). Happens on my Hermes Lite 2 using PowerSDRmrx and SDRConsole. Also happens with SunSDR2 Pro and their software. I have replicated this on 2 different Windows 10 machines one of which is a brand new machine and install.

I have seen this issue of random no TX audio after sitting idle when using both WSJT-X and JTDX. In my installation, I have found it appeared to be a problem when using WSJT-X and JTDX radio settings/split operation set to Fake It. It seemed like a timing issue where the Flex tried to transmit audio before the Slice was switched up or down in frequency was completed using Fake It mode? Setting Split Operation to None cured the problem and I have not had the issue since. I hope this helps some. Something to try if you have been using Rig or Fake It for split operation in WSJT-X or JTDX. I am using a Windows 10 64 bit computer, Flex 6500 with SmartSDR 2.6.2, WSJT-X 2.2.2 and JTDX rc-152.

73 Jay KA9CFD

I have an issue where WSJT-X sporadically loses RX audio if idle or if the program is shut down and restarted. Restarting WSJT-X and/or DAX does not fix the issue. The only fix I have found is to reboot the (3 month old) computer. In fairness, I had this issue with my older computer as well. I have turned off all energy saving features.

Tim vE6SH