I got the opportunity the borrow a "hi-fi" USB soundcard from my local club
OH2AAB. I made a brief comparison with my internal laptop soundcard, using DigitalMaster 780 and my rig TS-850S on 7035kHz at about 9PM GMT.
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| The PSK screen using the internal soundcard of a HP Pavilion dv7; strongish laptop |
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| The PSK screen using the Roland UA-1EX soundcard |
I was a little bit surprised: I don't see very much difference. Or am I blind? A more thorough test would maybe reveal the differences...I don't know. Let's see if I have time to do that. Also on the transmit side. Also I could test an ancient PC...to get some baseline for comparison. My current laptop is quite an efficient multimedia laptop.
Well, I don't believe in a high end soundcard. Since a digital mode uses only a few Hz for data. And the bandwidth is only about 2000 Hz on receive. There is much more difference between radios I think especially signal to noise figures are important. 73, Bas
ReplyDeleteTnx Bas, for commenting! The real difference comes with better sampling rates/bandwidths...and to make use of that you need SDR, right?
DeleteHi!
ReplyDeleteI am the owner of an Edirol UA1-EX, which I bought a few years ago primarily for my homebrew Softrock Lite 40m SDR.
In this application it was the best of all my soundcards.
However, for general Digimode use, compared to other soundcards (built-in, Delta-44, "cheapo Behringer USB") the performance is not noticeably better than or different to any of these.
My conclusion therefore was "high-specification soundcards for SDR", anything else (within reason)for anything else!
However the "volume control" on the Edirol unit is a nice feature, and none of my other sound gadgets have that!
73
Martin - G4FUI
Tnx for your interesting comment, Martin!
ReplyDelete