Jim, Thanks for your comments and insight.
I hope you are not correct in you presumption that they might not fix it for the reason you stated below, but that is a possibility. Even with the limitations using 96K, the Presonus is a very good interface for use with the SDR1K with the particular features it brings to the table, such as balanced inputs, mic preamps, headphone jack and volume control and the good dynamic range numbers. If they do no choose to fix the problem, then I suspect I'll be looking for a more complete solution in the future. -Tim --- Integrated Technical Services "You can't close the door when the walls cave in" --Robert Hunter -----Original Message----- From: Jim Lux [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, April 05, 2006 11:12 AM To: Tim Ellison; Flex Radio Subject: Re: [Flexradio] All Firebox users - Please read At 06:44 AM 4/5/2006, Tim Ellison wrote: >I am sure all of you are aware of the issue with the Firebox related to >the substantial roll off of the noise floor starting at 24 KHz when >operating at a sampling rate of 96 KHz. If not, you can refer to the >follow up post by Eric on 3/30/09 entitled "Panadapter at 96K >Questions". ><snip> Welcome to the wild and woolly world of using devices with A/Ds outside their nominal intended uses. The same problem exists with FPGA boards for developing DSP applications. They'll make some reasonable design decisions (like a LPF before the A/D intended to digitize, e.g. video) and then, when you want to do something like IF undersampling, you can't get to the raw A/D input. Sometimes the mfr is responsive, other times they aren't. Sometimes it's a lack of technical support resources to give you the data you need. Sometimes it's that they don't want the hassles of explaining why the modified board doesn't behave as expected, or, that they aren't confident it will work at all, and have no time/money/staff to find out. You can contact me off list if you want specific companies that I've found are good and/or bad to work with in terms of this. >So, it looks like we need to band together as a disgruntled user base >and mount a letter (e-mail) writing campaign to request that the >firmware be fixed so that we get the attention of Presonus and put this >issue on their radar. It should be a polite correspondence indicating >the problem, the fact that it is a known issue and that you would really >appreciate them making an effort to fix this in a timely manner. If >they get inundated with requests, it should expose the problem. Given that they are a consumer equipment manufacturer, don't hold your breath. They can make a perfectly reasonable marketing decision that it's not worth it. Here's an idea.. see if you can figure out how many of these widgets the company sells total, and what fraction of that we SDR1000 users are. Maybe looking at serial numbers might give a clue? If they're selling 10,000 units/month, we're not a very big market in comparison. If they're selling 10 units/month, then we are. >Here are the folks at Presonus that this effort should make an impact by >reading you letters. I am sending my letter to all of them. > >Kurt Bueche - Vice President, Operations: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Chad Kelly - Customer Service Manager: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Rick Naqvi - VP of Sales and Marketing: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Brad Zell - Director of Marketing: [EMAIL PROTECTED] My own preference would be to call (on the phone) the marketing folks, or try to hit them up at a trade show. AES is in the fall, so that's a while from now. They were/are showing at Musikmesse international trade show in Frankfurt. Perhaps at NAB in Las Vegas at the end of April? Explain why providing this capability is useful to ALL of their customers (not just the tiny number of hams with SDR1000s) The customer service manager isn't really involved in product design issues. He'd actually resist any sort of modification or change in performance that might adversely affect their core clientele (folks recording audio in small studios), and the ops manager is just worried about producibility and driving the last penny out of the build cost.
