Hi Mark, Before I ordered my Flex-3000, I read everything I could find, and played with the demo on several different computers. Like you, I had less than stellar experience with the demo, and got very confused and apprehensive with a lot of the discussions and info in the knowledge base and forum archives.
I bought a Flex-3000 anyway, and the reality is much much better than the demo. The 3000 needs no sound card. You just need a firewire card, a power supply, and a mike/key, plus a reasonably recent PC. My Dell $200 refurbished GX620 (single-core Pentium 4) works fine for me. I plugged in a pair of powered computer speakers and a mike, but you can use phones/headset too. IMHO, the demo is good for showing how the Flex, or more accurately the PowerSDR, user interface looks and behaves, so you can see how tuning, filters, etc. are used. The demo is not a good simulation of how the radio itself behaves, or how your PC will react. Ignore what you hear out of the speakers with the demo - the real hardware is much much much better. Also, take a lot of especially older information with large grains of salt. I've found that comments and discussions that were written when only the SDR-1000 existed, or when using older versions of PowerSDR, are often no longer applicable with the current versions of hardware and software. But it's often very hard to tell. I have the Flex-3000 running on that old Dell, along with VAC and Dxlabs Suite for PSK31. Should do RTTY too but I haven't tried yet. All audio streams are routed through software. No extra physical cables or sound cards needed. The SDR-1000-based discussions about sound cards are now irrelevant for the current hardware. Just as you said - Flex, power supply, firewire card/cable, and PSDR/VAC/com0com/digital software or mike or key is all you need. Oh yeah, an antenna too... 73, /Jack K3FIV On Mon, 2009-06-29 at 07:55 -0500, Mark Whatley wrote: > Hello all, > > > > I've been doing a lot of reading before deciding on buying a FlexRadio. I'm > still a bit confused about the sound card requirements. The computer that I > would like to use currently has a SB Live 24 bit external sound device. But > it is not in the supported list of sound cards. But I see this Q and A in > the FAQs on the web site: > > > > Q3: Does the FLEX-3000 need a sound card to operate? > > A: The need for an external sound card to provide the A/D and D/A > conversions of the I/Q signals was a requirement only for first generation > software defined radios, such as the SDR-1000 other SDRs that utilize the > SDR-1000 architecture. All second generation and beyond SDRs from FlexRadio > Systems, such as the FLEX-3000 do not require a sound card of any kind to > operate. The A/D and D/A converters are integrated into the radio hardware. > > So, why do I need a different (and expensive) sound card? Also, in the KC > article about the supported sound cards I see a note that some contain a > microphone preamp and some don't. It looks like the microphone connects > directly to the radio - so is the lack of a preamp important? > > I have loaded the demo and then the 1.18.1 release. I had a few problems in > getting it to run on the intended system (Dell 3GHz single core XP Pro). > Finally found the right combo of sample rate/buffer size/audio > device(48000,1024,MME). But almost any deviation from 48000 sample rate and > 1024 buffer size will crash the program. These parameters seem to relate to > the sound card and add to my confusion about the sound card requirements. I > understand that in the demo I don't have a radio and possibly the sound > interface is more critical. > > If I understand all this correctly I can hook the FxK box to my computer, > install the software, plug a mic into the FxK, plug a set of headphones in, > and connect a PS and antenna and get on the air. Without a sound card at > all. I'm guessing that most people would want to listen to the receive audio > on speakers. > > So if I want to listen to the audio via my computer speakers then I'll need > a sound interface of some kind (or a separate set of powered speakers)- but > do I really need one of the supported cards? My SB seems to do a good job > with everything else I listen to. > > If I want to feed receive audio to my PC speakers and operate RTTY using > MMTY do I need two sound cards? I've read through the VAC articles so I > follow the basic ideas. But the VAC articles show how to route one audio > stream between the radio and the sound card used for the digital mode. What > about the receive audio stream? > > In all the research I've been doing on this I have probably missed something > that would have answered my questions. I've learned a lot however. I'm > hoping to replace my old FT-1000 with a FlexRadio. > > Thanks to all on the reflector - your posts have been helpful. > > 73, Mark K5XH > > > > _______________________________________________ > FlexRadio Systems Mailing List > [email protected] > http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz > Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ > Knowledge Base: http://kc.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: > http://www.flex-radio.com/ > _______________________________________________ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List [email protected] http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kc.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
