After a bit of repair and upgrading at Flex-Radio Central, I just fired up my radio (with amp and tuner) today, and actually talked to someone on 20 SSB!
I'm using a D44 card without an external mic preamp, and at the moment just a cruddy hand mike I had around that happened to be wired to work with the front panel mic connector. I know a month or so ago there was conversation about using the D44 without a preamp on the mic input. I found that by setting the preamp gain on the TX panel to about 35, I get what seems to be decent audio. But I'm not sure how that interacts with the "Mic" setting on the main panel, and I'm not sure how to set the various levels to optimize the transmit audio (not looking for hi-fi right now, just proper levels and a bit of compression to add some punch). Any suggestions for how to optimize the TX audio chain, and particularly how to balance between preamp setting and front-panel Mic gain settings? Any hints on compressor/compandor setting would also be appreciated. (I'm running beta 1.3.12). Thanks, John