Created my iCW "Station"

[Mark Tosiello]

After bringing together EhoCW, VoiceMeeter Banana and Mumble, I built an interface for my paddles using the following:

1 - Sewell USB-Serial Adapter (I had this on hand, a similar one is available on Amazon)

1 - 3.5mm Stereo Female Terminal Block panel mount connector

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B077XPSKQD/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_...

 1 - DE-9 (DB-9) RS232 Female Soccket Connector to Terminal Block

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B075QB33VV/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_...

Using the above it was trivial to create a patch cable for my various paddles. The connectors came in 2 packs, so I'm going to make one for my straight keys as well. Dit -> tip (pin 6), Dah -> Ring (pin 8) and Common -> Sleeve (pin 4).  For Straight keys, pin 4 and pin 6.

Working very well, loopback works well. Looks like I'm all set!

73 de Mark KD8EDC

[Chuck aa0hw]

Congrats Mark !  on getting your iCW station together...

- great finds for the hardware peripherals ...thanks for providing the info and links for these...

   

[Mark Tosiello]

Thanks Chuck!!! And thanks for all of your efforts to provide myriad ways for us to send Morse Code over the internet! I do have a question. Using the Voicemeeter AUX VAIO driver in EhoCW to send input to VoiceMeeter results in a very raspy, rough and unpleasant CW tone when monitored in my headphones. I have VB-Audio HI-FI Cable installed as well, but I'm not using any of those virtual cables. Using the driver ASIO:Voicemeeter AUX Virtual ASIO(1-2) solved this problem and works very well with almost no latency. All other settings are at default with respect to system settings and buffers. I wondered if you might have any insight as to why? I don't think I have any issues whatsoever using the current Voicemeeter Virtual ASIO, but I wondered why this might be happening?

Thanks!

Mark KD8EDC

[Chuck aa0hw]

Hi Mark,  

RE ur ? @ - VoiceMeeter & ehoCW -   i think the audio drivers of WINDOWS,  are a common occurrence when speaking about audio glitches when mixing different sound cards and virtual sound cards together...etc...sometimes changing the type of WINDOWS AUDIO DRIVER helps....since windows has several audio drivers(WASAPI, MME, DIRECT SOUND etc)....so it can be difficult to find the right combo...

Happy to hear that the VM virtual ASIO driver is working for a good tone using ehoCW... 

chuck  aa0hw

...

[Mark Tosiello]

Thanks for the info, Chuck. I've been testing my setup using both server loopback and the Recording function of Mumble itself, and configuring things as  you have suggested in your vids. The only issue I have is that I seem to be unable to eliminate a static-like "pop" at the beginning of a series of morse elements. That is to say, I don't hear any "static" during sending a long sequence of elements, several words for instance, but if there is any appreciable silence before beginning another series of elements, the first character sent always starts with a scratch of static. 

Not sure where to go from here, but I'd appreciate any advice you have. I've played back the recordings from Mumble using both Audacity and Adobe Audition. Interestingly, doing the test in which one runs a long (1 minute series of dits with just Mumble's loopback return audible is clean.

Running an 8th Gen i7 using VoiceMeeter Banana, EhoCW and Mumble, with paddles attached as noted above.

Thanks again!

Mark 

[Chuck aa0hw]

Hi Mark,

1st thing i would try, is EHOcw by itself, and try all the options for windows drivers that EHOcw shows in its menu options for audio device and your native sound card on your compouter...and see if you still hear the scratching tone ...if so...then i would try dahDIdah's software cw keyer and do the same thing...if you don't hear the scratch, you can rule out ehoCW(dahdidah) as being the source of the scratch...

2nd thing is to make sure all sample rates are the same on all sound cards being used in the advanced options of windows sound properties...for both playback and recording sound cards for  VoiceMeeter's virtual audio cards, window's native sound cards and the VoiceMeeter menu settings for the selected audio cards chosen...

the other thing to make note of is the VoiceMeeter virtual audio cable control panel...those sample rates on the VM CONTROL PANEL, might benefit from having the same sample rate and bit rate you have chosen for your windows main sound card that you eventually wind up listening to...(on my computer it is the REALTEK HD AUDIO driver)

if after all this, you notice that you are hearing a clear pleasant tone on the first dit without using VoiceMeeter, but do hear the scratch when using one of the VoiceMeeter virtual audio cables(routing that VAC to your native sound card via VM's console   etc)....then i would test an audio repeater and bypass the VM-VAC for now and see if you still hear the scratch...i think this AUDIO REPEATER is pretty easy to use...and adjust its buffer settings so you don't hear any audio pops & clickZ....it is located here:  https://sourceforge.net/projects/virtualaudiopip/files/Audio_Repeater/

to setup the audio repeater...you have to select some kind of VAC as the input and then your native computer sound card as its output...then you should be able to key your paddles and hear your sidetone with a tiny bit of delay more or less depending on the buffer settings...

if you still hear the scratch using the audio repeater and one of the VM VAC's  ...i would try another VAC...perhaps the breakaway pipeline -  which you can find here:  http://www.breakawayone.com/downloads/

[Mark Tosiello]

1st thing i would try, is EHOcw by itself, and try all the options for windows drivers that EHOcw shows in its menu options for audio device and your native sound card on your compouter...and see if you still hear the scratching tone ...if so...then i would try dahDIdah's software cw keyer and do the same thing...if you don't hear the scratch, you can rule out ehoCW(dahdidah) as being the source of the scratch...

2nd thing is to make sure all sample rates are the same on all sound cards being used in the advanced options of windows sound properties...for both playback and recording sound cards for  VoiceMeeter's virtual audio cards, window's native sound cards and the VoiceMeeter menu settings for the selected audio cards chosen...

the other thing to make note of is the VoiceMeeter virtual audio cable control panel...those sample rates on the VM CONTROL PANEL, might benefit from having the same sample rate and bit rate you have chosen for your AUDIO driver)

if after all this, you notice that you are hearing a clear pleasant tone on the first dit without using VoiceMeeter, but do hear the scratch when using one of the VoiceMeeter virtual audio cables(routing that VAC to your native sound card via VM's console   etc)...

This is where I am currently. When I have Voicemeeter turned off, and I'm using EhoCW or DahDiDah via my Speakers, and I have no static. The best is running EhoCw with the Windows SASAPI:Speakers(Realtek High Definition Audio) (1-2) driver chosen from configuration. That gives a low latency, pleasant CW tone thru my speakers with NO STATIC WHATSOEVER. Bringing up Voicemeeter, I have the following Settings (All sound card resolutions set to 44100):

And my output going to my speakers. Again, a very solid, static free tone when Sent thru ASIO: Voicemeeter AUX Virtual ASIO.

Connecting to Mumble, going to the testing room and doing a Loopback test is where I start hearing the static. It appears that the static is most pronounced at the START of a group of code elements...within the code string, it's less obvious. Chuck Broadwell W5UXH jumped on and listened to my signal, and he noted several artifacts in the signal, as parsed within Audacity. I will forward that email to you if that will help.

Listening to recordings of my signal using Mumble's recording option also reveals the static. I must admit, even as a programmer/analyst, I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to configure the other options (Breakaway Pipline in particular, since Audio_Repeater caused my computer to generate hundreds of cmd consoles before I got it stopped. Reinstalling produced the same effect. Trying a different virtual audio cable would be nice, if I could figure out how to set it up. However, if the signal sounds good with VoiceMeeter coming thru my speakers, it almost sounds as if it's Mumble. I followed your vid closely in terms of adjusting the parameters, but perhaps some more tweaking?

then i would test an audio repeater and bypass the VM-VAC for now and see if you still hear the scratch...i think this AUDIO REPEATER is pretty easy to use...and adjust its buffer settings so you don't hear any audio pops & clickZ....it is located here:  windows main sound card that you eventually wind up listening to...(on my computer it is the REALTEK HD https://sourceforge.net/projects/virtualaudiopip/files/Audio_Repeater/

to setup the audio repeater...you have to select some kind of VAC as the input and then your native computer sound card as its output...then you should be able to key your paddles and hear your sidetone with a tiny bit of delay more or less depending on the buffer settings...

if you still hear the scratch using the audio repeater and one of the VM VAC's  ...i would try another VAC...perhaps the breakaway pipeline -  which you can find here:  http://www.breakawayone.com/downloads/

Again, not to sure how to do the above, although I did install breakaway pipeline. Perhaps you can walk me thru that if I need to.

Thanks to all for the help. Oh, and I did change, per Chuck Broadwell's suggestion, to Continuous (vs Voice Activity on Mumble transmit, with no effect. The specs of the coomputer I have (8th Gen i& on Sawtooth X99 Mobo with 16GB Ram, Onboard Sound, Hybrid H2O Cooled NVIDIA 980Ti GTX card and watercooled CPU) should easily be enough not to be straining the CPU...... Again, Thanks for the help!!!

Mark KD8EDC

[Mark Tosiello]

Hi all,

Well, the saga continues. By implementing a few of Chuck's suggestions above, I was able to remove SOME, but not all, of the noise in my signal. First of all, Chuck W5UHX noted in our test QSO that my signal contained not only static pops at the beginning of groups of code elements (i.e. after initiating code after dead air), but a rasping sound that he could hear as he transmitted. He also noted that my signal amplitude was very low. I discovered that although the mic from my webcam was turned down, it was Hardware Input 1 on VoiceMeeter Banana, and tho there was no signal on the meter, it was sending intermittent, frequent, random "rasping" sounds thru and these were heard on Mumble. Removing the device took care of the issue (I could also have simply unclicked the broadcast button). I tested the "sidetone" sound that I could hear from EhoCW and DahDiDah, and they were perfect and clean as I sent them to my speakers, by themselves and then thru VoiceMeeter. In order to isolate my paddles and their interface, I transmitted typed code to mumble (which I recorded) and autoplayed code. Both have the static. I then installed Breakaway Pipeline, and configured EhoCw to transmit audio thru Breakaway Pipeline 1 into VoiceMeeter as Hardware Input 2, and I configured Hardware Out A1 as my Speakers(Realtek High Definition Audio), and Hardware Out 2 as VB Audio Hi-Fi Cable. I then configured Mumble Audio INPUT to be the Hi-Fi Cable Output(VB Audio Hi-Fi Cable), and the Transmission to "Continuous". Mumble Audio Output was configured to Voicemeeter input (VB -Audio VoiceMeeter VAIO). All sliders were configured as in Chuck's video. In VoiceMeeter Banana, Hardware Input 2 have A1/A2 and B2 active, VoiceMeeter Vaio Virtual Input has A1/A2 and B2 active, and Voicemeeter Aux Virtual Iniput has A1/B1/B2 active.

With this configuration, and increasing the gain over what I was transmitting to Chuck last night, I have been able to get things to the point where the frequent static pops on starting code element groups are less noticeable, but I haven't been able to eliminate them. Any other suggestions would be welcome...perhaps there's a filter I can pass the audio from EhoCW thru using a virtual cable as it's going to Mumble?  Not sure what else to try, but I DO want to stay away from Rig Side-tones/Mic Jack Inputs (Despite owning 2 Behringer UCA 222s), since my rigs are not near this computer, and my brand new Lenovo Yoga i7 seems to hate VoiceMeeter....

Thanks!

73 de Mark KD8EDC

[Chuck aa0hw]

Hi Mark,   The audio REPEATER i suggested is a sub-product of the virtual audio pipeline...which i would not recommend...since it is alpha and it failed on my windows too...I was asking you download the Audio Repeater Download button, which was prominent on the page link provided...but i should have included a picture like this:

May I suggest that a TEAMVIEWER session would provide more info and i might be able to find something faster than by texting back and forth...I would be happy to setup a time with you to take a look at your iCW setup and see if i can see something else that might provide a clue on how to get rid of the static...

https://www.teamviewer.us/

chuck

[Mark Tosiello]

Hi Chuck!

Yes, I did click on the green button, and I still got the failure. I'll do it again to be sure I didn't inadvertently download an alpha binary......I write a lot of code myself, and I'd be pretty wary of that anyway......LOL.

I have teamviewer installed on my PC as a matter of course, as I often access it from work. I would be happy to do a teamviewer session with you whenever you're available. I'm available today (I'm in the Eastern Time Zone) this morning from about 8:30 to 10:30 am, or after 9:30 tonight. Tomorrow, I'm available from 8am on until about 4:30pm EDT.

In the meantime, I'll give re-downloading Virtual Audio Pipeline (Audio_Repeater.zip from the latest version, and see how installing goes. Thanks again for all of your help!

Mark

[Mark Tosiello]

Addendum: After a bit of searching SourceForge, I did manage to find this:

I downloaded the Audio_Repeater link, which is an executable called Sonics Audio Repeater, and that loads up and runs. So, I think I have everything that you might need downloaded (Including Reaper, BTW). Thanks!