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In: Audio
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USB audio is complicated, and we humans don’t like that. So we start simplifying things, even vendors do that. Unfortunately, simplification can lead to wrong information. Like as with USB async audio, the DAC “asks” for data (some vendor’s flyer, long time ago). With USB, there is one master, the host. Only firewire was able to reverse the roles. Or what about digital is digital, so cables don’t matter. The data packets send with USB audio are fire-and-forget. Bad cable means packet loss. But since it’s digital, a good cable is good enough. Better “copper” does not improve things. Since USB audio is fire-and-forget (USBRead More →

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In: Audio, Computer
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I learned about sshfs when using Daphile, the music server and player package for Intel PC’s. Daphile should connect to my Mac to access my iTunes library. I tried this before using SMB file sharing, but this failed due to sleep-wake cycles of the Mac. This made the SMB connection unreliable. Recent versions of Daphile support sshfs, and I hoped to avoid the issues I had with SMB. sshfs requires only a ssh account on the server and uses the sftp protocol to transfer data. Unfortunately, my Mac went to sleep even during a sftp file transfer. With ssh, you can block sleep with settingRead More →

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In: Amateur Radio, Audio, Computer
With: 6 Comments

Dire Wolf is a sound card based modem for packet radio. It can be downloaded for Windows and Linux here: https://github.com/wb2osz/direwolf Although there is a reference to MacOS, there are no further build instructions for Mac. Google reveals some info: one site references an outdated version, the other one proposes to install the brew build/port environment to provide the cmake tool. Installing an environment like brew for just one tool, which actually is a build tool by itself, is .. well .. odd. So I decided to build Dire Wolf on Mac without any hacks or special tools. After using the result for some time,Read More →

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In: Amateur Radio, Audio
With: 2 Comments

Both the IC-7300 and the IC-9700 have an IF output option. A great feature that enables the receive of all kinds of exotic transmissions. On the IC-7300, Icom pitched this feature at DRM receive. Soon after the IC-7300 launched, it became clear that the IF output bandwidth varies with the receive mode setting, which is illogical (Mr. Spock). For DRM receive, all is fine: set mode to AM, connect something like DREAM to the IF output and listen to PC audio. For CW skimmer, it’s a little more problematic, so maybe Icom only had DRM receive in mind when designing this. It will work, butRead More →