From: main@SDR-Radio.groups.io <main@SDR-Radio.groups.io>
On Behalf Of Siegfried Jackstien via groups.io
Sent: 31 August 2021 12:22
To: main@SDR-Radio.groups.io
Subject: Re: [SDR-Radio] Speech Processor
the nice thing when using all in software (sdr) you can do things with compression, limiter, etc etc ... that you can NOT do with analogue circuits
your "rf clipper" may produce a more boosted signal ... but i guess when all is made in software you can be a bit better
the sdr has the audio in a chain (buffer) and you can have a look forward agc ... limit every word to the maximum without overshooting or harmonics produced
and with a monitor receiver on the output of your amp you can add predistortion ... result is an even cleaner (but more punchy) signal
no way to do that with conventional circuits
you could try to combine your rf clipper with the processor in sdrc (but do not crank it up tooo much) ... i do a simlar thingy with my mixing software (voicemeeter potatoe) with some vst plugins added in the chain ... first the plugins do a tiny bit of
compression and limits the peaks not to overdrive the sdrc input ... and a bit of processing of the sdrc is added afterwards ... the result is a well boosted signal with no splatter (pay also attention not to produce intermod distortion on the final amp or
driving stages!!)
simon you have the equalizer ... what if each filter in the eq would have its own processor and limiter?? is that what you mean with half octave filters (and boosting those) ?!?!?
dg9bfc sigi
Am 31.08.2021 um 12:01 schrieb MikeC:
Interesting article. I did experiment further with the processor settings and compared the result with an analogue speech processor that was part of a ssb rig I designed about 20 years ago. This processor uses variable rf log clipping
of an ssb signal (at 10.7MHz) followed by another ssb filter. The audio is pre-processed by a syllabic compressor (a vogad). The clipping is done with two stages of log amplifiers. In the original design the resulting ssb was converted to the required frequency
but I had already added a demodulator back down to audio for something else so here the output is audio. As the article points outs, non dc baseband clipping avoids the serious harmonic distortion that baseband clipping induces at all but very light clipping
because the harmonics multiply outside the passband. There are still intermodulation products that eventually limit performance.
Of course this processor is very component hungry by today’s standards and I happened to have it on the shelf. As the article also points out, the the same result can be achieved in dsp by other means that could not be realised in practice
by analogue circuits.
I feed the audio output at line level into the pc and have the SDRC processor turned off. The audio processor bandwidth is from about 200Hz to 2.4kHz, determined almost entirely by the analogue ssb filters.
I think that overshoot is a slightly different, but related problem. Interestingly though I had a look at this processor’s performance by putting test sine and square-waves frequencies into it and looking at the audio output on a scope.
Probably by more luck than judgement, the overshoot is a few percent unless the processing is set ridiculously high. I suspect that a fortuitous combination of filters and time constants, plus the relatively narrow bandwidth requirement helps.
I have not checked for overshoot on the rf output from the Limesdr that eventually generates the signal for transmission.
My metering indicates that the average to peak power ratio has increased significantly and, although this is pretty unscientific, the “hf pileup breaking index” is markedly improved.
Nothing can be all things to all men (or women). Everything is a compromise of requirements, performance, complexity, time and cost.
Mike
Sent from
Mail for Windows
Probably.
I use a single band RMS compressor followed by a very-well designed limiter which avoids overshoot. I’ve tried multi-band compressors but not achieved much benefit. When I get into my main winter project I may look at this again, having
a compressor instance for each octave or half-octave.
For winter I want to finally play with my Hermes-Lite 2, with my main amplifier I’ll have ~350 watts so will want to boost the audio.
Simon Brown, G4ELI
https://www.sdr-radio.com
Controlled-Envelope good?
http://www.arrl.org/files/file/QEX_Next_Issue/2014/Nov-Dec_2014/Hershberger_QEX_11_14.pdf
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