I regularly use the noise reduction on SDR Console - it's a great tool for extending the audible range of the receiver down to not much above the noise level.

For SSB, I favour NR1, with the level set at around 10dB. When there is no QSB, this results in reception with very little artifacts. When there is QSB, as the noise level changes rapidly, you do hear quite a lot of 'water gurgling' noises - not complaining, they are much easier to listen to than the incessant, piercing hiss of normal QRN.

I also occasionally use PowerSDR OPenHPSDR . The noise reduction setting NR isn't that great, but NR2 is worth listening to. It sounds like 'voice down a pipe' like SDR Console's NR1, but without the really noticeable gurgling during change of conditions. There are artifacts, but they're well down on the speech. I'd rate it slightly better that SDR Console NR1 by a short head. Worth looking at that algorithm ?

Having done a little more listening - it's very close. The OpenHDSDR NR2 produces 'sweeping filter' noises behind the wanted signal. I guess as the signal approaches the noise level, the artifacts really become apparent. Which NR is 'best' probably comes down to conditions on the day and your particular ears/brain.
Bob G4BBY with Hermes-Lite (seriously good little radio with SDR Console)

OK Siegfried,
NR4 (at least for me) seems less effective than NR1 because I hear more artifacts with it at all control settings. But I run a 32 bit windows 7 system with a low cost nvidia GPU - your radio and mine may behave differently, I wonder?
OK on the external noise gate - that's a good idea - I notice the internal squelch works for FM only. I have Virtual Audio Cable operating, so could hook up external programs if need be. I've used VST based components before now like that for mic processing. Does add latency, however.

IMO the NR2 algorithm in Thetis v2.9.0 (the successor to PowerSDR) is head-and-shoulders above anything else out there (I use it daily). And the code is open source.

Mark  K1LSB

i use the mixer for voice input (mic is routed through mixer) and for receive audio

the intellipan give you a fast and easy control to change the overall sound (more or less bassy, more or less high tones increase) without messing with a dozen equalizer sliders so depending how the other stations tx sound is i can finetune it for better readability

how well the noise reduction works also depends on the ALC setting in console ... it comes set to 130 db from "factory" (from the "boss" Simon)... lowering that to around 70 db it lowers the audio artifacts below the noisegate level when i set the audio volume in sdrc to around 80 (noise gate in mixer set to 5.0 or half way)

settting volume to 100 opens the gate so any station that is very thin still can be heard with just increasing the volume from sdrc towards mixer

so ... how well nr4 works also depends on some other setting (and it was a bit of try and error to find ther right combination)

greetz sigi dg9bfc

Siegfried - thanks for the tip - agc threshold set to around 70, which is around the level that starts to reduce the noise on a clear channel, does help a lot.
Cheers from Bob G4BBY

I'll give Thetis another try, Mark.

Bob,

Here's the latest Thetis, released 8 days ago:

https://github.com/TAPR/OpenHPSDR-Thetis/releases/tag/v2.9.0

Mark