[TenTec] New Orion I v2 Firmware version: 2.062a

[Robert Carroll]

Merle-

I spent most of yesterday playing with the new release again, wondering
again if I have overlooked something.  I hear the same things you do.  I
have run every AGC parameter through its ranges many times, and though on
occasion a signal will sound very clean, it's not long before the fuzz and
rasp disappears.  I am pretty sure I can hear aliasing noise at times, also.
The rasp/fuzz  has a lot of high (audio) freq components and the lower-fi
the headphone or speaker, the less of it you will hear.  Running up the RX
eq will help for this reason--but not get it back to what is acceptable to
me.  After hours of this, I did what I have been doing for a few days--going
back to 2056.  With that load MY Orion I, which appears to be different from
about 50% of the population, sounds like an analog receiver.  The cw signals
and sidetone are perfect--no rasp or buzz.  I do have fond memories of
1.375B and 1.373 and find their "sound" to be totally acceptable though to
me not as clean as 2056 on my particular set.  The V1 releases do have the
reputation for having more lockups, however.  In their favor I believe there
is pretty much universal agreement that processed SSB has a lot more punch
than it does with the V2 releases.

Having interacted with TenTec frequently in the last couple of weeks, I
believe they do not give credence to any cw imperfection with the recent
releases.  I will be interacting with them again on Tuesday, so maybe I will
get more of a sense of the situation.

73
Bob W2WG

-----Original Message-----
From: tentec-bounces at contesting.com [mailto:tentec-bounces at contesting.com]
On Behalf Of Merle Bone
Sent: Sunday, May 27, 2007 12:25 PM
To: tentec at contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TenTec] New Orion I v2 Firmware version: 2.062a

Buck (K4IA) said:
" Very tinny, very low fidelity with a tendency to add a  click at the end.
That is what 2.062a sidetone sounds 
like to me. " 

"On my radio, the raspy CW is particularly bad with Fast AGC and  narrow 
bandwidths (<1khz).  It is starting to sound like the DSP in an  ICOM
756Prox."
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I am hearing similar "distortion" on both weaker CW signals and on the CW
sidetone note. Although the sidetone note is much better then it was in the
previous release, it still has a very annoying noise at the end of each
element - particularly identifiable when you slow down the code to 3 or 4
words per minute. At higher speeds is just sounds like a "repetitive noise."
In my case the sound gets worse as the audio gain is increased - I can raise
the signal audio with an external audio amp without raising the level of the
noise. If I raise the audio level of the Orion the noise signal comes way
up. I worked with Ten-Tec but they could not duplicate the problem. They
offered that I could send the Orion in to be worked on, but I just went back
to V1.373b5 - which has no such sound on the keying sidetone. 

The CW distortion is worse on weak signals - maybe correlated with maximum
gain in the DSP/IF chain. Again I really don't hear that
distortion/fuzziness on V1.373b5. I sure would like to get on to the new V2
firmware - and a lot of progress seems to have been made - but this audio
distortion is really distracting when you work something like the WPX for
several hours.  I'm back at V1.373b5 and hoping Ten-Tec will keep working on
the V2 code.
73, Merle - W0EWM


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