[WriteLog] WriteLog Digest, Vol 124, Issue 1 (Frustration with XMMT)

Ed Muns w0yk at msn.com
Mon Apr 1 15:15:21 EDT 2013


Yes, new capability with new a user interface and corner cases of
incompatibilities are frustrating.  Don is working on tutorials for all this
on rttycontesting.com, so you may want to wait for that to be complete
rather than terrorizing yourself as an early adopter.

The historical perspective may be helpful.  G3YYD developed an alternative
to MMTTY that he and others felt would offer significant decoding advantages
in marginal signal situations like selective fading (unequal tone
amplitudes), flutter, multi-path, QRM, etc.  David is only interested in
having 2Tone work on N1MM Logger.  One could argue that this is
short-sighted, but its his creation and its freeware.  Within a few weeks of
2Tone's availability users were claiming superiority over MMTTY.  Many of us
discounted these reports as simply initial enthusiasm of early adopters.

As time passed, more and more N1MM users got hooked including some top RTTY
contesters with credible opinions.  Several of us non-N1MM users bit the
bullet and invested time to start climbing the learning curve on N1MM so
that we too could evaluate 2Tone.  Despite many hours of work and gracious
support from N2AMG, K8UT and others, I personally was not able to make N1MM
work satisfactorily with all the features I deploy.  I had planned to use
N1MM/2Tone in WPX RTTY but bailed Friday morning before the contest and
moved my setup back to WriteLog.  This was very discouraging because it
meant I couldn't use what was increasingly looking like a superior decoder.

Meanwhile, other loggers like Logger32 and WinWarbler interfaced to 2Tone.
WriteLog's Beta testers were ecstatic when Wayne released the first
breadboard of XMMT.ocx support for MMTTY and 2Tone.  Not only did he
solidify this new interface so 2Tone is available, but he also expanded the
Rttyrite ini file capability so that now a huge number of parallel decoder
windows can be created with their settings saved reliably for WriteLog
exits/restarts.  This is a huge enhancement for users of multiple decoder
windows.  See my earlier post with an example Rttyrite ini sections.

Because 2tone is not defined in a way that all loggers can easily interface
to it, there are some rough edges.  An example is that 2Tone has AFC
hardwired on.  It cannot be turned off.  The reason is that the decoding
algorithm is optimized assuming AFC.  Moreover, NET is on by default and
there is no way to turn it off.  This is unacceptable for a running station.
Since N1MM Logger is the sole design goal for 2Tone, David queries the
logger to see whether it is in "Run" state or "S&P" state.  If "Run" then he
turns off NET.  WriteLog paradigm does not include Run and S&P states.

The current hot topic on this reflector about hardware FSK not working
properly with microKEYERs is unrelated to 2Tone or the XMMT.ocx interface.
It is a consequence of using WriteLog's Rttyrite FSK capability when 2Tone
is the main software MODEM because 2Tone does not support FSK transmission
like MMTTY does.

The Beta-testers thought there were alternatives around this
Rttyrite/microKEYER incompatibility, but several people are still having
trouble.  More work obviously needs to be done on this.

The upside of all this commotion is a superior decoder.  95% of the time
both MMTTY and 2Tone copy perfect.  But in most marginal situations it is
2tone that copies perfect while MMTTY requires repeats.  What really stuns
me are the times when I don't hear anything coming back my CQ, but 2Tone is
printing the caller's callsign perfectly, multiple times.  I've never had
that experience with any other decoder.

Ed W0YK


Nick W4GKM wrote:
> This really seems like a lot of trouble to install my 
> Writelog that has been working perfectly for years, and 
> trying to figure out how to run this new 2tone program.  I 
> have down loaded the new version of Writelog and have the 
> XMMT.ocx already on my contest computer from Don, AA5AU 
> several weeks ago.
> 
> Will this thing work with just regular soundcards and FSK 
> operation.  Can someone explain this is simple terms as I am 
> sure there a lot of guys out there like me that is totally confused.



More information about the WriteLog mailing list