SDR-J-FM 3.0 Feedback

[andrewfer000]

Not an issue but just some feedback on the latest version of the sofrware. Most feedback is about the new UI.

First off, I got to say you got the RDS decoding is really good compared to the last version. The text cuts off by a few characters at times but still it's night and day better. However RDS kind of breaks when AFC is enabled but when that's disabled it's really good. There is no difference between RDS-1 and RDS-2 for the AFC and character thing I mentioned.

The new UI looks cool and is something I enjoy having on my TV. My only suggestion is that the RDS display is slightly larger and different parts can be resized, specifically the bookmarks.

I don't know if it's my KDE theme or sdr_j_fm but when clicking in the drop down menu text can be hard to see. It's still visible but I can see some people having trouble with it.

Also I found getting started pretty hard. As someone who is tech savvy I know what many of these options do. However a new user may have trouble. The tooltips are helpful but are still technical. Maybe a future version can have some settings presets such as "FM USA" or "FM Europe" etc. that a user can choose from to get up and running right away. I also didn't know about the new volume control and was wondering why I had no sound to realize the volume slider was at -999 which took me a few minutes to figure out.

Here's a screenshot of my setup if you're curious and/or you want to share it as a screenshot on the ReadMe

Btw, Here is what I'm talking about a few characters being cut off. It's not bad but I find it interesting how it's only 1-3 characters every time. Mostly it's been 1 character.

I see you put a lot of hard work in this version. Thanks again for maintaining and improving this program. This new version was a pleasant and unexpected surprise for me. Really made my day!

[JvanKatwijk]

Thanks

You (we) should thank Thomas Neder for hid contributions and the boost it gave to the development of the software. Thomas write the matching Rds decoder, introduced the new layout and made a number of further additions in the code.

I ll have a look at the color of the combobox texts best jan

Op wo 14 dec. 2022 om 08:37 schreef Andrew @.***>:

Not an issue but just some feedback on the latest version of the sofrware. Most feedback is about the new UI.

First off, I got to say you got the RDS decoding is really good compared to the last version. The text cuts off by a few characters at times but still it's night and day better. However RDS kind of breaks when AFC is enabled but when that's disabled it's really good. There is no difference between RDS-1 and RDS-2 for the AFC and character thing I mentioned.

The new UI looks cool and is something I enjoy having on my TV. My only suggestion is that the RDS display is slightly larger and different parts can be resized, specifically the bookmarks.

I don't know if it's my KDE theme or sdr_j_fm but when clicking in the drop down menu text can be hard to see. It's still visible but I can see some people having trouble with it.

Also I found getting started pretty hard. As someone who is tech savvy I know what many of these options do. However a new user may have trouble. The tooltips are helpful but are still technical. Maybe a future version can have some settings presets such as "FM USA" or "FM Europe" etc. that a user can choose from to get up and running right away. I also didn't know about the new volume control and was wondering why I had no sound to realize the volume slider was at -999 which took me a few minutes to figure out.

Here's a screenshot of my setup if you're curious and/or you want to share it as a screenshot on the ReadMe

[image: image] https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/9620913/207531958-5366a2bb-37c9-48d2-8116-326e8f4c206f.png

Btw, Here is what I'm talking about a few characters being cut off. It's not bad but I find it interesting how it's only 1-3 characters every time. Mostly it's been 1 character.

[image: image] https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/9620913/207532370-9a55cb6d-70ae-41d8-8185-4217b030ad31.png

I see you put a lot of hard work in this version. Thanks again for maintaining and improving this program. This new version was a pleasant and unexpected surprise for me. Really made my day!

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-- Jan van Katwijk

[andrewfer000]

I did run into one problem however. The bookmarks I added did not save after the program was closed. Deleting the stations bin file in my hone directory and trying again did not fix it. The new stations bin file was not created. This is the appimage version.

[JvanKatwijk]

Assuming you compile the stuff yourself, you could give the current version a try. I changed the background color of comboboxes and the program list is now explicitly stored on program exit

Op wo 14 dec. 2022 om 21:06 schreef Andrew @.***>:

I did run into one problem however. The bookmarks I added did not save after the program was closed. Deleting the stations bin file in my hone directory and trying again did not fix it. The new stations bin file was not created. This is the appimage version.

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[tomneda]

Hello Andrew and Jan,

Andrew: "thank you for the flowers" (as we say for the commendation in Germany) :-). I could set up my improvements onto a well working, stable "basis" which Jan did and makes much fun to do that improvements.

Jan: Thank you also I could let include most of my changes in your code. They are still some issues open as Andrew found also some. I guess I could do some further work the next days and try to improve things.

Jan: the bad readable coloring in combo-boxes is still existing at my side (in Xubuntu, in Window I could not try yet). What it also bad on the "Adaptic" stylesheet are the check-boxes. They have green rectangles when they are checked. So far so good. But they also show that green rectangle when only the mouse is hovering over that check box even it is not checked; this clutters somehow. This was the reason I preferred the other stylesheet "Combinear". But your choose with "Adaptic" is quite more colorful what I would also prefer else. I know currently nothing about stylesheets but I could also try to change this behavior.

I would like write a bit more but it is late now I had to work tomorrow (better: today), but I will give a notice later of any progress.

Jan: I did not write you a mail to thank for the merge as the other three (in sequence) mails to you still "open". I did not want to create a further parallel thread :)

[JvanKatwijk]

Since discussion on "skin"s is probably never ending, I added a command line parameter where you can set the skin If you pass -A to the command line, the system will set (and record) your preference for the current one, if you pass -B to the command line, the system will set (and record) your preference for the other one

Thomas: I "honored" your pull request

best jan

Op vr 16 dec. 2022 om 02:13 schreef tomneda @.***>:

Hello Andrew and Jan,

Andrew: "thank you for the flowers" (as we say for the commendation in Germany) :-). I could set up my improvements onto a well working, stable "basis" which Jan did and makes much fun to do that improvements.

Jan: Thank you also I could let include most of my changes in your code. They are still some issues open as Andrew found also some. I guess I could do some further work the next days and try to improve things.

Jan: the bad readable coloring in combo-boxes is still existing at my side (in Xubuntu, in Window I could not try yet). What it also bad on the "Adaptic" stylesheet are the check-boxes. They have green rectangles when they are checked. So far so good. But they also show that green rectangle when only the mouse is hovering over that check box even it is not checked; this clutters somehow. This was the reason I preferred the other stylesheet "Combinear". But your choose with "Adaptic" is quite more colorful what I would also prefer else. I know currently nothing about stylesheets but I could also try to change this behavior.

I would like write a bit more but it is late now I had to work tomorrow (better: today), but I will give a notice later of any progress.

Jan: I did not write you a mail to thank for the merge as the other three (in sequence) mails to you still "open". I did not want to create a further parallel thread :)

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-- Jan van Katwijk

[andrewfer000]

Andrew: "thank you for the flowers" (as we say for the commendation in Germany) :-). I could set up my improvements onto a well working, stable "basis" which Jan did and makes much fun to do that improvements.

Yeah your welcome I think you did an incredible job with this. All the features work very well and if you continue to work on features and/or fixes and need anything (testing, InputDumps, etc...) let me know.

I don't know about Germany. But in the USA we still use Analog radio everywhere and have no real good digital standard. We have something called HD Radio (NRSC5-C) for digital which is okay but when it comes to audio quality is drastically inferior compared to the global DAB+ and even DRM and HD is technically proprietary so HD Radios are rare and expensive unlike DAB radios you can get pretty much anywhere. Analog has less features but the sound quality is much better in many cases. This is why Analog radio programs that are easy to use and have cool features like RDS decoding is nice to have. So yeah thanks again for your hard work.

[andrewfer000]

Hey one more thing about RDS-

I learned that the PTY codes are different in North America than they are in Europe.

https://www.fmsystems-inc.com/rbds-rds-pty-codes-program-types/

Is there a place in the code or a file somewhere that I can change for these?

Also how do I compile on Linux? I used to know how but I forgot since the appimage release. Also since then I switched from Ubuntu to Fedora so I need to figure out the different libraries I need to install. Do you just use regular make or something like cmake or qumake?

[JvanKatwijk]

I'll have a look tomorrow, seems possible to maake a separate table Today I am a little budy wwith other things best jan

Op zo 18 dec. 2022 om 07:36 schreef Andrew @.***>:

Hey one more thing about RDS-

I learned that the PTY codes are different in North America than they are in Europe.

https://www.fmsystems-inc.com/rbds-rds-pty-codes-program-types/

Is there a place in the code or a file somewhere that I can change for these?

Also how do I compile on Linux? I used to know how but I forgot since the appimage release. Also since then I switched from Ubuntu to Fedora so I need to figure out the different libraries I need to install. Do you just use regular make or something like cmake or qumake?

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-- Jan van Katwijk

[JvanKatwijk]

It seems possible to add a parameter in the ini file, I'll add it tomorrow

Op zo 18 dec. 2022 om 18:41 schreef jan van katwijk @.***

:

I'll have a look tomorrow, seems possible to maake a separate table Today I am a little budy wwith other things best jan

Op zo 18 dec. 2022 om 07:36 schreef Andrew @.***>:

Hey one more thing about RDS-

I learned that the PTY codes are different in North America than they are in Europe.

https://www.fmsystems-inc.com/rbds-rds-pty-codes-program-types/

Is there a place in the code or a file somewhere that I can change for these?

Also how do I compile on Linux? I used to know how but I forgot since the appimage release. Also since then I switched from Ubuntu to Fedora so I need to figure out the different libraries I need to install. Do you just use regular make or something like cmake or qumake?

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-- Jan van Katwijk

-- Jan van Katwijk

[JvanKatwijk]

It is an almost trrivial addition, are you running a Windows version ora Linux version?

Op zo 18 dec. 2022 om 18:50 schreef jan van katwijk @.***

:

It seems possible to add a parameter in the ini file, I'll add it tomorrow

Op zo 18 dec. 2022 om 18:41 schreef jan van katwijk < @.***>:

I'll have a look tomorrow, seems possible to maake a separate table Today I am a little budy wwith other things best jan

Op zo 18 dec. 2022 om 07:36 schreef Andrew @.***>:

Hey one more thing about RDS-

I learned that the PTY codes are different in North America than they are in Europe.

https://www.fmsystems-inc.com/rbds-rds-pty-codes-program-types/

Is there a place in the code or a file somewhere that I can change for these?

Also how do I compile on Linux? I used to know how but I forgot since the appimage release. Also since then I switched from Ubuntu to Fedora so I need to figure out the different libraries I need to install. Do you just use regular make or something like cmake or qumake?

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-- Jan van Katwijk

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-- Jan van Katwijk

[JvanKatwijk]

Hi Andrew

I added a button (bottom line, left) where you can specify that you are either in Europe or in the US. Setting will be remembered between program invocations and the effect is immerdiately. I figured that there pty codes in say Australia or so might differ as well, so the set up is that adding a new list of pty codes is (almost) trivial. (the setting for the deemphasis will be maintained between program invocations as well)

I updated the Windows executable and the AppImage, so you might give it a try

best jan

Op zo 18 dec. 2022 om 19:15 schreef jan van katwijk @.***

:

It is an almost trrivial addition, are you running a Windows version ora Linux version?

Op zo 18 dec. 2022 om 18:50 schreef jan van katwijk < @.***>:

It seems possible to add a parameter in the ini file, I'll add it tomorrow

Op zo 18 dec. 2022 om 18:41 schreef jan van katwijk < @.***>:

I'll have a look tomorrow, seems possible to maake a separate table Today I am a little budy wwith other things best jan

Op zo 18 dec. 2022 om 07:36 schreef Andrew @.***>:

Hey one more thing about RDS-

I learned that the PTY codes are different in North America than they are in Europe.

https://www.fmsystems-inc.com/rbds-rds-pty-codes-program-types/

Is there a place in the code or a file somewhere that I can change for these?

Also how do I compile on Linux? I used to know how but I forgot since the appimage release. Also since then I switched from Ubuntu to Fedora so I need to figure out the different libraries I need to install. Do you just use regular make or something like cmake or qumake?

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-- Jan van Katwijk

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-- Jan van Katwijk

-- Jan van Katwijk

[andrewfer000]

Hey Jvan,

It works well. My bookmarks now save and the PTY makes a lot more sense now lol.

I think the PTY codes are only different in North America.

Like everything else when it comes to technology, North America always has to do something different and technically inferior compared to everyone else. (Looking at you too ATSC TV and HD Radio)

In any case, Thanks again for all your hard work. I use this program almost everyday to listen to my news and music so I appreciate it.

[JvanKatwijk]

Just for my information, do you run windows or Linux?

Op ma 19 dec. 2022 om 17:31 schreef Andrew @.***>:

Hey Jvan,

It works well. My bookmarks now save and the PTY makes a lot more sense now lol.

I think the PTY codes are only different in North America.

Like everything else when it comes to technology, North America always has to do something different and technically inferior compared to everyone else. (Looking at you too ATSC TV and HD Radio)

In any case, Thanks again for all your hard work. I use this program almost everyday to listen to my news and music so I appreciate it.

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[andrewfer000]

I run Linux specifically Fedora.

[JvanKatwijk]

Oh good, so do I, I develop under Fedora

Op ma 19 dec. 2022 om 18:09 schreef Andrew @.***>:

I run Linux specifically Fedora.

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[tomneda]

Hi Jan, good to know that you mainly develop under Linux. I personally prefer Windows (where I use more "professional" (bought) SW) but I like the idea of a free OS. So I mainly develop this fmreceiver under Windows and check how it works under Linux. In work I also develop under Windows and Linux (Ubuntu and Yocto).

I use the QTCreator in Windows (Win10) and Linux (Xubuntu) and I used formerly the .pro file for setup the project which worked fine. You provide also a CMakeLists-file etc. and I would like to turnover to this concept and not using the .pro-file further. For Windows this does not work yet but I currently working on this.

Of course, I have some question to you :) :

• Which develop tool (IDE) do you use?
• Do you prefer the -pro-file or also more CMake? (Maybe you/we could omit the .pro at all in the future?)
• What tab size has you chosen in your IDE that I have the same look at you see? (see comment below)
• Can you easy explain how you build the windows setup? (seems you only works with Linux)

Regarding tab size: Some IDE uses 2, 4, 8, 10 spaces. Some align them on an equidistant step position, others inserts this number of (virtual) spaces. So finally it looks very different on different IDEs using tabs. This is the reason why my company forbids using tabs at all since a very long time. There the IDE must configured such way that the TAB key inserts a certain amount of numbers of real spaces (we use 2 spaces for indention). The source files grows up a bit bigger in size but they looks like the same in every editor. I mention this because it is a bit difficult for me to provide pull requests to you. Of course, I want to preserve your code style but this is difficult with this tabs in it. For a test, you could try to select another step size for a tab and you will see how different the code looks like. So, I asked the question above to you to setup my IDE with the same tab step size for a easier mergeable pull request.

Andrew: I wanted also say some words about your comment ( https://github.com/JvanKatwijk/sdr-j-fm/issues/9#issuecomment-1355993588 ) but I have to shift this to a later time. I am still "under pressure" for X-mass things etc. I hope I can you answer soon.

BR Thomas

[JvanKatwijk]

Hi Thomas

I work on a Linux laptop, running Fedora (I have to upgrade to the latest version shortly). I edit using vi, compile 99% of the time using qmake/make. For projects not using Qt I am using Cmake or sometimes I write my own makefiles The Windows software I have falls into two categories a. windows versions of programs developed for/under Linux, for these I use the Mingw64 cross compiltion facility provided by Fedora b. I wrote some plugins for the SDRuno environment, and it seems inevitable to use the Visual Studio environment but I cannot say I like that So, I have one disc partition shared between windows and linux, and do compilation and minimal editing of the plugin sources in the VS environment, but for editing more than one or two lines I switch back to Linux. Debugging under windows is for me impossible.

There are two reasons for that a. Microft ruins my layout and, at least as b. when using the MVS environment I do not have the feeling that I am in control, so I avoid it as much as possible. It thinks it is a good idea to hide the texts you are edting with pop ups of lost of potential additions. (I do not use any IDE, since IDE's try to take over control)

(Few years ago I tried to start developing under Windows, even bought some books, but I really do not understand Windows and for me it is an awful system)

As said I develop for and on Linux, if it doen not take too much work to adapt (i.e parameterzie) software for cross compiling it I'll do it,

One interesting problem I am regularly confronted with is dabstick support.

There is a pretty large group users of the Qt-DAB software and a number of these users use dabsticks. Now when scanning, the software switches from one channel to the next, ibviously. Since changing a channel is a major reset in the system (dozens of parameeters from the previous channel are to be saved, lots of parameters for the new channel have to be computed), so the normal way is to close the callback function that interacts with the use subsystem , and to restart that when everything is set for the next channel, Windows cannot handle that, it causes a crash somewhere deep in the rtlsdr.dll. I cannot debug windows, soI had to make separate versions of the support functions, a normal one for Linux and a stpid one for Windows.

OK, My style of programming is not completely consistent over time, but there are some lines I try to follow a. in include files, lines should start with a tab, with the class header shifted further to the right b. next spacing is always in goups of three c. I try to start variables with a lower case letter, and most of the time it is somethinh as xxAAA, but sometimes that is really ugly and unreadbale and then I use (not very often) xx_AAA or xx_aaa.

Spacing and layout is for me essential for readability, and some parts of the programs I am working are about 12 13 years old, so I have to read the text to understand what is all means

I do not believe in long comments, although they sometimes can be very handy for understanding the more global set up.

The overall size of the Qt-DAB software is over 40000 lines, and comments are pretty rare.

hope this helps best jan

Op di 20 dec. 2022 om 13:29 schreef tomneda @.***>:

Hi Jan, good to know that you mainly develop under Linux. I personally prefer Windows (where I use more "professional" (bought) SW) but I like the idea of a free OS. So I mainly develop this fmreceiver under Windows and check how it works under Linux. In work I also develop under Windows and Linux (Ubuntu and Yocto).

I use the QTCreator in Windows (Win10) and Linux (Xubuntu) and I used formerly the .pro file for setup the project which worked fine. You provide also a CMakeLists-file etc. and I would like to turnover to this concept and not using the .pro-file further. For Windows this does not work yet but I currently working on this.

Of course, I have some question to you :) :

• Which develop tool (IDE) do you use?
• Do you prefer the -pro-file or also more CMake? (Maybe you/we could omit the .pro at all in the future?)
• What tab size has you chosen in your IDE that I have the same look at you see? (see comment below)
• Can you easy explain how you build the windows setup? (seems you only works with Linux)

Regarding tab size: Some IDE uses 2, 4, 8, 10 spaces. Some align them on an equidistant step position, others inserts this number of (virtual) spaces. So finally it looks very different on different IDEs using tabs. This is the reason why my company forbids using tabs at all since a very long time. There the IDE must configured such way that the TAB key inserts a certain amount of numbers of real spaces (we use 2 spaces for indention). The source files grows up a bit bigger in size but they looks like the same in every editor. I mention this because it is a bit difficult for me to provide pull requests to you. Of course, I want to preserve your code style but this is difficult with this tabs in it. For a test, you could try to select another step size for a tab and you will see how different the code looks like. So, I asked the question above to you to setup my IDE with the same tab step size for a easier mergeable pull request.

Andrew: I wanted also say some words about your comment ( #9 (comment) https://github.com/JvanKatwijk/sdr-j-fm/issues/9#issuecomment-1355993588 ) but I have to shift this to a later time. I am still "under pressure" for X-mass things etc. I hope I can you answer soon.

BR Thomas

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-- Jan van Katwijk

[tomneda]

Hello @JvanKatwijk ,

thanks for integrating the PSS feature fully into the master branch.

You mentioned above an issue in QT-DAB where rtlsdr.dll in Windows crashes somehow. I tried out the current (3 days old) 5.0 and 4.4.2 version and also older versions with (unfortunately) the same version numbers but older code and with all four I have no issue with the RTL stick while switching between channels (eg. 11d to 10d and others). It reacts stable within some seconds.

But I have an issue when I recall the device "dabstick" in the device list again: (DAB stick not found. Please use a RTL2832U or similar chip set).

I got this only repaired when I restart the complete QT-DAB program. Only using other device between did not help.

BR Thomas

[JvanKatwijk]

Well, that is the issue, restarting rtlsdr stcks usually causes the program to crash. Since it is Windows and - as I have made clear I hope - I am not a Windows fan and do not have the capability of debuggin under windows, I just mention that there is an issue and hope that are people are wise enough to use a decent operating system

best jan

Op za 7 jan. 2023 om 19:51 schreef TomNeda @.***>:

Hello @JvanKatwijk https://github.com/JvanKatwijk ,

thanks for integrating the PSS feature fully into the master branch.

You mentioned above an issue in QT-DAB where rtlsdr.dll in Windows crashes somehow. I tried out the current (3 days old) 5.0 and 4.4.2 version and also older versions with (unfortunately) the same version numbers but older code and with all four I have no issue with the RTL stick while switching between channels (eg. 11d to 10d and others). It reacts stable within some seconds.

But I have an issue when I recall the device "dabstick" in the device list again: [image: grafik] https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/103888527/211165789-5b465c76-53a7-41d9-8697-8495f83a9c37.png (DAB stick not found. Please use a RTL2832U or similar chip set).

I got this only repaired when I restart the complete QT-DAB program. Only using other device between did not help.

BR Thomas

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[tomneda]

Hi @andrewfer000 ,

Regarding your text above:

I don't know about Germany. But in the USA we still use Analog radio everywhere and have no real good digital standard. We have something called HD Radio (NRSC5-C) for digital which is okay but when it comes to audio quality is drastically inferior compared to the global DAB+ and even DRM and HD is technically proprietary so HD Radios are rare and expensive unlike DAB radios you can get pretty much anywhere. Analog has less features but the sound quality is much better in many cases. This is why Analog radio programs that are easy to use and have cool features like RDS decoding is nice to have. So yeah thanks again for your hard work.

In Germany analog FM is still important and will not die so soon even DAB+ exists here already a longer time in parallel. This is really because the quality of the FM signal is almost very good. All years some politician said that the FM should be switched off soon because of the good DAB+ network but there are still many FM users and because of the good quality they do not dared yet switching it off. (hope this is so still for a while)

But DAB+ has also some kind of a good quality relative to DAB (without plus). The former DAB has older audio codecs with lower compression rate and a worse data correction (missing Reed Solomon codecs). The best improvement in DAB+ could be the SBR (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_band_replication) which extents the upper frequency which (can) got lost while data compression. But this is only some kind of "workaround" reproducing a good sound.

For me FM is as good as DAB+. FM (Stereo) suffers more from noise if the signal strength is not high enough. DAB+ suffers from compression artifacts sometimes but has no noise. DAB+ is of course much better in transferring meta data like MOT.

I read that in Great Britain they use the older DAB and the audio quality due to the compression should be such bad that they should use mono instead of stereo to have more bandwidth left to avoid too much compression artifacts. I don't know if that is correct but sounds really bad (stereo is a very important thing to me). This is more worse that in GB analog FM got switched off very soon after introducing DAB many years ago (only read this, hope that is correct).

BR Thomas

[tomneda]

Hello @JvanKatwijk ,

you wrote that in your description formerly:

There is a pretty large group users of the Qt-DAB software and a number of these users use dabsticks. Now when scanning, the software switches from one channel to the next, ibviously. Since changing a channel is a major reset in the system (dozens of parameeters from the previous channel are to be saved, lots of parameters for the new channel have to be computed), so the normal way is to close the callback function that interacts with the use subsystem , and to restart that when everything is set for the next channel, Windows cannot handle that, it causes a crash somewhere deep in the rtlsdr.dll. I cannot debug windows, soI had to make separate versions of the support functions, a normal one for Linux and a stpid one for Windows.

So, I assumed that this happens while the channel change (direct or via scan) which would be a major issue of course.

When this only happens while re-selecting the dabstick then this is (for me) only a minor thing. I guess I can also not setup the develop system so fast in Windows in a shorter time but I hope I can do it soon.

I had a similar thing for SDRplay in Linux where I had to wait some seconds until restart the FMreceiver until the SDRplay driver was unloaded (i guess). Restarting too fast causes an driver access error (currently working in Windows, could not test it live for more detailed information).

In Windows I got the SDRPlay not to run in QT-DAB:

"sdrplay" is also not working.

I have SDRUno installed and very like the 3.10 driver. So I guess this is the reason for that. I use a SDRPlay RSPdx. maybe this device is also not supported yet fully by your driver. For me it is ok only using the DAB stick (I have also the HackRF but not tested with it yet).

Hope I could help you here soon.

BR Thomas

[tomneda]

Hi @JvanKatwijk ,

a proposal which would be quite fine: Could you increment the version number if you provide new setups? Because for my test I found two different 5.0 and two different 4.4.2 in my downloads. So, it is bad to distinguish which one is really newer (in this case I know that the dark new GUI style comes with the newer version).

I am sure you know the concept of semantic version which you already use somehow. Maybe do not know this site yet: https://semver.org/ :-)

BR Thomas

[JvanKatwijk]

I created separate versions for Windows and Linux. The rtlsdr driver requires an addditional thread, mainly to handle the callback, The approach I had from the very beginning was that on calling a "start" function, a thread is created, and on a call to a "stop" function, the task running the thread was stopped and the thread killed. So, on changing a channel - which requires quite some resetting - I execute a "stop", followed by a "start" for the new channel (of course on starting up the program and selecting a service, only a "start" is called)

Until a few years ago this worked quite well both under Linux and Windows, however, last year I got complaints that using the dabstricks caused crashed, especially when scanning. My "solution" is to change the driver for Windows such that on initializing the driver a thread - with a task running on it for handling the callbacls - is created and the thread remains active until the driver is stopped (either by terminating the program of changing the device) While this works well, the problem of restarting remains, so one could run a session with a dabstick as selected device, however switching to e.g. a filereader and then back to the dabstick driver causes a crash.

I tried to figure out where in the driver the crash occurs but my windows expertise in (almost) zero and I am not able (and not willing) to transfer the stuff to a windows environment with mingw running on it and debugging the stuff. I tried that last year, but for me it is completely unworkable.

best jan

Op za 7 jan. 2023 om 20:54 schreef TomNeda @.***>:

Hello @JvanKatwijk https://github.com/JvanKatwijk ,

you wrote that in your description formerly:

There is a pretty large group users of the Qt-DAB software and a number of these users use dabsticks. Now when scanning, the software switches from one channel to the next, ibviously. Since changing a channel is a major reset in the system (dozens of parameeters from the previous channel are to be saved, lots of parameters for the new channel have to be computed), so the normal way is to close the callback function that interacts with the use subsystem , and to restart that when everything is set for the next channel, Windows cannot handle that, it causes a crash somewhere deep in the rtlsdr.dll. I cannot debug windows, soI had to make separate versions of the support functions, a normal one for Linux and a stpid one for Windows.

So, I assumed that this happens while the channel change (direct or via scan) which would be a major issue of course.

When this only happens while re-selecting the dabstick then this is (for me) only a minor thing. I guess I can also not setup the develop system so fast in Windows in a shorter time but I hope I can do it soon.

I had a similar thing for SDRplay in Linux where I had to wait some seconds until restart the FMreceiver until the SDRplay driver was unloaded (i guess). Restarting to fast causes an driver access error (currently working in Windows, could not test it live for more detailed information).

I Windows I got the SDRPlay not to run in QT-DAB: [image: grafik] https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/103888527/211167845-03480289-cc2d-4c7d-a2c3-fcf1381b8842.png

"sdrplay" is also not working. [image: grafik] https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/103888527/211168162-3b88363f-b7f2-46f0-922f-5bf625ea6693.png

I have SDRUno installed and very like the 3.10 driver. So I guess this is the reason for that. I use a SDRPlay RSPdx. maybe this device is also not supported yet fully by your driver. For me it is ok only using the DAB stick (I have also the HackRF but not tested with it yet).

Hope I could help you here soon.

BR Thomas

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[JvanKatwijk]

Yet another version is uploaded now, a version that contains (a.o) the PSS (Perfect Stereo Setting) from Thomas such that on the GUI you can see the error in the pilot phase used to re-create the stereo output The Windows version is tested with the SDRplay RSP1A (I just found out that my DABstick is gone, it was mechanically weak and now it is broken, so I cannot run tests with a DABstick), I did not see any problem in using the RSP

[andrewfer000]

Yet another version is uploaded now, a version that contains (a.o) the PSS (Perfect Stereo Setting) from Thomas such that on the GUI you can see the error in the pilot phase used to re-create the stereo output The Windows version is tested with the SDRplay RSP1A (I just found out that my DABstick is gone, it was mechanically weak and now it is broken, so I cannot run tests with a DABstick), I did not see any problem in using the RSP

I seem to be having RDS issues with this version. I don't know what the cause is but on the prevous versions it works and on this latest release many stations stopped working.

Older Version:

The previous version:

Most Recent Version:

This means something changed in the last few commits that caused this.

Speaking of version issues. I suggest you make a new release for each appimage/exe update so if there is a problem with the latest a user can download an older version. Each update should also have a new version number such as 3.0.1 etc..

Just noticed the recent PR. Maybe that has the fix.

[JvanKatwijk]

Wow, that is interesting (read: strange), the RDS here locally - with a simple whip as antenna - performs much better than with previous versions, so it needs some investigation. Do you think you are able to make a recording of the signal, and send me a link, such that I can investigate the why?

jan

Op wo 11 jan. 2023 om 18:14 schreef Andrew @.***>:

Yet another version is uploaded now, a version that contains (a.o) the PSS (Perfect Stereo Setting) from Thomas such that on the GUI you can see the error in the pilot phase used to re-create the stereo output The Windows version is tested with the SDRplay RSP1A (I just found out that my DABstick is gone, it was mechanically weak and now it is broken, so I cannot run tests with a DABstick), I did not see any problem in using the RSP

I seem to be having RDS issues with this version. I don't know what the cause is but on the prevous versions it works and on this latest release many stations stopped working.

Older Version: [image: image] https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/9620913/211871607-0e455479-6f29-42d4-82cd-26196ca084ea.png

Most Recent Version: [image: image] https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/9620913/211871999-f9c6c393-53de-485c-8bdc-b86c7099a352.png

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[andrewfer000]

Okay I made an input dump and tested it in my older version of SDR-J-FM and it worked. So I'll upload it here. It's kind of big at 2.7GB so I compressed it to a Zip now it's around 2GB. The frequency I recorded is 104.500 MHz.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1R_YGuTzvs-1VgTnGGJTm5VooCWJF038H/view?usp=sharing

Also what happened to the filereader on newer versions of SDR-J-FM? It was such a useful feature!

[tomneda]

Hi Andrew, hope Jan could help you soon that RDS and the filereader is working again. I was interested also about your sample data as they come from a "complete different area of the world" :-)

I use may last working branch of my fork and it works fine with RDS: but the RDS signal degrades very fast with a more narrow IF filter. Maybe the nearby NRSC 5-C signal could disturb here something (but I had expected that a bit smaller IF filter would improve here something).

Because of the NRSC 5-C signal which is not existing in Germany or Netherlands, this sample file is very interesting. Could be a future work to decode this, too. Or Jan, isn't it? :-) BR Thomas

[JvanKatwijk]

The interesting thing is that the obvious change to the code that solved Andrews problem causes the RDS decoding to fail completely for the transmissions here. I attach a link to a Linux version that seems to work, both for the file Andrew sent and the (at least dutch) transmissions in Europe

https://www.dropbox.com/s/bee4ygevjxgjvp1/fmreceiver-x86_64.AppImage?dl=0

Op do 12 jan. 2023 om 02:09 schreef TomNeda @.***>:

Hi Andrew, hope Jan could help you soon that RDS and the filereader is working again. I was interested also about your sample data as they come from a "complete different area of the world" :-)

I use may last working branch of my fork and it works fine with RDS: [image: Screenshot_2023-01-12_01-58-14] https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/103888527/211950636-7b8b4c98-3a27-454a-91f7-2acc38eb67a3.png but the RDS signal degrades very fast with a more narrow IF filter. Maybe the nearby NRSC 5-C signal could disturb here something (but I had expected that a bit smaller IF filter would improve here something).

Because of the NRSC 5-C signal which is not existing in Germany or Netherlands, this sample file is very interesting. Could be a future work to decode this, too. Or Jan, isn't it? :-) BR Thomas

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[andrewfer000]

The interesting thing is that the obvious change to the code that solved Andrews problem causes the RDS decoding to fail completely for the transmissions here.

Yeah this version works a lot better. Can I have more details about the change and what exactly happened? Also would it be possible to create an RDS 3 selection that turns the obvious change on and off?

[JvanKatwijk]

The problem was in the phase correction of the pilot phase that is computed. The correction applied worked fine for the stereo handling and

• as shown - fine for the RDS as transmitted in Europe, and it failed for the RDS as transmitted in the US By using a different corrector for the pilot phase for the stereo handling than for the RDS, the US and the Europe RDS were both recorgnized and the stereo handling seems OK There will be no additional RDS3 selector

Op do 12 jan. 2023 om 15:39 schreef Andrew @.***>:

The interesting thing is that the obvious change to the code that solved Andrews problem causes the RDS decoding to fail completely for the transmissions here.

Can I have more details about the change and what exactly happened? Also would it be possible to create an RDS 3 selection that turns the obvious change on and off?

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[JvanKatwijk]

I uploaded the latest version with precompiled versions for both Windows and Linux

[andrewfer000]

I uploaded the latest version with precompiled versions for both Windows and Linux

Works great, thanks!

I know you guys have done a lot for me and I am very grateful but I do have one feature request. It would be nice if there was an instant record option that would just automatically save the file with date and time to the home directory or if possible a directory of the users choosing. This would be for audio dumping not input dumping. I feel like it would be a useful feature.

[JvanKatwijk]

just for my understanding: an additional button that - when touched creates a ".wav" file with an automatically generated name (or user selected?) - to which the audio data is written. File to be stored in the "home directory"?

Op do 12 jan. 2023 om 23:22 schreef Andrew @.***>:

I uploaded the latest version with precompiled versions for both Windows and Linux

Works great, thanks!

I know you guys have done a lot for me and I am very grateful but I do have one feature request. It would be nice if there was an instant record option that would just automatically save the file with date and time to the home directory or if possible a directory of the users choosing. This would be for audio dumping not input dumping. I feel like it would be a useful feature.

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[JvanKatwijk]

just a small additional question: if recording is on, is the regular audio output then on or off

Op vr 13 jan. 2023 om 10:27 schreef jan van katwijk @.***

:

just for my understanding: an additional button that - when touched creates a ".wav" file with an automatically generated name (or user selected?) - to which the audio data is written. File to be stored in the "home directory"?

Op do 12 jan. 2023 om 23:22 schreef Andrew @.***>:

I uploaded the latest version with precompiled versions for both Windows and Linux

Works great, thanks!

I know you guys have done a lot for me and I am very grateful but I do have one feature request. It would be nice if there was an instant record option that would just automatically save the file with date and time to the home directory or if possible a directory of the users choosing. This would be for audio dumping not input dumping. I feel like it would be a useful feature.

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-- Jan van Katwijk

-- Jan van Katwijk

[JvanKatwijk]

stupid me, it is such a long time ago that I wrote the software (> 10 years) that I forgot that there is an audiodump button on the GUI, that will ask you for a filename to dump the audio as ".wav" file into. Did you mean such facility or something else

Op vr 13 jan. 2023 om 11:38 schreef jan van katwijk @.***

:

just a small additional question: if recording is on, is the regular audio output then on or off

Op vr 13 jan. 2023 om 10:27 schreef jan van katwijk < @.***>:

just for my understanding: an additional button that - when touched creates a ".wav" file with an automatically generated name (or user selected?) - to which the audio data is written. File to be stored in the "home directory"?

Op do 12 jan. 2023 om 23:22 schreef Andrew @.***>:

I uploaded the latest version with precompiled versions for both Windows and Linux

Works great, thanks!

I know you guys have done a lot for me and I am very grateful but I do have one feature request. It would be nice if there was an instant record option that would just automatically save the file with date and time to the home directory or if possible a directory of the users choosing. This would be for audio dumping not input dumping. I feel like it would be a useful feature.

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-- Jan van Katwijk

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-- Jan van Katwijk

[andrewfer000]

So yeah basically the audio dump that's already there but there's a checkbox that you can click and if it's selected all you have to do is choose a directory once and after that will you press the audio dump button it would just start dumping without you having to choose a file name first.

Another convenient way instead of the original suggestion would be to dump the audio to a temporary file and once you're done by clicking the button again have the file save dialog appear. I think that would be a lot more convenient and makes a lot more sense than the current way.

[JvanKatwijk]

The second option, i.e. touch button and dumping starts, touch button again, dumping stops and temp file is move to a user specified location with user specified filename does not seem to hard. I'll give it a thought

Op vr 13 jan. 2023 om 16:33 schreef Andrew @.***>:

So yeah basically the audio dump that's already there but there's a checkbox that you can click and if it's selected all you have to do is choose a directory once and after that will you press the audio dump button it would just start dumping without you having to choose a file name first.

Another convenient thing would be to dump the audio to a temporary file and once you're done by clicking the button again have the file save dialog appear. I think that would be a lot more convenient and makes a lot more sense than the current way.

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[JvanKatwijk]

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ikbnwv6qkon62sa/fmreceiver-x86_64.AppImage?dl=0

You could give this one a try. Touching the audioDump button starts audio dumping, touching the button for a second time results in showing a file menu. Not official yet since solution is highly Linux orineted, I have to figure out how to make it windows proof

Op vr 13 jan. 2023 om 16:43 schreef jan van katwijk @.***

:

The second option, i.e. touch button and dumping starts, touch button again, dumping stops and temp file is move to a user specified location with user specified filename does not seem to hard. I'll give it a thought

Op vr 13 jan. 2023 om 16:33 schreef Andrew @.***>:

So yeah basically the audio dump that's already there but there's a checkbox that you can click and if it's selected all you have to do is choose a directory once and after that will you press the audio dump button it would just start dumping without you having to choose a file name first.

Another convenient thing would be to dump the audio to a temporary file and once you're done by clicking the button again have the file save dialog appear. I think that would be a lot more convenient and makes a lot more sense than the current way.

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[andrewfer000]

Works great! This is pretty much what I wanted. Hopefully you can get it working on Windows since I think many will appreciate this.

I'm not asking for this myself but you might see a question/request like this in the future: can there be an ARM build or instructions to build on ARM Linux platforms?

You may want to look into that.

I'm shocked about how much progress this program has made in the past month. Great work.

I keep looking out for new builds/improvements, if you need or want any more input dumps just ask.

[andrewfer000]

Hey Jvan,

just cheeked out version 3.1's appimage from 2 days ago and it works well here in the US. Seems to be no issues with the radio part! Also I like that the UI theme can now be changed in the UI which is a nice touch. Also thanks for bringing back the OG theme from 2.0.

One thing however is that the UI window size cannot be changed. While the width is fine and can be moved and changed the height is stuck. I feel like this makes the plots too small. Not sure if this is intentional or not so just wanted to mention it.

Overall good update. I like the less complicated U.I.

[JvanKatwijk]

I uploaded as a quick fix an AppImage with a slightly more simplified GUI and ... it is resizable

Op zo 29 jan. 2023 om 06:53 schreef Andrew @.***>:

Hey Jvan,

just cheeked out version 3.1's appimage from 2 days ago and it works well here in the US. Seems to be no issues with the radio part! Also I like that the UI theme can now be changed in the UI which is a nice touch. Also thanks for bringing back the OG theme from 2.0.

One thing however is that the UI window size cannot be changed. While the width is fine and can be moved and changed the height is stuck. I feel like this makes the plots too small. Not sure if this is intentional or not so just wanted to mention it.

Overall good update. I like the less complicated U.I.

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[tomneda]

Hello Jan,

yes it is resizable now but looks quite strange making it bigger vertically. :-)

See here:

• The three top left numbers have different sizes (but maybe indented?).
• The program list is not growing but it would nice to see the content better.
• The field of the squelch state grows much too big.
• The elements jumps around depending of the length of the RDS running text output.
• And I would expect like @andrewfer000 that the Scope outputs would grow with the resize because they are really small.

If it is ok for you I can immediately address this topics above and is hopefully ok for us all? :-) Then I will try to delivery a pull request today.

PS: the problem that the config and device window is always behind the main windows seems only to be of my Xubuntu (Ubuntu with XFCE). On Windows and also on Fedora with Gnome (in a virtual machine) it works.

BR Thomas

[JvanKatwijk]

Hi Thomas Feel free, As said I am struggling with the qt designer

best jan

Op zo 29 jan. 2023 om 15:14 schreef TomNeda @.***>:

Hello Jan,

yes it is resizable now but looks quite strange making it bigger vertically. :-)

See here: [image: grafik] https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/103888527/215331123-2297f2a4-657a-4c7b-aa76-0be7d74b472a.png

• The three top left numbers have different sizes (but maybe indented?).
• The program list is not growing but it would nice to see the content better.
• The field of the squelch state grows much too big.
• The elements jumps around depending of the length of the RDS running text output.
• And I would expect like @andrewfer000 https://github.com/andrewfer000 that the Scope outputs would grow with the resize because they are really small.

If it is ok for you I can immediately address this topics above and is hopefully ok for us all? :-) Then I will try to delivery a pull request today.

PS: the problem that the config and device window is always behind the main windows seems only to be of my Xubuntu (Ubuntu with XFCE). On Windows and also on Fedora with Gnome (in a virtual machine) it works.

BR Thomas

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[tomneda]

Hello Jan,

I finished my adaption of the GUI and made a bit other things too as you could see in the pull request description. Hope this works also for Windows and GNOME.

I added again the icons to minimize and maximize the main windows (see picture below, very likely not seen in GNOME, as GNOME has no icons like these). You wrote in the code that you could not compile with that in Ubuntu 16. Maybe you use an older QT version there? I use 5.15.2 here (under Windows 5.12.12, but my last compilation is longer ago there).

This is the code which could make this trouble (I did it a bit other way as it formerly was, with a combined enum for min and max): setWindowFlag (Qt::WindowMinMaxButtonsHint, true);

If it still makes trouble, please comment it out. There would be a theoretical better way set this flag in the constructor of the QDialog object but it behaves quite strange. In that case the closing cross was missing, even I try maintain the possibly already set flags.

I still had the problem, when I clicked on "Safe Frequency" the small dialog box was occurring and after writing a text and press return then the FM quit with an exception. I could not debug that because it happens somehow deep within the QT. I guess it is a memory access problem. I already tried to provide the parent-pointer of the caller to QLineEdit (maybe I did it wrong), but it does not help. Finally I made the QLineEdit object as a member of the radio dialog and only show() and hide() the dialog. So it works reliable.

Unfortunately, I got a other new problem today: I guess it has nothing do to with this SW (or it is not a new problem). Today, I set up a VM with VirtualPC to test with Fedora GNOME. There, I installed your latest AppImage from today which worked with the sample file from Andrew. I hear also a sound but it was very dark (low pass filtered). After that test I had problems outside the virtual machine with my sound system when I want use the FM under my Host in Xubuntu again. I hear no sound anymore, but only when I switch around the audio devices up and down, then suddenly the sound was there but very loud and stuttering. The audio mixer of Linux seems to be bypassed.

The strange thing is that even a complete PC shut down (power off) and restart of Linux does nor repair this anymore. And it looks like that it has something to do with the FM as other audio application like sounds from the web browser (Youtube) and Spotify still works well (together with the audio level mixer). But I have (always as I remember) a similar issue with Audacity, where I also must switch around the audio outputs until the sound is suddenly occurring (also with bypassing the audio level mixer). Audacity works well under Windows.

Do you have any idea what happens here?

Hope you and finally @andrewfer000 will like my adaptions :-)

BR Thomas

[JvanKatwijk]

Excellent!! I uploaded an AppImage and a Windows installer

Thanks a lot!!

Op ma 30 jan. 2023 om 00:01 schreef TomNeda @.***>:

Hello Jan,

I finished my adaption of the GUI and made a bit other things too as you could see in the pull request description. Hope this works also for Windows and GNOME.

I added again the icons to minimize and maximize the main windows (see picture below, very likely not seen in GNOME, as GNOME has no icons like these). You wrote in the code that you could not compile with that in Ubuntu 16. Maybe you use an older QT version there? I use 5.15.2 here (under Windows 5.12.12, but my last compilation is longer ago there).

This is the code which could make this trouble (I did it a bit other way as it formerly was, with a combined enum for min and max): setWindowFlag (Qt::WindowMinMaxButtonsHint, true);

If it still makes trouble, please comment it out. There would be a theoretical better way set this flag in the constructor of the QDialog object but it behaves quite strange. In that case the closing cross was missing, even I try maintain the possibly already set flags.

[image: grafik] https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/103888527/215358987-c9582fdc-57d1-445d-a63a-097d4484a1db.png

Unfortunately, I got a other new problem today: I guess it has nothing do to with this SW (or it is not a new problem). Today, I set up a VM with VirtualPC to test with Fedora GNOME. There, I installed your latest AppImage from today which worked with the sample file from Andrew. I hear also a sound but it was very dark (low pass filtered). After that test I had problems outside the virtual machine with my sound system when I want use the FM under my Host in Xubuntu again. I hear no sound anymore, but only when I switch around the audio devices up and down, then suddenly the sound was there but very loud and stuttering. The audio mixer of Linux seems to be bypassed.

The strange thing is that even a complete PC shut down (power off) and restart of Linux does nor repair this anymore. And it looks like that it has something to do with the FM as other audio application like sounds from the web browser (Youtube) and Spotify still works well (together with the audio level mixer). But I have (always as I remember) a similar issue with Audacity, where I also must switch around the audio outputs until the sound is suddenly occurring (also with bypassing the audio level mixer). Audacity works well under Windows.

Do you have any idea what happens here?

Hope you and finally @andrewfer000 https://github.com/andrewfer000 will like my adaptions :-)

BR Thomas

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-- Jan van Katwijk

[andrewfer000]

Works well! Thanks @tomneda and @JvanKatwijk for the UI improvements.

Also @tomneda since you worked on the new RDS algorithm would you mind looking at a few samples that I have. At times a few characters are cut off and I can't figure it out. If you don't mind looking let me know and I'll upload the input dumps for you.

[tomneda]

Hi @andrewfer000 thanks for the appreciation :-)

Of course you can send me/us sample data. I had asked you nevertheless for such sample data because I am interested into decoding this NRSC5 stuff which we have not here in Europe. I try to use this FM radio framework to use the work of https://github.com/theori-io/nrsc5 , only to play around with that a bit. So if your files would contain also NRSC5 signals it would be nice. I see on your Github site that you forked already NRSC5 stuff. Could you succeed with that? (in the hope that the signal quality is good enough in the sample files).

Regarding your problem: Please describe a bit what for problem you experience.

@JvanKatwijk : Interesting, when I execute your AppImage (with XFCE) then the Config windows pops up in the front whereas in my compilation it is always hidden from the main window. Do you use maybe another QT version? I do not know yet how to look behind the content of the AppImage to look for myself.

[andrewfer000]

@tomneda Here is the sample. I used a lot of frequencies with mixed RDS signal strength so sorry for all the jumping around! I tried to include as little copyright music as possible. Even though I feel like this is considered fair use to some extent.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hpISaQUMVGxvbP2kNMeJ4cz1JDoYY1JQ/view?usp=sharing

Due to my G-Drive space running low. I will delete this in 48 hours. So download it soon. That goes for my old sample too.

NOTES: Look out for these!

"WHYY - The Worl" is supposed to be "WHYY- The World" "Spandau Ballet - Tr" is supposed to be Spandau Ballet - True. "Alt 104.5 My Hero Foo Fight" is supposed to be "Alt 104.5 My Hero Foo Fighters" "Guns N' Roses- November Ra" is supposed to be "Guns N' Roses- November Rain" WRTI (90.1) and NJ-101.5 and Big 98.1 are complete and normal in this capture.

As you can see, it's always 1-5 characters are missing. Some songs and program names are worse than others. Feel free to look around the other frequencies I did not mention and see what you can catch.

I'm assuming it has to do with the termination character (I think it's an s with an accent mark. Can't remember.) or some kind of CRC or hash thing. Not sure how you implemented it.

If you can fix it let me know. Also a high level explanation on how RDS and this decoder works would be nice. I always wanted to learn how it works.

Lastly, if you want more NRSC-5 specific recordings let me know. If you can get NRSC-5 decoding within SDR-J-FM working with proper hybrid mode like a real "HD Radio" device that would be awesome however it will be a challenge and I am unsure if it's even possible. However I will help you with samples and testing if you want to do anything with NRSC-5. I can get you dumps from SDR-J-FM or NRSC-5 itself. Oh and my NRSC-5 fork is just an extra mirror with the latest code that works from the main repo, I wish I can contribute to these programs but I don't know how to get started!

[tomneda]

I hope this text do not come twice here because I answered it first via email but it is not shown here, yet.

Hi @andrewfer000 ,

got your file, you could delete it if you want, but maybe Jan is also interested in it. I guess the old file could have been deleted since a longer time.

I will look deeper into it after my job.

Only short yet:

Have you ever see the full length of the RDS text?

If yes then I guess the decoding was never able to decode the letter position without checksum error because its only written to the display if all letters from begin to a certain position are received without error. In other words: If the full text would have 30 letters and you have a receive error on letter 9 you will only be shown the letter 1 to 8 but not 9 to 30. If the letter 9 is suddenly received well then the whole 30 letter text is shown. This filter should made the output more nice looking but maybe it is to harsh (then I would apply a switch to make the filter strength switchable). I will look into this later give also answer to your other question then. I have to work now... :-)