[hpsdr] Digital Voice and HPSDR

[John Petrich]

Quite a number of you responded, on and off the reflector, to my questions. 
I want to acknowledge the fine help offered by each and everyone of them: 
Walt, K5WH, Tony, VK3JED, Glenn, WB6W, and good 'ol Ken, K9VV.  Thanks guys.

The take away messages for me are these:  Digital Voice (DV) should play 
just fine thru the PowerSDR DSP.  The DV stream should be processed as an 
odd, but otherwise manageable, audio input or output by PowerSDR.  Amateur 
DV is very much "experimental", which is a great opportunity.  The 
"experimental" aspects include the development and release of a robust open 
source Codec that permits a higher bit rate than present systems, adoption 
of the Codec by enough people to allow us to talk to someone else over the 
air, and organizing around the details of getting the new software to "work" 
in the real world amateur station.  There are a couple of available DV 
applications, WinDRM and FDMDV that will allow one to copy shortwave 
broadcast stations that use DV, and will also permit DV QSO's with similarly 
equipped amateur stations.  These applications are not ideal or an end in 
themselves but are important stepping stones in the development of a DV 
system that someday we might use for routine communication purposes.  I 
remember the very early days of SSB and wonder how lonely those hams felt 
while they tried to find another ham to communicate with.

What I am going to do is to look more carefully into FDMDV and at least 
monitor some SW DV broadcasts.  In the longer run, I'll keep my eyes and 
ears open for the next phase in Codec development.

If anyone is interested in learning more, contact me and I can supply some 
URL's that might be helpful.

Regards,
John Petrich, W7FU