PDW Can't Get PDW to Work!!

[joesheets]

I am beating my head on the wall trying to get PDW to work with SDR#. I have attached some pics of the setup with hopes someone can pick out what my issues is/are.
I am using RTL-SDR and VB cable.
Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated!

 

[alabamarailfan]

Hello!
Two things that I would check:
1. You should see steady audio in the green "level" meter beside the CABLE VB Output. Yours is not showing anything indicating either the volume is set to 0 (double click to set audio) or the output is not set correctly in SDR#.
2. Make sure that you tell PDW which audio device to use and to treat it as a discriminator tap. See attached images.

 

[morfis]

SDR sharp audio output should be set to your virtual cable input
PDW should be set to your virtual cable output

Works fine here with one copy of sdrsharp running multiple VFOs to seperate VACs to individual copies of PDW. Haven't a scooby what the windoze sound settings show as I have never needed to look.

 

[joesheets]

SDR sharp audio output should be set to your virtual cable input
PDW should be set to your virtual cable output

Works fine here with one copy of sdrsharp running multiple VFOs to seperate VACs to individual copies of PDW. Haven't a scooby what the windoze sound settings show as I have never needed to look.

That is the way I have them set up.

 

[alabamarailfan]

Look at the screen capture you took of the recording tab versus the one I posted. See the difference in the audio level? That shows that no audio is getting through the VB Cable, whether it be from the level set to low or you have squelch turned on in SDR# or whatever. You should see a steady audio level in the "meter" under the Record tab next to VB Cable just like a scanner with a discriminator output. If you don't see this audio, there is a problem somewhere and no way that PDW can decode. You can double click the VB Cable in the Record tab to set the volume.

Forgot to mention, in PDW, click Interface/Setup to get to the dialog I captured above. Hope that helps!

 

[morfis]

That is the way I have them set up.

Your screenshots appear to show that you have the sdr sharp audio output OFF

 

[joesheets]

Look at the screen capture you took of the recording tab versus the one I posted. See the difference in the audio level? That shows that no audio is getting through the VB Cable, whether it be from the level set to low or you have squelch turned on in SDR# or whatever. You should see a steady audio level in the "meter" under the Record tab next to VB Cable just like a scanner with a discriminator output. If you don't see this audio, there is a problem somewhere and no way that PDW can decode. You can double click the VB Cable in the Record tab to set the volume.

Forgot to mention, in PDW, click Interface/Setup to get to the dialog I captured above. Hope that helps!

See pics...

 

[joesheets]

Your screenshots appear to show that you have the sdr sharp audio output OFF

View attachment 78773

That was temporary. It doesn't work with mute off.

 

[morfis]

That was temporary.

Right, really useful screenshot to use when you are asking for help then

Your latest screenshot also shows a different output driver from sdrsharp when compared to your original.

Which version of windoze are you using? There is an odd 'feature' in windows 10 which requires you to have microphone privacy set to off for virtual cables and decoding software to work.

As @alabamarailfan has said, there is no audio on the virtual cable so no audio for PDW to decode - this is where you need to concentrate your debuging effort.

 

[joesheets]

Win 10. I set Mic privacy to off.

There are 2 "Cable Inputs" available in SDR# ..[Windows Direct Sound] Cable Input and [MME]Cable Input(VB Audio Virtual Cable). I have tried both and neither work. I am still getting no signal through the VB.

Is there anything else in SDR# that can be hindering?

 

[joesheets]

AND NOW THIS!...I finally got a signal on the VB cable but now PDW is having none of it!

 

[morfis]

Well at least it's progress!

Recheck the microphone privacy and ensure 'Allow desktop apps to access your microphone' is ON as well as allowing apps ON

Restart PDW

 

[Ubbe]

You can only attach one audio device to a VB cable. Someting else are hogging that VB output or you are trying to use the input.

/Ubbe

 

[joesheets]

You can only attach one audio device to a VB cable. Someting else are hogging that VB output or you are trying to use the input.

/Ubbe

What should I look for to determine this?

 

[Ubbe]

What should I look for to determine this?

Don't really know, but both input and output of the VB are set as default so every audio device are trying to use your VirtualCable.
Set at least the speaker as default audio device for output in the mixer. Then hopefully the VB output will be free to be used by PDW.
You probably have to restart the PC between any audio device changes.

/Ubbe

 

[joesheets]

Finally! Got it to work! Not sure which thing changed but I am decoding at about 93%. Tweeking to get better decode.
Thanks for all of the help!!

 

[poltergeisty]

You'll find the right antenna makes all the difference. I was amazed at the signal decode quality with a dipole that I bought on eBay for SDRs and an outside 800/900 MHz antenna. My signal decode went way up. Though, the traffic of ACARS is very boring and so I don't mess with this anymore. Just tried it with an SDR to see how well it performed.

 

[rellyrell]

By the way, PDW sucks when it comes to ACARS decoding. I had it running side by side with MULTIPSK decoding fine while PDW just sits there with a black screen in lala land.

 

[Ubbe]

PDW are extremly picky about the signal level to it. It has to be exacly spot on and doesn't accept that you deviate much from the nominal value.

At least in pocsag there's an "intelligent" inbuilt training mode that you have no access to that tries to adapt to the signal but always seems to make the signal decoding worse with each decode if it initially wasn't spot on, and needs to be restarted to reset it.

/Ubbe