CubicSDR on Linux becomes laggy after 2 hours of use

[jaymot]

Hi. I'm new to SDR but not to monitoring. I just got a Nooelec SMArt HF bundle which includes their Ham It Up 1.3 upconverter in an aluminum case, 3 antennas, various connectors, adapters, etc. I use MX Linux 19.4 AHS which is based on the current Debian Stable 10 (Buster) but with the 5.10 LTS kernel and more recent graphics and mesa stacks for newer computers and video cards. I'm using CubicSDR 0.25 from an AppImage file as the natively-installed version crashes with a segmentation fault on Debian 10 systems. I've noticed that after using CubicSDR for a couple of hours it starts to become laggy and slower to respond to mouse clicks, dragging to change frequencies, etc. and I have to close and reopen the program. It acts like a buffer gets full or something. It's not my computer as I have a fairly new system with a gaming motherboard (Asus TUF Gaming B450M PRO), a Ryzen 7 3700X CPU (3GHz 8 cores 16 threads) and 32GB of DDR4 RAM. I'm also running the operating system and my applications from a 500GB M.2 NVMe solid-state drive with 175GB of free space. I typically have Firefox open with 4 or 5 tabs at the same time to various websites pertaining to radio such as a greyline map, a frequency lookup site, Wikipedia's page on shortwave radio bands, and one or two others. I'm not having issues with any other applications, just with this one. CPU and other temperatures are OK and CPU utilization, while higher when using Cubic, is still OK, usually 2.6 to 2.8GHz. (BTW my video card is a Biostar Radeon RX 560 with 4GB of GDDR5 RAM.)

My usage pattern is typically to widen the main spectrum to show a wider range of frequencies then narrow it again when I see what looks like a signal, click on it to listen, then if it's not something I'm interested in or is just noise or a birdie to clear my recent(s) then continue exploring the spectrum. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Does anyone know if there are any settings in CubicSDR I can change to mitigate the lagginess? I typically just use the default settings other than disabling AGC and enabling the -125000KHx offset when I want to listen to shortwave. Or is it the way I'm using the program that's causing it, i.e. too many spectrum changes and sideways scrolls in too short of a period of time, and there's a more efficient way to use the software?

 

[deadite66]

Cubic has always slowed down.

Cubic Slowdown · Issue #538 · cjcliffe/CubicSDR

The fps of cubic begins slow down after about 15 minutes, mousing over cubic you can see the interface stutter. i have noticed that if i leave a menu column open the fps goes back to normal. __GL_S...

github.com

they never fix it.

 

[jaymot]

@deasite66: Thanks for the info. So, as Justin Wilson the Cajun raconteur and cook would say, there ain't nothin' I can did about it. That's a pity: I don't mind so much having to close and relaunch the program but it has no method of saving my settings or remembering what frequency I was on that I've been able to find, so every time I restart it I have to disable AGC, set the gain to where it was, then retune to the band I was just on when Cubic started acting up which is a pain in the backside.

I've tried GQRX but I don't find it to be nearly as easy to figure out and use as CubicSDR. I'm considering trying Linrad as it's supposed to be very good about pulling weak stations out of the mud but it's said that Linrad has a very steep learning curve. I haven't even figured out how to get it to compile yet let alone use it.

 

[deadite66]

have you tried SDR++, its still work in progress but it's coming along.

GitHub - AlexandreRouma/SDRPlusPlus: Cross-Platform SDR Software

Cross-Platform SDR Software. Contribute to AlexandreRouma/SDRPlusPlus development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

 

[jaymot]

No, but I may give it a go. Meanwhile I found through experimentation that the issue with Cubic not remembering settings between sessions was only with the appimage version. I was able to get the native one from the Debian repo working by purging cubicsdr, *hamlib* and soapy* then installing cubicsdr and soapy-module-rtlsdr. Previously I had installed several other Soapy modules because I didn't know which one my dongle needed, and I think one of those or one of its dependencies was causing Cubic to crash with a segmentation fault. It's up and running natively in my Debian Buster-based system now I'll test it further to see if the lagginess persists or if that was also an issue with the appimage version.

 

[jaymot]

CubicSDR still gets laggy after around 2 hours of use. It took me 3 hours but I finally got SDR++ to compile and install, so I'll check it out later this evening. Thanks for the tip.