Shortly after posting my Traveling Light, SWLing Right article yesterday, @LondonShortwave shared a video of the portable set up he uses for SWLing in London public parks:
Click here to view a video of his Tecsun PL-660/Nevada EFW-2 combo in action.
The antenna @LondonShortwave uses in the video is the Nevada EFW-2 (below). To keep the PL-660 from overloading he either sets the PL-660 sensitivity switch to “Normal” (rather than “DX”) or uses the Global AT-2000 coupler shown in the video.
Recently, I posted a video showing how @LondonShortwave uses the GarageBand plugin, SoniqWare SG-1, for noise reduction. Since GarageBand is an Apple application, I didn’t believe SoniqWare SG-1 would work on a Windows PC, but SWLing Post reader Jeff Benedict (KB7AIL) writes:
“I run Mac OSX and GarageBand so it’s not really a concern of mine but, according to the documentation, SG-1 is compatible with Windows sound processing applications.
Here’s the documentation from SoniqWare:From: http://www.soniqware.com/pdf/
SoniqWare-SG-1.pdf
p. 17System Requirements
• Microsoft Windows XP/Vista,
• Mac OS X 10.5/10.6,
• 512 MB RAM,
• VST, VST3, or AU compatible host softwareAn explanation of the VST and a list of applications for Windows which are compatable with VST plug-ins:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Virtual_Studio_Technology Of course, this comes with the caveat that I do not run any version of Windows or any of these sound processing applications so YMMV.
A short explanation of the different formats for sound processing plug-ins:
Many thanks, Jeff, for the tip!
Many thanks to @LondonShortwave, on Twitter, who made a video showing how to use a GarageBand plugin to filter noise out of shortwave audio in real time. He describes this on his YouTube channel:
“I recently discovered a Mac AudioUnit plugin called Soniqware SG-1 that allows real-time noise filtering based on a brief noise sample (sometimes referred to as the “noise profile” or the “noise fingerprint”). This video shows it being applied to shortwave radio signals, which I believe is a first, as I have been unable to find anyone else who has already done it. In a number of cases, it turns laborious DXing into armchair listening.
The antenna used in these experiments is a Wellbrook ALA1530SP-1 and is positioned indoors. More information is contained in the first few seconds of the video.”
Click here to watch the video on YouTube.
Note that GarageBand is an application only available on the Mac OS X platform. Fortunately, it comes free with every new Apple computer purchase. You can find the Soniqware SG-1 spectral noise gate plugin by clicking here.
Be sure to follow @LondonShortwave on Twitter: http://twitter.com/LondonShortwave