flex 6300, icom 7300

[N2DTS]

How is the AM on the flex 6300?
I have looked at the utube video and it seemed to sound good and clean.

Icom is coming out with an sdr in a box the 7300 and its supposed to be inexpensive.

[Pete, WA2CWA]

Mouse over

[W1AEX]

Brett,

In my opinion the Flex 6300 sounds great on AM. The 6.xxx series will faithfully reproduce whatever audio you feed it. When 15 meters was open I used to chat with Dan - W7NGA almost daily as he got his Flex 6300 squared away. The video links below were from a year ago and he had the 6300 dialed in very nicely by that time.

When the 7300 announcement was first made there was no mention of RX or TX bandwidths for their SDR box.  As far as I know that information is still not available. I would be surprised if it was not limited to 2.9k of audio bandwidth which would present a 5.8kc wide signal on AM. As far as I know that has been the bandwidth standard used by ICOM for all of its transceivers. Perhaps they will allow something more for the 7300 but I'd be sure to confirm that before plunking my money down.

73,

Rob W1AEX

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwXDeDcZnXE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ccS1isroR0

[WD5JKO]

    I worked a guy last weekend with a 6300. It sounded like a stock Valiant on 40m with a blown modulation transformer. The sidebands were offset towards upper sideband, and the audio was weak, narrow, and highly distorted. The OM is a former FRS employee too.  

   I own a Flex 3000, and yes I have transmitted some mighty peculiar signals with it too. Mostly dealing with Firewire cable RFI susceptibility, and RF feedback. So it was reassuring to me that the 6300 could emit a really squirreley signal too. I think I will keep my 3K now that I have learned how to tame it. It seems that most of the 6K features that I don't have now pertain to digital modes I never heard of, or don't care about.

Jim
Wd5JKO

[N2DTS]

I would be interested in the 6300 for two reasons really, the very good receiver (very low noise wide dynamic range) and the ethernet interface.
Firewire is limited in bandwidth and you need to add a card to most computers, USB is not real time, and the new flex radios do most of the processing in the radio, not your computer.

I have no use for the digital modes and so on, and I am sure the new radios can sound good if adjusted right.
Even the old ones seemed to be very fussy with the many audio level settings.

[W1AEX]

The Flex 6300 is a nice hardware platform for a nice sounding SDR for AM and at $2499 it will run circles around box-type radios at the same price point. I'd suggest also taking a look at the Apache Labs ANAN-100 as well (also interfaces to the computer with ethernet) which is selling for $2449 with free shipping from Ham Radio Outlet.

There are two schools of thought regarding the thin client (Flex) and the thick client (ANAN) approach to the SDR platform. With the thin-client Flex you are relying on the onboard FPGA to handle most of the DSP and other processing tasks which certainly does lighten the load on the computer. The trade-off is that performance and future-proofing is locked to that FPGA in your hardware.

With the thick-client ANAN approach the processing tasks are distributed (balanced) between the onboard FPGA and the computer. This opens the door for the firmware and software programmers to distribute the tasks over the low-latency ethernet connection between the radio hardware and the computer. Additionally, it allows the programmers to seamlessly allow full spectrum FFT data crunching to your computer's graphic card (NVIDIA gpu) or even a cheap single board computer plugged into your home LAN's router (NVIDIA Jetson T1 board less than 200 bucks) using ARM processors and CUDA cores to handle all the heavy lifting. Since all the processing is distributed across your LAN the latency is typically less than 1 ms. My "thick client" OpenHPSDR software typically runs at between 4% to 7% cpu utilization on a 4 year-old I-7 computer I built myself, which is far different from my Flex 5000 running PowerSDR which used to sit at around 45% cpu utilization on the same computer.

So... when making your decision, think about whether or not it's really an advantage to lock your future feature-set to the internal FPGA.

73,

Rob W1AEX

[N2DTS]

I did not know you could get the ANAN without doing the customs nonsense.
My flex 5000 was a nice box, I had no real issues with it (for a 25 watt radio).
CPU was under 10% at the time and I could get the latency very low with the firewire.

[W1AEX]

Yeah, the Flex 5000 was (still is) an excellent radio. I happily ran mine from 2010 to 2014 and never thought about moving to anything else until the direct sampling rigs began to show up. Flex makes first-rate stuff.

I believe there are 3 vendors based in the US at this time who carry the ANAN line of transceivers but can only remember Ham Radio Outlet and Gigaparts. When I bought my ANAN-100 there were no US vendors so I had to do the whole "buy it direct from India" adventure and between shipping and the US import fees it ended up adding about $90 to the bottom line price, which at the time was $2399. It all went without a hitch and it only took 5 days for the rig to get here from the time I pushed the "Order" button on the web. Still, it's nice to have a US vendor to work with on things like this.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do. Both Flex and ANAN owners seem pretty happy with their stuff.

73,

Rob W1AEX

[N2DTS]

I tried to order one way back when they first came out, but the site would not take my credit card.

I can not say I enjoy fighting with software, so would likely do the flex, as I would use the thing as a source of RF to drive homebrew tube stuff (how odd is that?) and as a receiver.

I found Power sdr a good program from the operating standpoint, flex seems to do that well.
Or, I could go the netsdr route from RF Space for $1500.00. 16 bit IP based receiver.
 

[W1AEX]

Yeah, the credit card setup was bizarre and it sort of looked like it went through as a PayPal transaction but it all turned out fine. Definitely strange though! I'm glad going forward that US hams can buy the ANAN transceivers from HRO, Gigaparts, or Cheapham!

Good luck with the Flex 6300!

Rob W1AEX

[w1vtp]

I use my Flex 1500 as a receiver only in my class E station.  Works fine.  the USB line is a little funky but if I hold my mouth right on turn on it works fine.  I love it.  Of course the Flex 5000 works just fine.

The  market seems be flooded with 5000's these days.  Keep an eye out for a 5000

Al

[N2DTS]

I wanted to do tests and experiments with audio and anything USB has way too much delay through it.
A fine receiver really but not real time.

[Carl WA1KPD]

 the USB line is a little funky but if I hold my mouth right on turn on it works fine.

Al

Hi Al,
Trying to get a visual here.....
Carl
/KPD

[N2DTS]

If the Icom 7300 is anywhere around the $1200.00 price point, its going to be very attractive.
Being a direct sample setup it should be quite good performance wise.

$1200.00 seems very low though, for a 100 watt radio with a built in tuna and nice display.
 

[N2DTS]

Talked with Stu today and he was saying how good the ANAN 10E is for the money.
The price is right and I am trying to resist ordering one.

The pre distortion (pure signal) makes it very interesting if you want to run a radio into a crappy amplifier.
 

[n1eu]

I am REALLY excited about knobbed DDC/DUC SDR radios being introduced by the major ham vendors, but I just don't have a good feeling about the IC-7300.  The display is way too low of a resolution and reports are that audio bandwidth will be limited to 2900hz.  Icom needs to change their 2.9KHz audio policy.  I think by far the screaming deal today in SDRdom is a used ANAN.  I think there's a used ANAN-100 on QTH for $1550 and there are similarly good deals popping up every few weeks.  

Barry N1EU

[N2DTS]

I just hope I can get the thing working.
The old flex stuff was very easy to get going.

[Pete, WA2CWA]

reports are that audio bandwidth will be limited to 2900hz.  Icom needs to change their 2.9KHz audio policy.  

Barry N1EU

For SSB. Been roughly the norm for many of Icom's transceivers over the years. They've never supported Hi Hi-Fi sounding rigs.

[flintstone mop]

A little off-topic. My first great experience with SDR was the first of the  FLEX SDR 1000. Clumsy box and parallel connection to a computer for control and out board exotic sound cards.

You get into the higher end fire wire sound cards of that time period and the TX audio was out of this world. Awesome modulation wide nice smooth audio. No audio processors needed. 130% pos peaks easily. Loud smooth TX audio
The receiver and the software used caused a lot of birdies that made the receiver a little disappointing. But the FLEX would outperform my R390A with the DSP processing. The SAM mode for AM was very effective to reduce selective fading. NOTHING will ever beat the SE3 Sync detector......tooo much money and now out of production.

Fred

[N2DTS]

I just worked someone last weekend on a flex 1000 and he sounded very good.
I think the ANAN sounds very good as well, and the audio settings seem much less critical and they work better.

But then again, I think most people on the air sound good.

[WA2SQQ]

KJI Electronics had an open house - an ICOM rep attended. Their SDR radio is going to be a very basic SDR. For example, no I and Q outputs to interface with third party software. My friend, WO2X, showed the rep his Flex operating over a wireless connection on his iPad. The display was detailed and fluid. The ICOM rep admitted that "our radio will not be that good on a wireless connection and will not have many of the features that Flex or Anan offer.

Regarding Anan vs. Flex I'd like to share a story. My long time friend and former co-worker, K3WKM, purchased an Anan 100. He kept it about 1 month and sold it. While the radio worked very well, he was very frustrated with the frequent firmware updates and what seemed like constant software tweaking. He purchased a Flex (6500) and commented that the Flex was much more user friendly. He is enjoying using the radio and not feeling like part of a beta test team. I had one problem with my 6500. Total turn around time including shipping was 9 days, during which I received 18 e-mails with status updates. Their customer care is second to none. Brett, I had a 5000 (actually I bought it from you) and I loved it. I bought the 6500 after WO2X decided he wanted to upgrade to a 6700. I got a great deal on the 6500 and I'm not regretting it one bit.

While the 6300 does not have many of the extra features the 6500 and 6700 offer, for your basic AM operation I think its just what you are expecting.

[n1eu]

Look, I'm a fan of both ANAN and Flex.  I follow both of their forums regularly.  I own an ANAN-100D and I actually just made an offer this morning to a guy selling a Flex 6500 locally and waiting to hear back.

That being said, in terms of the current state of both radios, it's unfair to characterize the ANAN (relative to the Flex 6K) as needing more frequent firmware/software updates or tweaking.  Maybe that was true in the distant past, but it's not at all true currently.

73, Barry N1EU

[WA2SQQ]

Perhaps it was a poor choice of words, but Steve's (K3WKM) motivation to sell the Anan was that there was just too many adjustments to keep tweaking. Recently Brett was discussing the need to make some sort of alignment on each band. It sounded to me like Brett's decision to sell the Anan was in part based on the lack of a user friendly plug and play experience.

If you are buying the radio to make QSO's and have a more plug and play experience I think Flex is the way to go.
If you are into tweaking and experimenting with the newest approaches to SDR than Anan is probably the best bet.

I think I fall somewhere in the middle.

[N2DTS]

I do not have a problem with the ANAN radio or software.
Not at all, both work very well.
I have a problem with the low power, lack of tuner, and the delay that all sdr's have.

I wanted to see how the ethernet interface worked, and it works fine, the radio will put out its rated power (10 watts) on every band, but AM TX does act funny on 80 meters.

I thought the radio was VERY easy to get working, better then the old flex stuff where you had to add a firewire card and drivers...

[n1eu]

To update my Dec 04 posting, my bid on the Flex 6500 was accepted and it's alive and well in my shack alongside my ANAN-100D.  As far as I can tell, both the 6500 and ANAN-100D are totally tweakless, putting out superb AM signals by just properly setting mic gain (and EQ).  The 6500 seems to like mic gain set for -10dB peak.  I hear some distortion if I let it drive up to 0dB.

See you on 15M AM.

73, Barry N1EU