I have recently bought the new Softrock Esemble II Receiver. This is a Sofware Defined Radio, it’s based on Si570 a local programmable oscillator and an Atmel ATTiny85 micro-controller unit, which works as a USB device.

The Quadrature Sampling Detector (QSD) acts as an output mixer, so then you need a stereo soundcard with a good bandwidth.

Today I have conducted the first test.

I didn’t know what was the correct configuration for my PC. I must note my setup: I have a MacBook 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB of ram DDR3 and 250GB. For this test I have used Windows 7 into a Virtual Machine through Parallels software…

So, to properly configure my new SDR, I have found 2 precious links:

• http://www.wb5rvz.com/sdr/ensemble/psdriq.htm
• http://home.ict.nl/~fredkrom/pe0fko/SR-V9-Si570/index.shtml#install

The PC needs a correct driver to recognize Si570 local oscillator and so to properly install the Softrock Esemble II RX. I have followed, without problems, the guide of PE0FKO (the second link before). Then there are some softwares for the SDR.

I have chosen the PowerSDR-IQ 1.19.3.15, this is my screenshot:

I have also recorded an audio file during the CQ of 9X0TL on 15m today, in this file I have test various filter and dsp configuration, you can listen the differences:

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