Recording contest audio

[K3MQ]

What is involved in recording all your qso's in a contest?

I use N1MM which has a feature "Record QSOs", but I've yet to figure it out.

I'd like to record everything in mp3 format. Do you need to have stand-alone audio program running - such as Audacity? What keeps the size of the files to a level where they would not slow down your computer?

K5TR has mp3 audio files online where he recorded entire contests,  but broken into one hour segments. How did he (or anyone) set this up?

73

Bob - K3MQ

[W3TUA]

I've never been able to make the record function of N1MM work. Audacity works great and will allow you to go back later and divide the track into segments.

[F5IN]

I use REcallpro
i create one file/hour

[KA8VIT]

Try Scanner Recorder available for free at:
http://www.davee.com/scanrec/

I usually work CW, but here is a link to some recordings made using Scanner Recorder:
http://ka8vit.com/qso

I've used Scanner Recorder to record for 10-days straight.

Using 8,000 Hz, 8-bit mono recording settings, makes for smaller files while allowing you to decode recorded digital mode signals or DTMF tones at a later time too.

If recording AM, bump it to 22,050 Hz.

I take the audio from the headphone jack to the soundcard mic input and then put my headphones into the soundcard output jack.

I set the rig volume to 10-o'clock and using the windows recording control to adjust the recording gain.

My rig has a 'monitor' function which will put the transmit audio to the headphone in the same fashion as the CW side tone.

73 - Bill KA8VIT

[K5TR]

What is involved in recording all your qso's in a contest?

K5TR has mp3 audio files online where he recorded entire contests,  but broken into one hour segments. How did he (or anyone) set this up?

I use a standalone computer just for recording.  The good news is that it does not have to be much of a computer.

Many of the windows contesting programs have recording built in - but I do not have any experience with those. I am still using an MS-DOS based contest logging program.  I will not claim that this is the best way or the easy way but it has worked.  The only issue I have is that linux and/or the various linux distributions keep changing how they do audio and that has made my life hard though up grades. I think I am going to explore using some version of Icecast to stream to a local icecast server all on the same machine but I have not gotten very far on that project.

I have done several different things over the years but here is what I have been doing most recently:

I use a computer running linux.  I use sox and lame to do the recording.  The lame setting I have been using that gives me the quality that I like uses a little under 21 Mb/hour.  I restart the recordings at the top of each hour using a cron job.  I have found it is much eaiser to deal with 24 or 36 or 48  21Mb files than it is to mess with one big file.

I am not an expert with lame ... but here is what I have been using most recently with very good results.

sox -t ossdsp -w -s -r 44100 -c 2 /dev/dsp -t cdr - | lame --verbose -r -b48 --scale 3.5 - contest.mp3

My command line is a bit more complicated as I get the time and date from the computer and put those in. You could
also stuff info into the id3 tags as well.

I use a cron job to restart the process every hour - thus creating a new file each hour.

Here is an example from an IARU contest first hour:
http://www.kkn.net/~k5tr/audio/contests/IARU/2005/2005-IARU-K5TR_2005-07-09-12:00.mp3

There are more contests here:
http://www.kkn.net/~k5tr/audio/contests/

If you poke around in there you will notice that there are some smaller and maybe larger file sizes - this is because I have been playing with the lame settings.  Some use VBR and one or two are mono recordings because I did not notice that I was not recording in stereo.  I use stereo most of the time since I want to record the two radio audio.

I am sorry I did not see this question back when you first posted it.

--
George - K5TR

[N0HR]

In the most recent CQWW CW contest I recorded most QSOs using a beta version of N1MM that allows all audio to be passed via USB cable to my Icom IC-7600.

The setup was very fast & easy. It was pretty sweet to have a single USB cable that handled both the radio CAT control and the audio for recording all in one! The only shortcoming was that the IC-7600 design did not allow the CW sidetone on transmit to be passed out of the USB (hopefully this will be fixed in the future in firmware). On SSB & RTTY contests, that won't be a problem as the "monitor" function will allow the tx audio to be passed via USB.

For more on this setup check out the N1MM and IC7600 groups on Yahoo. I hope to post something about the setup on my website as well: www.n0hr.com

Pat

[K9IUQ]

How about getting a SDR and record everybodys QSO in the WHOLE band for the WHOLE contest. It is being done right now for checking cheaters.

Contest checkers could que up the SDR recording, play it back to a certain time, on the frequency you have in the log and hear you make the contact. Scary huh?

Stan K9IUQ

[AA3YV]

What is involved in recording all your qso's in a contest?

I use N1MM which has a feature "Record QSOs", but I've yet to figure it out.

I'd like to record everything in mp3 format. Do you need to have stand-alone audio program running - such as Audacity? What keeps the size of the files to a level where they would not slow down your computer?

I got a small pet project here https://sourceforge.net/projects/qsorder
It is specifically for recording N1MM qsos to MP3s.    There was some discussion about it on the N1mm list. 

I think it's important to record contests or DX-peditions - I'm always curious how I sound in the pileups.  Or to go back and see where I messed up after receiving the log checking report.
(Sorry for resurrecting an old thread)