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Reviews For: SotaBeams DSP Filter

Category: Filters, Audio: (DSP and others)

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Review Summary For : SotaBeams DSP Filter
Reviews: 2MSRP: 75
Description:
DSP audio filter unit, assembled.
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.sotabeams.co.uk
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
0025
K5MH Rating: 2020-02-12
Superb Technology and Simple Operation Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
This small audio filter deserves high praise, not because it has many tricks but because it has one trick that it performs exceedingly well. The selectivity and noise reduction afforded by the SOTABEAMS filter is remarkable. The filter shrinks the audio bandwidth of my IC-718 to a degree that is comparable to the bandwidth of my Ten-Tec Eagle with the IF DSP filter set to 100 Hz. The SOTABEAMS filter doesn’t compensate entirely for the 718’s inherent deficiencies in crowded bands (e.g., in contests), when the IF passband is cluttered with signals and spurious responses, but it does make using an entry-level transceiver quite enjoyable in ordinary circumstances. My comments pertain to CW only; I have not tried the filter on SSB.

It might be unfair to criticize a product for the absence of features that would have raised its price. Nonetheless, I miss the availability of a bypass option that is controlled manually by a switch or remotely via the transceiver PTT (or both). The SOTABEAMS filter is active whenever it is powered. When the 12-volt power source is removed, the unit does not pass any audio to the speaker or headphones. When transmitting, I have experienced severe distortion of the CW sidetone on one band but, on the whole, the unit is free of RFI problems with a transmitter power level of 100 watts.
WB7DND Rating: 2019-08-09
Wow! Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
SotaBeams sells several audio filters. This is a review of the CW version of their outboard DSP audio filter unit, with CW wide (1000 hz) and CW narrow (300 hz) settings.

Without this filter, under contest-like conditions (specifically, the CW Ops weekly CWT sessions), my Yaesu FT-818ND sounds like a chicken coop where the chickens have just discovered the presence of a fox. Lots of noise in a small space, making it difficult to discern one source of noise from another. With so many similar signals in the barn door passband, it was very difficult to keep track of a signal while tuning through the pass band, much less to zero-beat a signal.

With the filter, the wide setting helps scan for signals without being inundated by noisy chaos. Once you find a signal of interest, turning on the narrow setting makes zero-beating a snap. Background noise is greatly reduced. The passband is so narrow that if you can hear it, you are very close to zero-beating it and you are unlikely to hear any nearby signal. Some slight fine tuning and you are there. For several signals, I double checked my displayed frequency against the Reverse Beacon Network. I was consistently within 0.1 khz.

In summary: Wow!