Using WOLFWAVE in an SSB contest

Posted by Richard Newstead on 11th Apr 2019

When I tuned to 80m last night I discovered that there was a contest in full flow. It seemed like a good opportunity to show the difference between a basic noise reduction system and WOLFWAVE which includes other features such as DSP bandpass filtering. Listening to the station it soon became apparent that a common problem was high frequency splatter from stations 1-2 kHz off frequency. This high frequency noise is common with many receivers and can be annoying (and tiring) to listen to. The graphical display on the WOLFWAVE showed the interfering signals (circled in red) very clearly. 

This, coupled with the neat bandpass filtering of the WOLFWAVE made it simple to adjust the filters to reject the interference. The following audio clip shows the WOLFWAVE being switched in and out with just bandpass filtering operations. Noise reduction alone would not make any improvement here.

Click here for the clip

I decided to take my experiment one step further to include some noise reduction into the mix. Again the clip is of the WOLFWAVE being switched in and out. As might be expected in this situation, the noise reduction made a subtle but useful improvement.

Click here for the clip showing bandpass filtering and noise reduction.

Cutting off the higher frequency splatter does leave the original audio sounding slightly muffled but as WOLFWAVE is very flexible, each user can adjust the sound to their own taste. Mnay will prefer slightly less processing but in all cases a happy medium can be found.