… with PowerSDR v3.3.9. I finally get to see and play with my own real SDR. I connected my antenna to the ANT1 input on the rear panel. It’s a good thing I have some BNC-to-UHF adapters in my parts bin. First impressions:

• The panadapter and waterfall are beautiful and useful. I have a recent model analog transceiver that, like many, has built-in DSP functions. It has a panadapter and waterfall that can appear in its display, but they now seem like toys compared to this SDR. (Get the waterfall to appear, below the panadapter, by selecting “panafall” in the drop-down listbox that’s centered below the panadapter area.)
• Complexity rules. There are lots of buttons and sliders, each with a useful function. It will take time to get fluent with this UI.
• Complexity rules II. There are a gazillion setup options! There are tabs and subtabs, each with many options. Many are puzzling and not explained anywhere that I can find despite my friendly relationship with Google search. For now, I’m leaving these at their defaults.
• How to hear audio? Audio appears at the 200D’s front-panel headphone jack. I could run from there to a set of amplified computer speakers. There are some available that have a headphone jack on the front of one of the speakers, so I could still use headphones when needed.
• Or I could use a virtual audio cable (VAC) to route the audio to my PC. I already have a set of computer speakers hooked up there. PowerSDR has VAC functionality built-in. No need for separate software or drivers. I tried VAC, and it works. My computer speakers sound great to me, so for now this is what I’ll use.
• I noticed a bit of delay (called latency nowadays) in the VAC audio coming from my PC speakers. I could observe, by eye and ear, an unnatural delay between the S meter rising and hearing the signal. I fixed this, to my ear, by changing buffer latency to 0 on the VAC subtab under the Audio tab in Setup.