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Explore Software Defined Radio — by Wolfram Donat (20 / 30)

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Once again, I’ve separated instructions for Windows and Linux. If you’re using Linux, feel free to skip ahead.

Windows

In addition to SDRSharp, you’ll need both a program called dsd (which stands for digital speech decoding) and a way of sending the output from SDRSharp to the dsd application, via software running inside your computer.

Ordinarily, when you tune your dongle and listen to the radio frequencies with a program like SDRSharp, the output is being piped (obviously) to your computer’s speakers. It’s really no different than listening to the radio in your car. If you want to decode digital speech signals, however, you need a way of sending the output of SDRSharp to a digital speech decoding program instead, and then sending that output to your speakers.

This is where a device called a virtual audio cable comes in. Picture it as connecting a cable to the “output” of SDRSharp and plugging it into the “input” of dsd — except that it’s all happening virtually, completely in software. Two commonly used programs for Windows users are Virtual Audio Cable and VB Cable. Virtual Audio Cable has both a free and a paid version, while VB Cable is completely free.

Virtual Audio Cable can be found at http://software.muzychenko.net/eng/vac.htm, and VB Cable can be downloaded from…