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N8SDR edited this page Jun 24, 2026 · 1 revision

Lyra User Guide — a mirror of the in-app guide (Help → User Guide). Canonical source: docs/help/USER_GUIDE.md.

Lyra — User Guide

A friendly, plain-language guide to operating Lyra. Written for hams, not programmers — if you can click a menu, you can use this.

About this guide. It grows feature-by-feature as Lyra is built. Each section describes what a control does, where to find it, and the sensible defaults — so nothing ships undocumented. This file is also the source for Lyra's in-app Help section.

Maintainers: when a user-facing feature lands, add or update its section here in the same change. A feature isn't "done" until it's in this guide.

Tip — the "?" badge. Every panel has a small cyan ? at the far-right of its title bar (the panel's name is on the far left). Click it for a tiny menu: Help guide jumps this guide to that panel's section, Settings… opens the matching Settings tab. Quick way to learn or adjust any panel.

Contents

Why "Lyra"?

The openHPSDR naming tradition leans Greek. The radio hardware itself is Hermes (the messenger god). Thetis — the venerable reference PC client — is named after the sea-nymph mother of Achilles. New projects in this ecosystem have historically reached into the same mythology for names that share the family.

Lyra continues that tradition:

  • Apollo's lyre was the instrument that turned invisible vibrations in the air into music — which is essentially what an SDR does: it takes vibrations in the electromagnetic field, digitizes them, and turns them back into something you can hear.
  • The constellation Lyra contains Vega — a star with a long history of amateur-radio significance (Vega is the zero point of the astronomical magnitude scale, and was the first star ever photographed). That's the lyre + Vega you'll find as the faint watermark on the panadapter.
  • It's short, pronounceable in every language the HPSDR community uses, and stays well clear of any existing SDR software or hardware product name.

Lyra is built by Rick Langford (N8SDR). This version is a ground-up native C++23 / Qt 6 rebuild (Qt Quick + Vulkan/RHI) of the original Python Lyra — same spirit, no Python and no GIL anywhere. Licensed GPL v3 or later, to align with the wider openHPSDR / WDSP ecosystem.

73 and good DX.

Getting started

1. Know your hardware

  • HL2 (plain) — a stock Hermes Lite 2 board. Received audio is decoded on the PC and played through whatever output you pick in Settings → Audio.
  • HL2+ — the HL2 base plus the AK4951 audio add-in board (and the updated HL2+ gateware). Adds on-board audio routing and a microphone input for future transmit. The HL2's own headphone jack is the default, lowest-latency audio path.

2. Network

The HL2 is a Layer-2 Ethernet device speaking HPSDR Protocol 1 over UDP port 1024. It has to be reachable on your local network:

  • Direct Ethernet PC ↔ HL2 — simplest, no switch needed.
  • Same LAN through any gigabit switch — also fine.
  • Across routers — not supported (discovery is broadcast-only).

The first time you run Lyra, allow it through Windows Firewall so it can talk to the radio (inbound UDP 1024 for lyra.exe).

3. First contact

Connecting to the radio lives in Settings → Hardware — open Settings (Ctrl+, or File → Settings…), pick the Hardware tab, and find the Radio section. Or just use ▶ Start on the toolbar:

  1. Power on the HL2 / HL2+ and make sure it's on the same network.
  2. Click ▶ Start on the toolbar (or Discover → Open in Settings → Hardware → Radio). Lyra also auto-connects to the last radio you used, so it may already be running.
  3. You should see a live spectrum and hear the band noise floor. ■ Stop disconnects.

4. First-launch note (one-time)

The very first time Lyra runs (and after a settings reset), it builds optimized signal-processing plans ("FFT WISDOM"). A small window says so; it takes a few minutes once, then Lyra opens normally and every launch after is fast. Let it finish.

5. Tune and listen

  • Tuning panel — set the RX1 frequency on the LED readout, and pick the mode (USB/LSB/CW/…) and step right under the VFO; see Tuning panel.
  • Filters panel — set the RX/TX filter bandwidth and sample rate; see Filters panel.
  • Band panel — jump between bands.
  • Audio panel — the DSP + AUDIO strip: Vol / MUTE, the AGC cycle, and Noise Reduction (NR on/off + Mode 1–4 + AEPF + NPE). Choose the output device in Settings → Audio.
  • Panadapter — click/drag/wheel to tune; drag the right edge to set the signal-strength scale. See The panadapter.

Finding your version

The version is shown in the title bar and under Help → About Lyra…. Include it when reporting a problem so it can be matched to the exact build.

The header (top toolbar)

The strip across the top, between the menu bar and the panels:

  • ▶ Start / ■ Stop — connect to the radio and start streaming, or stop it. On Start, Lyra connects to your saved radio (or scans and opens the first one found). The button is green when stopped (a click starts you) and red when running (a click stops you).
  • Connection status — green "Connected to …" while streaming, red "Disconnected" when not, and amber "Connecting…/Scanning…" during a connect attempt.
  • DSP / CW / Options chips — labelled groups of toggle chips: TX DSP: (the mic-rack panels — EQ / Speech / Combinator / Plating), CW (the CW console), RX DSP: (RX EQ), and Options: — CTUN (centre-tune lock) and WF-ID (arm the waterfall callsign ID). A lit chip means that panel is open, or that toggle is on.
  • ● TCI — the TCI-server indicator, just after the connection status. Green ● TCI: N when one or more programs (logger, cluster, etc.) are connected, showing the client count; amber ● TCI when the server is enabled but idle. Hidden when TCI is off. See Settings → Network (TCI).
  • ★ Spotted! — appears just before the clocks when your own callsign is spotted on the DX cluster (if the toast/badge option is on). See DX-cluster spots.
  • ⬆ vX.Y.Z (only when present) — an update is available; click it to open the release page. See Updates.
  • Clocks — a local clock (amber) and a UTC / Zulu clock (cyan, ending in Z), centered in the header. They read straight off your PC clock. Right-click either clock to Check clock drift now… — Lyra asks a network time server how far off your PC clock is and tells you (under 1 sec = fine). This matters for the NCDXF beacons: their rotation is locked to UTC on 10-second slots, so a PC clock that's off by a few seconds makes the beacon markers / Follow track the wrong station. If your clock is off, a ⚠ appears on the UTC clock; use the same right-click menu's Sync time (w32tm /resync) to fix it (Windows).
  • Weather badges — ⚡ lightning, 💨 wind, ⚠ severe — appear toward the right edge when an alert is active and flash on the most serious tier. Hidden when all-clear. See Weather alerts.

The status bar (bottom — HL2 telemetry)

The thin strip across the bottom of the main window. While a stream is connected, it shows live HL2 telemetry read from the EP6 status rotation:

HL2:  T 24.7°C    V 12.3 V    PA 0.00 A
  • T — board temperature in °C, sampled every ~400 ms.
  • V — HL2 supply voltage in volts (a normal HL2 / HL2+ reads 12.3 – 13.0 V; well below ~11 V suggests the supply is sagging under load).
  • PA — combined PA drain current in amps. The key telemetry during transmit:
    • ≈ 0 A at rest (PA bias disabled, gateware idle).
    • ~0.2 A at idle bias (PA Enable ON, MOX keyed, Drive = 0 %).
    • ~1.8 A at full output on a bare HL2+ on the dummy load.
    • Goes BOLD RED at ≥ 50 mA — visual confirmation that the gateware is producing RF. If you see red and your wattmeter reads zero, something in the chain (relay, BPF, antenna) is eating the RF.

n/a in any field means the gateware hasn't delivered that slot yet (briefly at startup) or the telemetry decode is mid-rotation. A persistent n/a is a stream / gateware issue worth investigating.

The PA-current readout is the single most useful TX bench instrument Lyra exposes. It's the gateware's own measurement, independent of any external watt-meter, and tells you whether the PA is actually biased + drawing current the way it should be for the drive you commanded.

Getting around the window

Lyra's window is built from dockable panels — like a workbench you arrange to taste. Lyra opens full screen (maximized) by default — the way it's meant to be run — in a curated default layout (panadapter on top, control panels in a row beneath).

  • Move a panel — drag it by its title bar. As you drag, a cyan highlight previews where it will land:
    • against an edge of the window → docks along that edge;
    • over the left/right/top/bottom third of another panel → splits that panel and shares the space;
    • over the centre of another panel → stacks as a tab behind it;
    • out on its own (away from any panel) → floats as a free window. Drop when the highlight shows the spot you want. Double-click a title bar to toggle floating.
  • Resize panels: drag the separators between them — they're the thin bars that brighten cyan when you hover. Drag the divider between the panadapter and waterfall the same way; the waterfall stays clean even squashed into a thin strip, and its position is remembered with your layout.
  • Show / hide panels: the View menu lists every panel; tick or untick to show or hide it.
  • Lock the layout: View → Lock panels (or Ctrl+L) freezes everything — panels can't be moved, floated, closed, or resized — so you can't disturb your arrangement by accident during operating. The move cursor disappears on locked title bars as a reminder.

Named layouts. View → Layouts gives you four save-able slots plus the built-in Lyra default — five arrangements you can recall in one click:

  • Save to a slot — snapshots the current arrangement (panels and the spectrum/waterfall divider) into that slot; name it whatever you like.
  • Recall a slot — snaps the window back to that arrangement.
  • Lyra default — returns to the built-in factory arrangement. (Use this if a layout ever gets scrambled.)

Recalling a layout restores only your main panels — it won't pop open the TX/RX DSP-rack or CW tool windows you reach from the header chips.

Your window size, layout, and divider position are remembered between sessions (and survive a lock + restart). To move a layout to another PC or keep a backup, see Backing up & sharing your settings.

Opening Settings: File → Settings…, or press Ctrl+,.

The panadapter (spectrum display)

The panadapter is the live picture of the radio spectrum — signals show up as peaks rising out of the noise floor. Lyra draws it with a glassy, glowing look that takes advantage of your graphics card.

Tuning on the panadapter:

  • Click anywhere to tune RX1 there. Where it lands depends on the Exact / 100 Hz setting and the Panafall step on the Display panel: in Exact the click snaps to the Panafall-step grid (1 Hz = truly exact), in 100 Hz it rounds to the nearest 100 Hz.
  • Click + drag left/right to pan across the band.
  • Mouse wheel steps the frequency by the Panafall step (set on the Display panel). Ctrl + wheel zooms instead.
  • A small frequency readout follows your cursor (toggle in Settings → Visuals).

The RX filter passband is shown as a translucent box over the tuned signal. Drag either edge of the box to widen or narrow the receive bandwidth — the RX BW readout in the Filters panel updates to match (and is remembered per mode). The orange center line marks your tuned carrier (offset into the passband on CW, where the tone sits).

The dB scale (signal-strength scale) down each side. The numbers on the left and right edges show signal strength in dB. Adjust by dragging on the right-hand edge:

Where you drag (right edge) What it does
Top third Raises / lowers the ceiling (top of the scale)
Bottom third Raises / lowers the floor (bottom of the scale)
Middle third Pans the whole scale up or down together

Dragging up always raises that edge. (Exact numbers live in Settings → Visuals → dB range.)

The frequency scale runs along the bottom in MHz, centered on your receive frequency. Zoom in/out from the Display panel.

Overlays you can turn on: peak markers (held signal peaks) and a noise-floor line — both configured in Settings → Visuals, with quick controls on the Display panel; the EiBi shortwave schedule; and DX-cluster spots fed in over TCI.

Tuning panel

Sets the RX1 receive frequency on a big amber LED-style readout (megahertz · kilohertz · hertz), the way old Lyra showed it.

  • Click a digit to select it (a cyan underline marks it), then roll the mouse wheel over the display to tune that digit's place up/down; the arrow keys also nudge it.

  • Roll the wheel anywhere on the display to tune by the current Step (see below).

  • Double-click the display to type an exact frequency. The frequency, Step, and Mode form one bordered VFO cluster. The border is green while receiving and turns red on transmit (MOX/TUN); an amber RX/TX tag in the top-left corner marks the role (it flips RX→TX on key). The Lyra logo sits centred to its right, with VFO B to the right of that (it appears when SPLIT is on).

  • Step — under the VFO, the wheel tune step: 1 Hz / 10 Hz / 100 Hz / 1 kHz / 5 kHz / 10 kHz (default 1 kHz).

  • Mode — under the VFO: LSB, USB, CWL, CWU, DSB, AM, FM, DIGU, DIGL. (Mode lives with the VFO it applies to — moved here from the old Mode + Filter panel.)

  • CW Pitch — on the centred row beneath the VFO, only in CW modes (CWU/CWL): your preferred sidetone / beat-note pitch, 200–1500 Hz. The receive filter centers on this pitch and the tuned-carrier marker offsets to match, so a signal you zero-beat lands at your chosen tone.

SPLIT — receive on VFO A, transmit on VFO B (same band). The action row beneath the VFOs has:

  • SPLIT — toggles split on/off. When on, VFO B appears (the TX VFO — tune it like VFO A) and transmit moves to it; VFO A keeps receiving. On key, VFO B's border + tag go red while VFO A stays green. VFO B transmits in the same mode as VFO A.
  • 1→2 / 2→1 / ⇄ — copy VFO A → B, copy B → A, or swap them.

In FM, the raw SPLIT button is replaced by a friendlier repeater front-end (FM repeaters are the common split case):

  • Dev — FM deviation, right there in the row (same control as Settings → TX → FM).
  • RPT — the FM split toggle. Turn it on, then pick Offset direction (− / +) and amount (100 kHz / 500 kHz / 600 kHz / 1 MHz / 5 MHz) → VFO B = VFO A ± offset, split armed. As you tune VFO A, VFO B tracks the offset (duplex). CTCSS is a lit button → enable it and pick the Tone for tone-protected repeaters.

On the panadapter (centred on your RX, VFO A) the RX carrier is a solid orange line at centre and the TX (VFO B) freq is a solid lime line — red while transmitting — so you can see exactly where you'll transmit before you key. (Split is the same mechanism FM repeater offsets use; PureSignal tracks VFO B automatically.)

To jump between bands, use the Band panel; to change the filter width, the Filters panel.

RIT / XIT — incremental tuning. Two lit toggle buttons on the action row, each revealing a small ± offset spin (±9.99 kHz, 10 Hz steps) when engaged:

  • RIT (Receiver Incremental Tuning) shifts only the receiver by the offset — chase a station that's drifted or zero-beat a CW signal without moving your VFO. The panadapter re-centres on where you're actually listening, and a pale-blue DIAL marker shows where your VFO still reads. Your transmit frequency is unaffected.
  • XIT (Transmitter Incremental Tuning) shifts only the transmit frequency by the offset — RX stays put. In simplex a lime TX marker (red on key) shows where you'll transmit. PureSignal tracks the shifted TX automatically.

Both persist across sessions. The ± arrows step 1 Hz, the wheel steps 10 Hz (Shift = 100 Hz), and the 0 button clears the offset (or just toggle off). Tip: RIT/XIT are session-style fine offsets — for a fixed transmit split (a repeater, or working a DX pile-up up/down), use SPLIT (or the FM RPT button) instead.

CTUN — centre-tune lock. The CTUN chip (top toolbar, in the RX DSP group next to RX EQ) freezes the panadapter / waterfall on its current centre so you can tune the VFO within the displayed span without the waterfall scrolling. Click it (it lights green) and the band stays put while the dial marker slides to where you're listening — ideal for watching a fixed slice of spectrum (a pile-up, a net, an FT8 window) and clicking signals across it. Tune past the edge of the span and it re-centres on the new dial automatically. Click again to release and return to normal scroll-tuning. RX1; works in any receive mode.

Filters panel

Sets the sample rate and how wide the RX/TX filters are. (The mode picker moved to the Tuning panel, under the VFO.)

  • Rate — the IQ sample rate / panadapter span: 96 k / 192 k / 384 k. Higher shows more spectrum at once (wider waterfall) for a bit more CPU/network.
  • RX BW — the receive filter bandwidth. The list is per-mode (sensible presets for SSB, CW, AM, FM, digital, with SSB running up to 10 kHz and AM up to 12 kHz for ESSB-style wide audio), and Lyra remembers the width you last used for each mode. If you drag a passband edge on the panadapter to a width that isn't a preset, the combo shows it as "(custom)" at the top of the list so the readout always matches what you're actually hearing; pick a preset to snap back.
  • 🔗 (Lock) — links RX and TX bandwidths so changes to either side mirror the other for the current mode. Click to toggle. Toggling it ON pulls the RX bandwidth into TX. With the lock OFF, RX and TX BW are independent per-mode.
  • TX BW — the transmit filter bandwidth. Per-mode just like RX BW. For SSB / digital it's the high edge: the TX passband runs from the Filter Low edge (Settings → Audio, shared with RX) up to this high edge — e.g. Filter Low = 70 Hz and TX BW = 4 kHz gives a 70-4000 Hz single sideband. For the double-sideband modes (AM, DSB, FM, SAM) the value is the total occupied width: the TX filter is symmetric around the carrier at ±(TX BW / 2), so AM at TX BW = 6 kHz transmits ±3 kHz = 6 kHz total and lands exactly inside the on-screen filter markers (matching RX). Sign-codes correctly per mode (USB positive, LSB negative-and-swapped, double-sideband symmetric) inside the WDSP TXA chain.

SSB and digital filters open at the Filter Low edge (Settings → Audio → Filter Low edge, shared RX+TX, default 100 Hz); CW filters are centered on your CW Pitch; AM/DSB/FM are symmetric around the carrier (the Filter Low edge doesn't apply to those modes).

Band panel

Quick band switching, in three rows:

  • Ham — the HF/6m amateur bands (160m … 6m). Click one and Lyra returns RX1 to the last frequency you were on in that band (the band's default the first time). The button for the band you're on lights up (red-glow), following the frequency however you tune. An optional 11m button (the Citizens Band, 26.965–27.405 MHz AM) appears at the end of this row, right after 6m, when you enable it in Settings → Hardware → Band panel. When you're tuned on it, the panadapter marks all 40 CB channels (Ch1…Ch40) across the top — click a channel marker to jump to it in AM.
  • BC — the shortwave broadcast meter bands (120m … 13m, all AM). Like the Ham bands, BC and the 11m band remember their last frequency and mode and return to it when you click them (band default the first time). The active band lights the same way.
  • Gen — the GEN1/2/3 general-coverage slots (below).

GEN1 / GEN2 / GEN3 (to the right of the band buttons) are general-coverage slots for listening outside the ham bands — shortwave, MW, time stations, utility. Each works like a band button but for any frequency: click it to jump to that slot's last freq + mode, and while it's the active slot (highlighted) tuning around updates it, so it always remembers where you left off. Defaults are WWV 10 MHz, WWV 15 MHz, and 1 MHz (MW), all AM. Right-click a GEN button to reset it to its default. Clicking an amateur band button leaves general-coverage.

TIME — HF time stations. Between GEN3 and Mem, the TIME button hops through the world's shortwave time-and-frequency stations — handy for checking propagation or setting your clock by ear:

  • Left-click TIME to tune the next station/frequency. It cycles through the whole list — WWV (2.5/5/10/15/20/25 MHz), WWVH, CHU, BPM, RWM, and others — advancing one step each click, and picks up where you left off next time. The mode is set for you (AM, or USB for CHU).
  • Right-click TIME for the full list grouped by station — pick any station and frequency directly, or Reset cycle to first entry.
  • The stations are ordered to put the most useful ones first based on your callsign (a US operator leads with WWV, etc. — set your callsign in Settings → Hardware).

Mem — frequency memory bank. At the end of the GEN row, the Mem button holds up to 20 saved frequencies, each remembering its name, frequency, mode, and (optionally) RX filter bandwidth:

  • Left-click Mem to open the recall list — pick a preset and Lyra tunes straight to it (mode first, then frequency).
  • Right-click Mem to Save current frequency (the VFO is stored with an auto-name like "14.074 USB") or open Manage presets….
  • Full editing lives in Settings → Bands → Memory: a table where you can rename, retype the frequency/mode/bandwidth, add notes, delete, clear all, and import/export CSV (columns: Name, Freq_Hz, Mode, RX_BW_Hz, Notes, Offset_Hz, CTCSS_Hz) to back up or share your list.
  • Repeaters: set Offset (the TX shift in kHz — e.g. −100 for 10 m, −1000 = −1 MHz for 6 m) and CTCSS (access tone in Hz) on a row, store the output frequency in Freq, and Mode = FM. Recall it and Lyra tunes to the output, arms SPLIT to the input (output + offset), and sends the tone — one click onto the repeater. Blank Offset/CTCSS = a simplex preset (recall clears any split + tone). "Store current" while you're set up on a repeater captures its offset + tone too.

Pick the mode under the VFO (Tuning panel) and the filter width in the Filters panel.

Per-band memory. Lyra remembers each band's settings independently and restores them when you move to that band: the last frequency (recalled by the band buttons), the demod mode, the panadapter dB min/max (reference-level range), and the waterfall dB min/max. Set 40m to LSB with a tight waterfall range and 20m to a wider one, and each comes back the way you left it as you hop between them — no need to re-adjust every time. (Auto-scale on/off is global; RX filter bandwidth is remembered per mode, as before.) Memory is saved live as you adjust, and persists across sessions.

Audio panel

The DSP + AUDIO panel — what you hear and how it's cleaned up. It's laid out in old Lyra's three-row arrangement:

Row 1 — Levels

  • Vol — output volume, shown in dB beside the slider (−∞ when fully down). The mouse wheel nudges it in fine steps.
  • MUTE — silences or restores the audio without disturbing the Vol slider; the button reads MUTED while engaged. (Lyra starts unmuted.)
  • LNA — RF input gain on the HL2's AD9866 PGA (−12…+31 dB; slider or mouse-wheel). Higher = more sensitivity; back off on strong bands to avoid ADC overload. The S-meter compensates for it automatically, so changing LNA doesn't shift the signal reading.
  • AF — audio makeup gain (0…+40 dB), applied before Vol. Use it to set a comfortable working level for your headphones/speakers once, then ride Vol on top of it for moment-to-moment changes. The value shows in dB beside the slider.
  • Bal — stereo balance: pans the audio left/right. Centre = both channels equal; the slider snaps to dead-centre near the middle so it's easy to recentre.
  • MON TX · Monitor — hear yourself transmit. With MON TX on, while you're keyed up Lyra plays your own post-rack TX audio (Speech → EQ → Combinator → Plating) in place of the auto-muted receiver. The Monitor slider rides its level (dB beside it). It's your voice through the DSP rack but before the radio's corrective ALC and TX bandpass — so it shows what your processing is doing, not the exact transmitted envelope. MON TX does nothing on receive, and in DIGU / DIGL / CW (rack bypassed / no mic audio) there's nothing to monitor. The monitor follows wherever your RX audio goes — the HL2 jack or selected output device (the Out picker), and, when enabled, a VAC PC device and your TCI clients — all from the single MON TX toggle (matching the reference's monitor routing).
  • Auto · Out — Auto rides the LNA on the ADC-overload edge (see LNA above). Out is a live output-device quick switch: click it for a pop-up list of the HL2 audio jack + your PC output devices (the current one marked), and pick one to move RX audio — and the monitor — there live. The full audio setup (host API, exclusive mode, VAC) still lives in Settings → Audio.

Row 2 — DSP toggles + AGC

  • A row of effect buttons NB · BIN · NR · ANF · LMS · SQ · APF · NF. NR (Noise Reduction), ANF (Auto Notch — nulls carriers/ heterodynes automatically), LMS (Line Enhancer — lifts CW/tones out of the noise), NF (manual Notch Filter), SQ (all-mode squelch), NB (Noise Blanker), APF (Audio Peak Filter), and BIN (Binaural) are all live. NR and LMS are complementary — NR subtracts broadband noise, LMS predicts the periodic signal, so both can run together on weak CW.

  • BIN — binaural pseudo-stereo: widens the soundstage on headphones by sending the signal to one ear and a 90°-phase-shifted copy to the other, so weak CW/SSB seems to lift out of the noise and voices gain a sense of space. A depth slider appears in the bottom row while BIN is on (0 = mono → 100 = full); loudness stays constant as you sweep it. (Headphones only — on speakers the effect collapses.)

  • APF — CW peaking: a narrow peak parked on your CW pitch that lifts a CW tone out of the surrounding hiss. It engages only in CWU/CWL (no effect in SSB/AM/FM) and re-centres automatically when you change the CW pitch. A gain slider appears in the bottom row while APF is on — pick how hard it lifts (3–18 dB in 3 dB steps; default 12). Stacks well with LMS for weak-signal CW.

  • NB — noise blanker: suppresses impulse noise (ignition, power-line arcing, lightning crashes) by gating it out of the raw IQ before demod. A strength slider appears in the bottom row while NB is on — higher = more aggressive blanking; back it off if it starts chewing CW/SSB transients. (For a steady carrier-type interferer use a manual notch or ANF instead — NB is for clicks/pops, not tones.)

  • SQ — all-mode squelch: mutes the audio between transmissions and unmutes when a signal opens it. It routes automatically by mode — a voice-presence detector (SSQL) on SSB/CW/DIG, the FM noise squelch on FM, and the carrier squelch on AM/SAM/DSB. A threshold slider appears in the bottom row while SQ is on: higher = tighter (only stronger signals open it); the usual sweet spot is ~10–30.

  • NF — manual notches (right-click the panadapter to use):

    • Right-click empty spectrum drops a notch at that frequency (200 Hz wide) and turns NF on.
    • Drag a red band to slide it onto the offending carrier.
    • Mouse-wheel over a band: down = wider, up = narrower.
    • Right-click a band to remove it.

    Each notch visibly cuts the spectrum trace and the waterfall in that region — the trace drops to the noise floor and the waterfall shows a dark stripe across the notch width, so you can see exactly what's being removed instead of guessing. The notches are deep and sharp by design — Lyra uses WDSP's NBP filter in a deep rectangular-window, 2048-tap configuration, so a carrier drops into the noise rather than just dipping. The NF button toggles all notches at once without losing their positions; the count shows beside the button. ANF (the auto-notch) likewise runs deep adaptive settings — a marked step up from the softer notching in the Python build.

  • AGC — click anywhere on the AGC cell (it highlights on hover) to cycle Off → Fast → Med → Slow. Med is the everyday default; Fast for fast-changing signals, Slow for steady ones, Off for fixed gain (digital modes / measurement). The three modes are genuinely distinct — Fast recovers in ~50 ms with no hang, Med in ~250 ms, Slow holds ~1 s then decays over ~500 ms (industry-standard time constants). The cell shows the AGC threshold and the live gain action (dB) beside the mode.

Row 3 — Noise Reduction character

  • NR Mode (1–4) — picks the WDSP denoiser's gain function: 1 Wiener + speech-presence, 2 plain Wiener (edgier), 3 MMSE-LSA (the smoothest, default), 4 trained-adaptive (most aggressive). Turn NR on in Row 2, then sweep modes to find the best sound for the band.
  • AEPF — anti-musical-noise smoother. On (default) engages both of WDSP's cleanup stages — artifact elimination and the post-filter that stock WDSP leaves off by default — so the "musical twinkle" is knocked down hard while MMSE-LSA (Mode 3) keeps the voice natural rather than robotic. Turn it off to hear raw EMNR on already-quiet bands. If you still want the most natural voice, stay on Mode 3 (Mode 4 trades smoothness for aggression and brings musical noise back).
  • NPE — how the denoiser tracks the noise floor: OSMS (smooth, best for steady atmospheric hiss) or MCRA (faster-tracking, better for changing/intermittent QRM).
  • LMS strength — appears in this row only while LMS is on: 0 is subtle, 50 is the WDSP-class default, 100 is full prediction (more taps, harder pull). Most useful digging weak CW out of band hiss.

Surfacing NR Mode + AEPF + NPE as separate knobs is one of Lyra's differentiators — most SDR apps hide them. All three persist across restarts.

Captured noise profile (NR-C) — Lyra's signature noise reduction

This is the one that's genuinely different. Instead of a generic denoiser, NR-C learns your band's actual noise spectrum and subtracts it — in the IQ domain, before WDSP's chain — so it's mode-independent and doesn't fight the AGC. Used well it drops the noise floor several dB and the signal pretty much sits where it was.

The workflow (left to right on Row 3):

  1. Tune to a quiet, signal-free spot on the band you're working — NR-C subtracts whatever it captures, so don't capture on top of a signal.
  2. Pick a capture length (3 / 5 / 10 s) next to the 📷 Cap button.
  3. Press 📷 Cap. The button shows a percentage while it averages the noise; press it again to cancel.
  4. Press Save, give the profile a name (e.g. 40m-night, 20m-ESSB) in the box that pops up. It's now in the picker.
  5. Flip NR-C on. The captured noise is subtracted from RX. The panadapter shows the cleaned spectrum too, so you can watch the floor drop.
  6. Fine-tune with the ⚙ button (appears next to NR-C while it's on):
    • Strength (1–5×) — how hard to subtract. Higher = more cut.
    • Floor (−3 to −30 dB) — the deepest any bin is allowed to drop. More negative = more aggressive.
    • Smoothing (0–95%) — steadies the gain so it doesn't "twinkle." Raise it if deeper Strength/Floor starts to sound watery.

FFT size (2048 / 4096 / 8192) sets the resolution — 8192 resolves wide ESSB noise finest (a touch more latency), 2048 is lowest latency. Changing it clears the current profile (a profile is tied to the size it was captured at).

Profiles are files you own. Each saved profile is a small .lnp file in %LOCALAPPDATA%\N8SDR\Lyra-cpp\profiles\ — browsable, backup-able, and shareable between rigs (drop a friend's .lnp in there and it shows up in your picker). Profiles are tagged with their capture rate + FFT size and won't load against a mismatched rate (you'll get a recapture hint).

Manage them in Settings → Noise: the full list with rate/size/date, plus Rename, multi-select Delete, and Open folder.

Notes: NR-C adds about one FFT window of RX latency (≈21 ms at 4096) only while it's on; off, the path is unchanged. It's independent of the WDSP NR denoiser — you can run either, both, or neither.

Setting up audio output

RX listening — the HL2 jack vs a PC device, plus feeding digital apps.

Lyra can send received audio out two ways — pick the one that matches how your station is wired:

  • HL2 audio jack — the headphone/speaker jack on the Hermes Lite 2 itself (its onboard codec, the AK4951 on HL2+). Recommended for most operators.
  • PC sound device — your computer's speakers, headset, or USB audio interface (or a virtual cable to another program).

You can switch any time; Lyra remembers your choice.

Which one:

  • Headphones/speakers straight into the HL2 → HL2 audio jack.
  • Listen on the PC's speakers / a USB headset → PC sound device.
  • Feed RX audio to WSJT-X / FLDigi / a recorder → PC sound device via VAC, or TCI if the app speaks it (see Digital modes below).

The HL2 jack is the easy button: the radio and its codec share one clock, so there's no drift to correct — glitch-free audio, lowest latency, zero setup. The PC path bridges two clocks (the HL2's and your sound card's), which Lyra handles with an adaptive resampler, but it's a little more to get right.

Where the controls are

On the Audio panel, top "LEVELS" row: Out is the output-device quick-switch — click it for a drop-down of every output (the HL2 jack is always first; the active one is marked). Vol is listening volume, AF is pre-volume makeup gain (0…+40 dB, for when everything is too quiet even at full Vol), MUTE silences without touching Vol, and Bal is left/right balance. Settings → Audio has the same chooser plus the Virtual Audio Cable (VAC1) options.

HL2 audio jack (onboard codec / AK4951)

  1. Plug headphones or powered speakers into the PHONES jack on the Hermes Lite 2.
  2. Click Out on the Audio panel and choose HL2 audio jack (the first entry). (Or Settings → Audio → output device.)
  3. Bring Vol up; if it's still quiet, add a few dB on AF.

No device matching, no sample-rate fiddling — this is the default and the path we recommend unless you specifically need PC audio.

PC sound device

  1. Click Out (or open Settings → Audio).
  2. Pick your PC output — speakers, USB headset, or interface.
  3. Set Vol to taste.

Lyra resamples between the HL2 and your sound card automatically. If your device name appears more than once (different Windows audio backends), just try one; pick another only if you hit dropouts.

Digital modes — getting RX audio to another program

A digital program (WSJT-X, JTDX, MSHV, FLDigi…) needs to hear the receiver. Lyra offers two routes — pick the one your program supports:

  • TCI — if your program speaks TCI (e.g. MSHV, SDRLogger+), it connects over the network and the RX audio rides that link directly. No virtual audio cable needed, and the same link carries transmit audio back the other way.
  • VAC — for programs that expect a sound-card input (e.g. WSJT-X, JTDX classic, FLDigi). Lyra plays RX audio into a virtual audio cable and the program records from it.

Which? If the app has a "TCI" radio/transport option, use TCI — least setup. If it only offers sound-card in/out, use VAC.

TCI route: Settings → Network — enable Lyra's TCI server, note the port. In the program, choose TCI and point it at Lyra's address + port. RX audio now streams over TCI (transmit goes back the same way — set the mic source to TCI; see Setting up your mic input).

VAC route: install a virtual audio cable on Windows first (e.g. VB-CABLE) — it appears as both a playback and a recording device.

  1. Settings → Audio → Virtual Audio Cable (VAC1).
  2. Tick Enable VAC1 (RX→PC and PC→TX).
  3. Driver — the audio backend for the cable (default usually works).
  4. Output device — the cable's input side (e.g. "CABLE Input"): where Lyra sends RX audio.
  5. Set RX gain so the program's level meter sits in its happy range.
  6. In the program, set its audio input to the cable's output side (e.g. "CABLE Output").

There's an option to auto-enable VAC1 when you switch to a digital mode. VAC1 also carries PC → TX (covered in Setting up your mic input).

Hearing your own transmit

On the Audio panel, MON TX monitors your own processed TX audio (set the level with the Monitor slider) so you can hear exactly what you're sending; it routes to the HL2 jack. For CW, CW MON sets the gateware sidetone level (separate from MON TX).

If something's wrong

  • No audio: check MUTE is off and Vol is up; confirm the right device under Out (the marked entry is active); on the HL2 jack make sure the plug is in the radio's jack.
  • Too quiet at full Vol: add gain on AF.
  • Clicks/dropouts on a PC device: that's the two-clock bridge under load — try a different backend of the same device under Out, close heavy audio apps, or switch to the HL2 jack (which avoids it entirely).
  • One side only: centre the Bal slider.
  • A digital app can't hear the radio: TCI — confirm the TCI server is on and the app is set to TCI on the right port; VAC — Lyra's Output device must be the cable's input side and the app's input the cable's output side (a matched pair); nudge RX gain.

Setting up your mic input

TX audio source — the radio's codec mic, a PC mic, or digital-mode audio.

Lyra lets you choose what drives the transmit chain, at Settings → TX → Mic source:

  • Mic In — a microphone in the Hermes Lite 2's mic jack (its onboard codec, AK4951 on HL2+). The default for voice.
  • PC Soundcard (VAC1) — audio from your PC (a USB/headset mic, or a program) via a virtual audio cable.
  • TCI (digital modes) — audio streamed from a digital-mode program (MSHV, JTDX, WSJT-X, FLDigi…) over Lyra's TCI link; the mic is bypassed.

(VAC2 appears greyed out — planned for a later version.) Only one source is live at a time — whatever's selected goes on the air.

Which one:

  • Voice with a mic on the radio → Mic In.
  • Voice with a PC/USB mic or headset → PC Soundcard (VAC1).
  • FT8 / FT4 / RTTY / digital → TCI (digital modes).

Watch the ALC meter while setting any source. A little ALC action on peaks is good; ALC slamming hard the whole time means too much input — back the gain off.

Mic In (radio's codec mic, AK4951)

  1. Plug your mic into the MIC jack on the Hermes Lite 2.
  2. Settings → TX → Mic source → Mic In.
  3. Key into a dummy load, speak at your normal level, and raise Mic Gain until the ALC meter just flicks on voice peaks.
  4. If your mic is genuinely weak, tick Mic Boost (+20 dB hardware, codec mic only) — the HL2 codec's analog preamp — then fine-trim with Mic Gain. (Mic Boost only affects the codec mic; it does nothing for PC or TCI sources.)

PC Soundcard (VAC1) — a PC/USB mic

Use this when your microphone is on the computer. It rides the same virtual-cable bridge as digital modes (install one, e.g. VB-CABLE, if you're routing from another program; for a plain PC/USB mic, point VAC1's input straight at the mic).

  1. Settings → TX → Mic source → PC Soundcard (VAC1).
  2. Settings → Audio → Virtual Audio Cable (VAC1): tick Enable, set Input device to your PC mic (or the cable's output side if feeding from another program), and set TX gain so the ALC sits right when you talk. Combine input mixes a two-channel source to mono if it comes through one-sided.
  3. Key up and check the ALC as above.

TCI (digital modes)

For FT8/FT4/RTTY/etc., the digital program sends transmit audio to Lyra over TCI — no microphone involved.

  1. Settings → TX → Mic source → TCI (digital modes).
  2. Settings → Network — make sure the TCI server is enabled.
  3. In the program (MSHV / JTDX / WSJT-X / FLDigi…), select TCI and point it at Lyra's address + TCI port.
  4. Set levels in the program so Lyra's ALC shows only light action — digital wants clean, just-below-ALC drive. If it's hot, Lyra also has a TCI input-gain trim to tame an over-driven client.

Setting levels (any source)

Aim for voice peaks (or digital drive) to push the ALC into a little action, not pinned. Too hot (ALC slammed) = distortion/splatter — reduce the gain (Mic Gain, VAC1 TX gain, or the digital app's level). Too cold (no ALC, low power) = raise it. For voice, start on a dummy load and use MON TX to hear your own processed audio while you dial it in.

If something's wrong

  • No transmit audio: confirm Mic source matches what you're using (a PC mic won't work if the source is still Mic In), you're keyed, and PA + Drive are set for real RF.
  • Mic In weak even at high Mic Gain: tick Mic Boost (+20 dB), then trim with Mic Gain.
  • Distorted, ALC pinned: back off the gain for the active source.
  • PC mic silent: source must be PC Soundcard (VAC1) and VAC1 enabled with the right Input device; enable Combine input if a stereo source is one-sided.
  • Digital app keys but nothing goes out: source must be TCI, the app set to TCI on the right port, and the app's output level up.

Display panel

The handful of spectrum/waterfall controls you reach for most often, one click away instead of buried in Settings. These mirror Settings → Visuals — change them in either place and both stay in sync. The panel is laid out in old Lyra's three-row arrangement:

  • Zoom — magnify the panadapter around center: a preset combo (1× / 2× / 4× / 8× / 16×) plus a fine slider and a live "N.Nx" readout. Zooming in narrows the displayed span so you can pull a single signal apart.

  • Panafall — the step the mouse wheel tunes by when you scroll over the panadapter/waterfall (1 Hz … 100 kHz). This is your coarse band-skim step, separate from the fine VFO step on the Tuning panel.

  • Exact / 100 Hz — how a panadapter click/drag/wheel tune lands:

    • Exact — go to where you clicked, snapped to the Panafall step above. With Panafall = 1 Hz that's truly exact; set it to 10/50 Hz (or higher) and clicks snap to that grid. The RX1 readout shows the full resolved frequency.
    • 100 Hz — quantize every click/drag/wheel tune to the nearest 100 Hz, regardless of the Panafall step.

    (At low zoom the panadapter is pixel-limited — each pixel can be tens of Hz wide — so to actually land on a 1 Hz boundary, zoom in or use the Tuning panel's fine step.)

  • Spec — spectrum frame rate (how many times per second the panadapter redraws).

  • WF — waterfall scroll rate (history rows per second).

  • Peak Hold — how the peak markers behave:

    • Off — no peak markers.
    • Live — markers ride the current spectrum.
    • 1 / 2 / 5 / 10 / 30 s — hold each peak for that long, then fade.
    • Hold — peaks never fade until you press Clear.

  • Decay — how fast held peaks fade once their hold time is up: Fast / Med / Slow (only matters in the timed modes).

  • Clear — wipe the held peaks and start fresh (handy in Hold mode).

The look-and-feel settings — palettes, smoothing, glow, gridline, peak style/color, noise floor — live in Settings → Visuals.

Meter panel

A GPU-drawn RX signal-strength meter with two looks — pick whichever you like with the small Arc | Bar toggle in the panel's top-right corner (your choice is remembered):

  • Horizon Arc (default) — a sweep dial against a fixed, calibrated S-scale. The fill climbs through colour zones (cyan → green → amber → red over S9) with a glowing "comet head" at the current level, a thin peak-hold pip that holds then fades, and a faint history trail in the dial's belly showing the last few seconds (handy for watching QSB / a station rising). Big S-unit readout in the centre with the dBm and SNR lines beneath.
  • Plasma Bar — a continuous level bar through the same colour zones, with a bright leading edge, peak-hold cap, a glass reflection beneath, and the readout (S-units / dBm / SNR) along the top.

Both styles also carry an optional max-peak marker — a second, red "high-water mark" that latches the highest level reached and falls back gently, so a fleeting DX or QSB crest stays readable long after the fast yellow peak pip has dropped. The fast pip tracks recent activity; the red max marker remembers the loudest moment.

In Meter panel you can tune both timings: peak-hold (how long the fast pip hangs before falling, default 800 ms) and the max-peak marker (on/off + its own hold time, default 3 s) before its gentle decay.

What the meter shows:

  • S-units — standard scale (S1…S9, then +20/+40/+60 dB over S9). The scale follows the band: S9 = −73 dBm below 30 MHz, −93 dBm above, the same convention major HF SDR software uses.
  • dBm — the calibrated signal level.
  • SNR — signal above the noise floor in dB (shows — when there's nothing above the floor). The faint band/marker on the meter is the current noise floor, so you can see at a glance how far a signal stands out — i.e. how readable it is, not just how strong.

The meter reads the in-passband signal level from the DSP engine (the same source professional SDR software uses) and only moves while you're receiving (press ▶ Start first; it rests at S0 when idle).

Calibration: the meter taps WDSP's in-passband RXA_S_PK level — the standard in-passband signal-strength point — and maps it through the HF/VHF S-unit scale (S9 = −73 dBm below 30 MHz, −93 dBm above). To make the absolute dBm/S reading exact, trim it once in Meter panel: tune to a known reference (WWV, or a signal generator at a known level) and adjust the S-meter calibration offset until it matches. With this tap the trim is only a few dB. The meter compensates for the LNA gain automatically, so the reading stays put as you adjust LNA — you can calibrate at any setting. The relative movement, peak-hold, SNR, and noise-floor behaviour are all live regardless.

Transmit meters are fully wired. The wire / safety / telemetry set — PWR (forward power, watts), SWR (antenna match), ID (PA bias current), VDD (PA supply), Temp (HL2 board) — plus the full TX-chain dynamics set that taps every stage of the modulator chain in signal-flow order:

Picker entry What it shows Unit
MIC mic peak into the modulator dBFS
LEV leveler output level dBFS
LVL G leveler gain (how much it's boosting weak passages) dB (typically positive)
ALC ALC output level — what the wire sees dBFS
ALC G ALC gain reduction (how hard the limiter is working) dB (typically negative or 0)
ALC Σ ALC_PK + ALC_GAIN — what the wire would see if the ALC weren't acting dBFS

All read live from the running TX chain the moment MOX engages, and show "—" on RX. Each meter uses the reference's ballistic exactly: the DSP engine smooths internally over ~100 ms, and the peak marker decays exponentially over ~500 ms (no UI-side over-smoothing — needles respond crisply to voice attack so transients show their true peak). Set the active TX source (and an optional secondary readout line, or a third line under that) in Meter panel. The panel auto-swaps from your RX source to your TX source on every MOX edge and back, so you can watch what you need without manual switching.

On CW the meter swaps to your TX set and shows forward power too — for keyboard/macro (console) sending and for a paddle, straight key, or external keyer into the radio. CW keys the PA at the radio's gateware (so the wire doesn't go through the normal MOX path), but Lyra still flips the meter for the duration of the over, then back to the S-meter when you stop.

Tip for dialing in the chain: pick MIC as primary + ALC G as secondary, key the mic, and adjust Mic Gain until MIC peaks land near −6 dBFS with ALC G staying under 3 dB. Want to see the leveler doing its work? Pick LVL G — a positive reading means the leveler is boosting a quiet passage to keep your modulator level consistent.

What's coming with v0.2.1: the Combinator (5-band multiband compressor + speech enhancements + parametric EQ + tube plating) lands as a Lyra-native processor before the WDSP TXA chain. Its per-band activity and total gain reduction will arrive as additional Meter Panel sources at that time — picker values 10/11/12 are reserved for them now.

TX panel

The operating-time TX controls — a single strip across one of the docks. Layout (left → right):

[TX]    Drive ──●── 25 %   Mic ──●── +10 dB              [ TUN ]  [ MOX ]
  • TX Drive (slider, 0–100 %, default 0) — how hard the HL2 drives its on-board PA. 0 % = no carrier even with PA enabled and MOX keyed. Start LOW (5–10 %) on a dummy load; raise gradually while watching the watt-meter. Mouse-wheel adjusts (Shift + wheel = 5 % steps). Live readback to the right shows the current %.
  • Mic Gain (slider, −90 dB to +40 dB, default 0 dB) — input gain into the WDSP TXA modulator (PanelGain1 — the only operator-tunable software gain stage in the TX chain, before the bandpass / leveler / ALC / everything downstream). 0 dB is WDSP unity = no boost vs the raw mic signal. Typical SSB voice runs +10 to +20 dB; ESSB with headroom +25 to +35 dB. The range matches the reference's Default TX profile (−90 deep-attenuate floor, +40 ceiling), so the full operating travel is preserved. Mouse-wheel adjusts (Shift + wheel = 5 dB steps). Bidirectionally bound with the spin-box in Settings → TX → Mic + ALC — moving either updates both, so you can adjust on the fly here or type a precise value in Settings. Watch the ALC meter as you raise — back off when ALC engages hard (more than ~3 dB of gain reduction means you're driving past the limiter ceiling and creating splatter risk).
  • TUN button — single-click gesture: arms a 1 kHz tune carrier AND keys MOX in one click. Click again to release MOX; the carrier auto-disarms on the next MOX-off edge for any reason (your click, the safety timeout, the FSM unwinding). When armed the button border glows amber. Carrier power follows the Tune drive mode you pick in Settings → TX (your TX Drive slider, a separate tune slider, or a fixed value — see there), and is always held to your Max TX drive ceiling.
  • MOX button — the keying button. Funnels through Lyra's TR- sequenced FSM (the same one your space-bar momentary uses when no text widget has focus). Goes bold red the instant the wire- MOX bit settles after the TR-delay window. A short tap shorter than the TR-delay (≈ 65 ms by default) still flashes the button orange for ~220 ms so you get visual feedback that your press registered — even if the FSM cancelled mid-keydown.

What the button colours mean, at a glance:

MOX button colour Meaning
Gray Idle (RX)
Orange flash (~220 ms) You just pressed; wire-MOX hasn't settled yet
Bold red Wire-MOX bit is high — radio is keyed, RF flowing if PA + Drive permit

TUN is a strict superset of MOX for tune-up: it does what MOX does PLUS injects the 1 kHz tune carrier. Use MOX when you want the relay to switch (CW key-down testing, mic feed-through, or with future SSB modulator); use TUN when you want a steady carrier on your dial frequency to set drive level / read an SWR / cal an external watt-meter / bias-tune an external amp.

Both buttons honour the safety knobs. They route through the same FSM that respects the TR-sequencing delays (see Settings → TX) and the PA Enable safety gate (see Settings → Hardware → Transmit). Carrier amplitude follows the cos² fade envelope on every keydown and keyup — no hard step, no click.

PA Enable is separate from MOX. With PA disabled, keying MOX or TUN gives you the relay click + the wire-MOX state but zero RF (the gateware PA bias never engages). This is the safe state for first-time bench work — leave PA off until you're confident in your Drive setting, fade defaults, and amp configuration.

Foot switch / hand-mic PTT — the HL2's hardware PTT-input pin is supported via an opt-in checkbox in Settings → Hardware → Transmit. Default OFF for safety; tick it after a quick bench check on your specific HL2 unit.

TX DSP rack (EQ + Speech + Combinator + Plating)

Lyra ships four native, operator-tunable DSP stages that sit on the mic audio before the WDSP TXA modulator — your own EQ, speech-conditioning, multiband-compressor and plate-reverb rack, done Lyra-native. They run in chain order Speech → EQ → Combinator → Plating. Each lives in its own dockable / collapsible panel (show/hide from the window's dock menu; drag, float and resize like any Lyra panel), and your layout is saved with the rest of your window state.

How bypass works (read this first)

Every item in the rack is independently bypassable, and bypass means exactly what you'd hope:

When an item is OFF it leaves the mic audio untouched — that stage's processing is skipped entirely (a true pass-through), bit-for-bit.

This matches the reference's behaviour — its TX EQ and compressor are manual on/off, and off means "not applied." Three things to keep in mind so you're never surprised:

  • The EQ ships ON. Its default layout includes a gentle high-pass and a high-shelf that shape the audio even at 0 dB gain. For a genuinely flat, unprocessed mic path, turn the EQ's ON button off — don't just zero the gains.
  • The rack is pre-modulator. Turning rack items off does not bypass the radio's transmit DSP: the always-on ALC limiter (splatter protection) and your selected TX bandwidth filter always run downstream — plus the Leveler / PHROT if you've enabled them in Settings → TX. "Item off" means clean through that item, not clean to the antenna.
  • Default states differ. The EQ ships ON; TX Speech, the Combinator and Plating ship OFF (they materially process the audio, so they wait for you to enable them).
  • Digital modes auto-bypass the whole rack. In DIGU / DIGL Lyra automatically skips the entire native rack (EQ + Speech + Combinator + Plating) so FT8 / JS8 / etc. transmit unshaped — you don't have to switch anything off. (This auto-gate is a Lyra convenience; the reference leaves it to you to untick manually or load a digital profile.) The panels show this at a glance: in DIGU / DIGL — and in CW, where there's no mic audio to shape — each rack panel's ON lamp greys out, its controls dim, and an amber "bypassed (MODE)" hint appears in the header. It's purely cosmetic: your settings are untouched and the panels re-light the instant you return to a voice mode (USB / LSB / AM / FM).

TX EQ — 10-band parametric

A draggable response curve over a live spectrum analyzer.

  • Bands — drag a node to set its frequency + gain; mouse-wheel over the selected node sets Q (width). Each band has a Type chip that cycles Peak / Low-shelf / High-shelf / Low-pass / High-pass / Bandpass / Notch. The default layout opens with a 60 Hz high-pass and a high-shelf; that high-pass — like any band — can be dragged down to the 20 Hz frequency floor or up.
  • Tile row under the curve shows each band's #, type, freq and gain/Q. Right-click a tile to reset just that one band.
  • Top bar — ON (bypass; see above) · Makeup output trim (± dB) · Reset (flatten all bands back to their defaults) · collapse ▼.
  • Analyzer behind the curve — the Spec button cycles Off → Spectrum → RTA (a line/fill spectrum, or log-spaced 1/N-octave band bars). Acc adds a red peak-hold overlay; right-click Acc for the hang preset: Live (tracks the instantaneous signal, no hold) / Fast / Medium / Slow / Hold (never decays). B/A overlays the pre-EQ ("before") trace in white against the post-EQ cyan so you can see exactly what the EQ did. On an HL2+ the mic codec free- runs, so the analyzer animates on receive too — you can shape your EQ while just listening, no need to key up (it's analysed, not transmitted, until you actually key).

RX EQ — receive parametric EQ

The receive-side twin of the TX EQ — the same 10-band panel and the same controls (drag a node for frequency + gain, wheel for Q, Type chips, the tile row, Makeup, Reset, and the analyzer behind the curve), applied to what you hear instead of to your mic. Open it from the RX DSP → RX EQ chip on the header strip; it pops as a movable window and your layout is remembered, exactly like the TX DSP panels.

  • What it shapes — the receive audio after WDSP, so it colours the headphone/speaker output and anything bridged out (recording, VAC, a digital-mode app).
  • Graph width tracks the RX bandwidth — the curve spans the receive passband actually in use, so the bands sit where the audio is. Change your RX filter width and the EQ rescales to match.
  • ON / bypass — the top-bar ON button bypasses the RX EQ in any mode. It additionally auto-bypasses in the digital data modes (DIGU / DIGL) so decoders always get flat audio; it stays available in CW and SSB.
  • Separate from TX — the RX EQ is a standalone listening setting (its own bands + bypass + makeup, remembered across sessions). It is not part of a TX profile — switching TX profiles never touches your receive EQ.

TX Speech — Noise Gate → Auto-AGC → De-esser

Three independent stages, processed in that order, each with its own ON toggle. All three default OFF, so the panel changes nothing until you enable a stage.

  • Noise Gate (first) — gates shack background noise between words. Threshold (default −45 dBFS), Range/Depth (how far it attenuates when closed, default 60 dB) and Hold (default 120 ms). It freezes the Auto-AGC gain while closed so pauses don't "breathe."
  • Auto-AGC — an input leveller that rides quiet and loud passages toward a target level (Target, Max-gain cap). This is distinct from the WDSP output Leveler in Settings → TX.
  • De-esser — a frequency-selective compressor that tames harsh sibilance ("s" / "sh"). Frequency (where it listens), Threshold and Range (maximum ducking).

TX Combinator — 5-band multiband compressor

The last native stage (after the EQ). It splits the mic into five bands with 24 dB/oct crossovers, compresses each independently, sums them, and optionally auto-balances the bands — the classic "broadcast / ESSB" multiband sound. Default OFF.

  • ON — engages the stage (top-bar button). Off = true pass-through.
  • Global controls: Mix (wet/dry — 100 % = fully processed), Attack / Release, Ratio (one ratio, all bands), X-Over (shifts the whole band split), and global Thresh / Makeup that every band rides on top of.
  • SBC (Spectral Balance Control) — when engaged, automatically balances the level between the bands; Speed sets how aggressively it works.
  • Per-band — pick a band (LOW / LO-MID / MID / HI-MID / HIGH) and set its Thresh offset and Gain (makeup), or switch the band off. The five colour-matched meters show each band's gain reduction live while you transmit.

The panel mirrors a hardware multiband processor's layout; the shipped default is N8SDR's own preset. It auto-bypasses in DIGU/DIGL with the rest of the rack.

TX Plating — plate reverb (ESSB air)

The last native stage (after the Combinator). A plate-class reverb for the ESSB "broadcast air" sound — a subtle wet tail that adds space without washing out the voice. Default OFF. Bandplan-constrained operators (contest, crowded DX) just leave it off.

  • ON — engages the stage. Off = true pass-through.
  • Preset picker — W5UDX and N8SDR load the two ship presets (the eight reverb params); your Mix is left untouched (it's a personal wet-level).
  • Controls: Pre-Delay (gap before the tail), Decay (tail length / RT60), Damp (how fast the tail's highs roll off), Size (plate size), Density + Diffusion (echo smoothness), Bass / Treble (wet-tail tone), and Mix — the reverb amount, capped at 15 % (the useful ESSB range) and shipped at 7 %.

It sits before the always-on ALC limiter, so the reverb tail is caught by the limiter; it auto-bypasses in DIGU/DIGL with the rest of the rack.

CW operating (paddle, keyboard, TCI)

Set the mode to CWU or CWL and your tuned carrier sits on the marker, offset into the passband by your CW Pitch (the single pitch shared by the RX beat note, the marker, the keyed carrier, and the sidetone — set it on the Tuning panel or the CW console). The HL2's gateware makes the carrier envelope and the hardware sidetone; Lyra just tells it when to key. There are three ways to key:

1 — Paddle / straight key (into the HL2 KEY jack). The radio's built-in iambic keyer reads your paddle and keys the carrier + sidetone on its own — the host stays out of the timing, so it's crisp regardless of PC load. Speed, weight, iambic A/B, and reverse are in Settings → CW.

2 — Keyboard + macros (the CW console). Click the CW chip on the top toolbar to pop open the floating CW Console (it floats by default and remembers where you put it — only open it when you want it). It works only in CWU/CWL; outside CW the send controls dim, so switch to CW first. The WPM slider sets the speed; Esc or the red Stop · Esc button aborts whatever is sending. The bottom type-and-send line keys a line live — type and press Enter. The console is also where the RX CW decoder will live (coming in a later release).

The console's centerpiece is the macro bank — named, click-to-send CW memories:

  • Send a macro — click its chip, or press its F-key (F1–F12). The F-keys work anywhere in Lyra while you're in CW (you don't have to click into the console first), like a contest keyer. The chip lights and shows "sending…" until the keyed text finishes; Esc/Stop kills it.
  • Defaults ship for the common calls (CQ, CQ contest, His call, Reply, Exchange, TU 73, AGN?, QRZ?). Below the ── My macros ── divider is your space: click + Add macro to build your own; they save automatically and survive restarts.
  • Repeat (the toggle + seconds box) re-sends the last macro you fired every N seconds — handy for calling CQ. Stop also clears Repeat.
  • Edit (top-right) flips every chip into editable name + text fields with a delete (✕); click Done when finished.

Tokens — fill-in-the-blanks for your macros. Instead of fixed text, a macro can contain tokens in {BRACES} that expand when you send:

  • About the contact (from the console's contact row — His call / Name / RST / #): {CALL} {NAME} {RST} {#}. Copy the other station's call into His call, set RST/serial, and one "Reply" macro works for every QSO. {MYCALL} is your own call from Settings → Hardware.
  • Your personal tokens — reusable facts about you that you set once. In Edit mode, under My tokens, add a name + value (e.g. {ME} = Rick, {PWR} = 25 watts, {QTH} = Hamilton OH, {RIG}, {ANT}). Then any macro using {ME} / {PWR} / {QTH} fills in automatically. (The five built-in names above are reserved.)
  • Click to insert — the token palette sits just above the send line. Click into a macro's text field (in Edit mode) or the send line, then click a token chip to drop it in at the cursor — no need to type the braces. Built-in tokens are amber, your personal ones cyan.

3 — From a logger over TCI. A TCI logging/contest program can key CW through Lyra — see CW keying over TCI.

Break-in (Settings → CW):

  • QSK (default) — full break-in: the gateware keys the carrier and you stay on receive between elements, so you hear the band right up to the next dit. The panadapter stays on the RX waterfall and you can watch your own dits/dahs land on the marker.
  • Semi — the radio holds transmit through the character and drops back to RX after a short hang.
  • Manual — you hold a foot switch (PTT) to put the radio in transmit and key with your paddle inside it; release the foot switch to return to RX.

Sidetone level — the CW MON slider on the Audio panel (it appears only in CW) sets how loud you hear your own keying. It's the hardware-generated CW sidetone and is independent of the MON monitor used for SSB.

Profiles (TX/RX chain presets)

A profile is a named snapshot of your operator TX/RX signal chain — recalled as a single unit so you can flip between, say, an SSB-voice setup and an FT8/digital setup without re-touching a dozen controls. This is the openHPSDR "TX profile" idea, done Lyra-native.

What a profile stores: RX bandwidth, TX bandwidth + the BW-lock, filter low edge; mic source, mic gain, 20 dB mic boost; the Tune-drive toggle + tune-drive %, and the TX drive level (your power knob); the TCI RX and TX gains; the VAC source (VAC1 enable, auto-enable-for-digital, and the VAC RX/TX gains); AGC mode; auto-mute-on-TX; and the TX safety-timeout (minutes + bypass). Because mic source and VAC enable are both stored, one profile can flip you from a TCI/voice setup to a VAC/digital setup as a unit — see Digital modes over VAC.

What a profile deliberately does NOT store:

  • The operating mode / sideband. Like the reference's TX profiles, a profile is a pure signal chain — recalling one (manually or via auto-recall) never changes your mode or which sideband you're on. It applies the chain and leaves you exactly where you were tuned.
  • Safety / input-method settings that are global by design: PA enable, hardware-PTT-input enable, and the space-bar-PTT toggle all live in Settings → Hardware and are never swept by a profile (you don't want a recalled preset silently arming your PA or changing how you key).
  • EQ, Speech, the Combinator and Plating now ship as live TX DSP panels (see TX DSP rack), but their settings are not yet swept into profiles — that field lands with a future profile update, and older saved profiles migrate forward automatically. A separate monitor output remains reserved for the same reason. (VAC is no longer reserved — it's stored as of v0.2.4. Audio device names stay global station setup, not per-profile, since they're machine-specific.)

The Profiles dock (front panel — quick recall)

A small dockable bar (show/hide it from the window's dock menu, like the TX or Display panels). It has just three things:

  • Profile dropdown — pick a saved profile to recall it instantly.
  • ● modified dot — lights orange when your live chain differs from the active profile (i.e. you've changed something worth saving); grey when they match. Hover it for which profile it's comparing against.
  • Save — opens the Save Profile dialog: either overwrite the active profile with your current settings, or give it a new name — and (optionally) tick which mode family should auto-recall it. That last part means you can set up a chain for the mode you're on and save it as a brand-new bound profile without ever opening Settings.

Settings → Profiles (the full editor)

The complete manager lives in Settings → Profiles:

  • A list of your profiles (the active one is bold and tagged (active); the startup default is tagged [default]).
  • Save (overwrite active), Save As… (capture current settings to a new name), Load (recall the selected profile), Rename…, Delete, and Set Default (apply this profile automatically every time Lyra starts).
  • A status line showing the active profile and a ● modified flag.
  • Auto-recall by mode family — one dropdown per family: CW, SSB, Digital, AM, SAM, DSB, FM. Bind a profile to a family and it's recalled automatically whenever you switch into a mode in that family. Sidebands collapse on purpose — USB and LSB both map to SSB, CWU/CWL → CW, DIGU/DIGL → Digital (the chain is identical regardless of sideband), while AM / SAM / DSB / FM each stand alone. Set a family to (none) to disable auto-recall for it.

Good to know

  • Recall is blocked while transmitting. Loading a profile is a no-op while you're keyed — Lyra never switches mic source or bandwidth mid-TX (the same safety rule that governs every chain change). Drop PTT, then recall.
  • Switching is always manual except for the per-family auto-recall table you configure above — nothing changes your profile on its own (e.g. Lyra never picks a profile based on who you're working).
  • A typical setup: a "Voice" profile bound to SSB (your mic, mic gain, speech bandwidth) and a "Digital" profile bound to Digital (TCI mic source, flat gain, wide filter) — then changing mode from USB to DIGU flips the whole chain for you, but leaves you on the frequency and sideband you chose.

Solar / Propagation panel

A compact strip showing current HF propagation conditions from HamQSL (N0NBH's solar data):

  • SFI (Solar Flux Index), A (A-index), K (K-index) — each colour-coded green / amber / red so you can read conditions at a glance (higher SFI is better; lower A and K are better). Hover the SFI box for the full picture — sunspot number, X-ray level, solar wind, and when HamQSL last updated.
  • A 10-band heat-map — 160 through 6 m, each tinted green (Good), amber (Fair), red (Poor), or gray (no prediction). Hover a band for its rating.

The ratings are shown for your current day or night — Lyra works out whether it's daylight at your location and picks HamQSL's day or night figures accordingly. For that to be right, set your grid square (or manual lat/lon) in Settings → Hardware → Operator / Station; without a location it assumes daytime. HamQSL doesn't predict 160 m or 6 m, so those two always show gray.

The data is fetched when Lyra starts and refreshed about every 15 minutes (the day/night split updates on its own as the sun rises and sets). It's read-only and needs no account or key — just an internet connection. If the feed can't be reached, the last-known figures stay on screen and the SFI tooltip notes the error.

NCDXF beacon auto-follow. The Follow button on the right of the panel lets you chase a single NCDXF beacon station through the rotation. Pick a station (e.g. 4U1UN) from the dropdown and Lyra automatically tunes (in CW) to whichever of the five beacon bands that station is transmitting on right now — 20 → 17 → 15 → 12 → 10 m — re-checking every second and hopping with it through the 3-minute cycle. It's a quick way to hear how one station is propagating across the bands. Set it to Off to stop; your choice is remembered between sessions. (While following, Lyra re-tunes on its own, so manual tuning won't "stick" until you turn Follow off.)

If you don't want the panel, close it like any other (the View menu re-opens it). It's a dock — drag, float, or tab it wherever you like.

Weather alerts

Lyra can watch for nearby lightning, high wind, and severe-storm warnings, and show flashing badges in the header so you know to think about your antennas. Turn it on and configure it in Settings → Weather.

⚠ Advisory only. These alerts are a convenience, not a substitute for official warnings or your own judgment. You must accept a short disclaimer before enabling them.

What you'll see — badges appear toward the right of the header when an alert is active, and flash on the most serious tier:

  • ⚡ Lightning — shows the closest strike distance + compass bearing. Yellow ≈ far, orange ≈ mid, red = close (flashing).
  • 💨 Wind — shows gust (or sustained) speed. The badge appears only once wind reaches the thresholds you set (Settings → Weather): orange when sustained or gust crosses your value, red = extreme (your value + 15, flashing). In calm air below your thresholds there's no wind badge at all.
  • ⚠ Severe — an NWS thunderstorm/severe warning is active (red, flashing). Hover for the headline.

Where the data comes from depends on which sources you enable (Settings → Weather): Blitzortung (global lightning, free), NWS / weather.gov (wind + severe + live station wind, free, US), and your own Ambient Weather or Ecowitt station (needs that account's keys). Lyra needs your location to know what's "nearby" — set your grid square in Settings → Hardware → Operator / Station.

Notifications — optionally a desktop pop-up and an audible chime when an alert first crosses a tier (with a cool-down so it doesn't nag). Lyra's own weather pop-ups are titled "Lyra — …" so you can tell them apart from other notifiers (your Ambient app, a Windows weather widget, etc.). The wind pop-up only fires when your local readings cross your thresholds; an area NWS High/Extreme Wind Warning pops a toast only if you opt in ("Pop NWS High/Extreme Wind Warnings", off by default — the badge still reflects it either way). Toggle the desktop/chime options in Settings → Weather, and use Send test alert there to see the badges light up.

Updates

Lyra checks GitHub for new releases so you don't miss one.

  • A quiet check runs a few seconds after launch. If a newer version exists, you get a one-time pop-up (Open release page / Remind me later / Skip this version) and an ⬆ indicator stays in the toolbar.
  • Check whenever you like: Help → Check for Updates….
  • Downloads are on the project's GitHub Releases page; grab the new installer and run it over the top.

Backing up & sharing your settings

Lyra can save your entire configuration — panel layout, saved default layout, and all your preferences (visuals, mode/bandwidths, weather, etc.) — to a single portable file.

  • File → Export settings… — writes a .lyra profile. Keep it as a backup, or hand it to another operator so they get your exact setup.
  • File → Import settings… — loads a .lyra profile; the layout applies immediately and Lyra offers to restart to apply the rest.

This is the easy way to recover if a layout gets scrambled, or to set up a second PC the same way. (One thing that intentionally doesn't travel in a profile: the graphics backend, since that's a per-machine hardware choice.)

Operating with an external amplifier (hot-switch protection)

If you're driving an external solid-state HF linear amplifier from the HL2, read this section first. Hot-switching — applying RF into a T/R relay that hasn't finished switching — can destroy a SS linear's PA. Lyra has two layers of protection against this; they're load-bearing, not cosmetic, and the defaults are chosen for typical 1 kW SS HF linears.

How the two layers compose

Layer Knob What it does
1. Scheduling RF Delay (default 50 ms) After the wire-MOX bit goes hot, Lyra waits 50 ms before allowing any RF onto the antenna. Gives the external amp's T/R relay time to fully close.
2. Amplitude shape Fade-In Duration (default 50 ms) Even WITHIN the RF Delay window, the host-side I/Q amplitude rises smoothly from zero via a cos² envelope. Redundant protection against any residual MOX-bit / relay timing skew.

Both knobs live on Settings → TX.

Workflow before the first on-air keying

The discipline that's saved more amps than anyone wants to admit:

  1. Dummy load on the antenna port. Until you've confirmed the full chain works the way you expect, the HL2 talks to a 50 Ω resistor, not your antenna. A dummy load tolerates hot-switching; a relay-bypassed antenna won't.
  2. External amp OFF / bypassed. First-RF goes to the dummy load straight from the HL2's on-board PA (a few watts). Confirm wattmeter behaviour, panadapter trace, and that TUN / MOX both ramp cleanly.
  3. PA Enable OFF in Settings → Hardware → Transmit. Run through your keying ergonomics first — TUN button, MOX button, space-bar, drive-slider movement — with no actual RF. You should hear the HL2 relays click and see the wire-MOX state flip; the wattmeter should read zero.
  4. PA Enable ON, Drive low (5–10 %). Key TUN once. Watch the wattmeter trace ramp up smoothly over ~50 ms, hold steady, then ramp down smoothly. No clicks, no spikes at either edge.
  5. Verify your Settings → TX values match your amp. The defaults are bench-safe for typical 1 kW SS linears. If your amp's documentation specifies a T/R relay settle time greater than 30 ms, leave RF Delay and Fade-In Duration at their defaults or HIGHER. Only consider lowering them if your amp's spec explicitly says it can handle a faster onset (e.g. QSK-rated amps with vacuum relays).
  6. External amp ON / inline. Re-do the TUN test with the amp in line, still on the dummy load. Confirm the amp keys and reads the right output for your drive level. Watch for any sign of relay arcing or other distress.
  7. Antenna connected. Final step. By the time you reach this, the chain has been verified end-to-end.

What to tune (and what NOT to tune)

If you're seeing… Tune this NOT this
Amp T/R relay arcing on key-up Space MOX Delay (and Fade-Out Duration must stay ≤ Space MOX Delay) Don't touch RF Delay — keyup arcing is a different problem from keydown hot-switching
Amp shows symptoms of hot-switching on key-DOWN RF Delay (raise it) — match your amp's T/R relay settle spec Don't reduce Fade-In Duration as a "fix" — it's the second protective layer
Audible click in your monitor at keydown Fade-In Duration — should be ≥ ~30 ms for clean SSB-band sound Don't extend RF Delay just to remove a click — that's the amplitude envelope's job
Audible click in your monitor at keyup Fade-Out Duration (raise it up to Space MOX Delay) Don't extend Space MOX Delay just for a click — that lengthens the re-key window too

When Lyra is killed mid-transmit (process crash, power glitch)

The HL2 gateware has its own watchdog: no EP2 keepalive frames for N seconds (gateware-specific, typically ~1 sec) → gateware drops PA bias. This is your last-resort safety if Lyra dies while keyed.

But it's slow. A second of stuck carrier into an antenna is enough to embarrass yourself or worse. The discipline above — dummy-load → external-amp-off → progressively widen — exists because the gateware watchdog isn't fast enough to substitute for operator-side discipline.

Settings → Hardware

The Hardware tab (Settings — Ctrl+,) holds your station identity and connects to the radio + optional station hardware.

Operator / Station

Your identity and location, used by the weather alerts (and, in time, the solar panel and logging):

  • Callsign — your call (stored uppercase).
  • Grid square — your Maidenhead locator (e.g. EN82, EN82dk). When it's valid, Lyra computes your latitude/longitude from it — shown live in Computed lat/lon.
  • Manual lat / lon (°) — a fallback if you'd rather not use a grid (or don't have one). Used only when the grid is blank/invalid.

Grid wins when it's valid; otherwise the manual lat/lon is used. Either way that's the location the weather sources use for "nearby."

Band plan (Region)

Region — your IARU region (US / IARU Region 2, IARU Region 1, IARU Region 3, or None). This selects which amateur band-plan the panadapter overlay draws. Set it to None to turn the whole overlay off.

Country — an optional refinement under Region, for the bands where a country's allocation differs from its IARU region (today this is 60 m). Leave it on Auto (use region) and you get the region default; pick your country to override just the bands that differ:

  • Auto — US gets the five fixed 60 m channels; IARU R1 / R3 get the contiguous WRC-15 band (5351.5–5366.5 kHz).
  • United Kingdom — replaces 60 m with the UK's own set of permitted segments (per the RSGB / Ofcom band plan), which differ from the plain WRC-15 band.
  • Canada — uses the WRC-15 60 m band rather than the US channels (Canada is in IARU Region 2 but does not use the US channel plan).

The overlay paints a thin strip across the top of the panadapter:

  • Sub-band segments — a coloured bar showing the mode allocations in view: CW (blue), digital (magenta), SSB (green), FM (orange). The label (CW / DIG / SSB / FM) shows when the segment is wide enough on screen.
  • 60 m channel markers — on the US 60 m band the five channels show as labelled CH1–CH5 bars. The labels are always visible (the channels are narrow), and you can click a channel to QSY straight to its USB dial frequency.
  • Digital landmarks — small ▼ markers at the common calling frequencies (FT8 / FT4 / WSPR / PSK), gold. Click a marker to tune straight to it (and Lyra switches to the suggested mode).
  • NCDXF beacon markers — the five International Beacon Project frequencies, in cyan. Hover one and the tooltip shows the station that's transmitting right now (the 18 worldwide beacons rotate every 10 seconds) — e.g. "Now: 4U1UN — United Nations, NY". Click to QSY there in CW.
  • Band-edge warning lines — red dashed lines at each band's edges, so you can see at a glance when you're tuning toward the edge of an allocation.

Each of those four layers has its own checkbox here so you can show only what you want. They're all on by default. Segment colors — the four swatch buttons (CW / DIG / SSB / FM) let you recolor each mode category; click a swatch to pick a color, or choose the original color to clear the override.

As you tune, Lyra shows a brief message at the bottom of the window when you cross a band edge — "In band: 40m (US)" when you're inside an allocation, or "⚠ Out of band — X.XXX MHz is outside the US amateur allocations" when you're not. (Gated on the band-edge layer above.)

The band plan is advisory only — the HL2 is unlocked and Lyra will tune anywhere it can receive. Sub-band boundaries vary by license class and country and change over time; verify against your own regulator before transmitting near an edge. The strip is a navigation aid, not a legal reference.

Shortwave broadcasters (EiBi)

Lyra can overlay the EiBi shortwave-broadcast schedule on the panadapter so you can see who's on the air across the SW broadcast and utility ranges. Each station shows as a small tick + name:

  • Cyan = broadcasting right now (the current UTC time falls inside the station's scheduled window for today).
  • Grey = scheduled on this frequency but off-air at the moment (only shown if you turn off "Hide off-air").
  • Hover a station for its frequency, language, target area, and on-air status; click it to tune there in AM.

Turn it on in Settings → Bands → SW Database:

  • Enable EiBi shortwave overlay — master on/off (off by default).
  • Update database now — downloads the current season's schedule (~3 MB) from eibispace.de. You must do this once before anything appears — the data isn't bundled (EiBi's licence is free but no-redistribution). Re-run it when the season changes (roughly April and October).
  • Load CSV file… — the fallback if the download fails. eibispace.de's security certificate expires periodically, which can block the in-app download; when that happens, download the sked-<season>.csv from the EiBi website in your browser, then point Lyra at it with this button. (Lyra copies it into its own folder, so you can delete the download afterward.)
  • Hide off-air — show only stations broadcasting now (on by default).
  • Show in all bands — by default the overlay is hidden inside the amateur bands (so it doesn't clutter ham operating); tick this to show it everywhere.
  • Minimum transmitter power — hide the weak stations; show only ≥50/100/250 kW transmitters to cut clutter.

EiBi schedules are a planning aid — actual broadcasts vary with propagation, season, and last-minute changes. A cyan station may be inaudible (wrong band conditions) and you may hear stations the database doesn't list. Data © the EiBi project (eibispace.de).

Radio

Find and connect to your HL2 / HL2+. Discover scans the LAN, Open connects to the selected radio (or just double-click it), Close disconnects, and the status line shows what you're connected to. The connected radio is shown green and bold in the list, so with several radios it's obvious which one is live. Lyra remembers the last radio and shows it here on launch. (The toolbar ▶ Start / ■ Stop does the same thing.)

Multiple radios. Keep as many radios in the list as you like and switch between them: select one (or double-click) → Open; to change radios, Close the current one first, then Open another. Lyra connects to one radio at a time.

  • Add by IP — type a radio's address (e.g. 192.168.1.50) and click Add for a radio Discover can't reach: a fixed-IP HL2, one on a different subnet, or a network where broadcast is blocked. Lyra sends a direct probe to that address and fills in the real board / gateware / RX count if it answers; either way the entry is added so you can Open it.

  • Discover now broadcasts two ways (the limited and the subnet-directed broadcast), so it finds radios on networks where one form is blocked.

  • Auto-start radio on launch (checkbox, default ON) — when on, Lyra connects to the last radio automatically at startup (the historical behaviour). Untick it to have Lyra open without connecting; you then click ▶ Start when you're ready.

Transmit (PA enable + safety timeout + hardware PTT)

The deliberate-arm safety gates for getting on the air. Both are intentionally OUT of the operating-time TX panel — they're set-and- forget config you arm once when you're ready to transmit, not knobs you touch between QSOs.

  • Enable PA (checkbox, default OFF) — toggles the HL2 gateware's PA bias. With this OFF, keying MOX or TUN gives you the relay click and the wire-MOX state but zero RF (the gateware never biases the PA). With this ON, MOX + non-zero Drive % produces real RF. The safest first-time-on-the-air bench gate: leave OFF for relay / panadapter / wattmeter wiring checks; turn ON only after you're confident in your Drive setting, fade defaults, and amp configuration. Lyra defensively clears PA on every stream close and open — restart Lyra and PA is OFF again, no matter where you left it.
  • TX safety timeout (spin box, default 600 s = 10 min, range 60 – 1200 s) — if the radio stays continuously keyed past this duration, the FSM auto-releases MOX through the normal keyup sequence (no shortcut on the wire — full TR-delay unwind, ATT-on-TX restore, the works). A pop-up toast notes the auto-release.
  • Bypass safety timeout (checkbox, default OFF) — for long-form AM ragchews or slow CW beacons where the 10-minute default is genuinely too short. Bypass disables the timer entirely. Use with intent — a stuck PTT or a software fault now has no host- side rescue (the HL2 gateware watchdog is still in play, but treats EP2 keepalive as the only liveness signal).
  • Enable hardware PTT input (foot switch / hand mic) (checkbox, default OFF) — when ticked, the HL2's hardware PTT-input pin is read on every status frame and an edge (press / release) is forwarded to MOX, so a foot switch, hand-mic PTT, or external mic-button keys Lyra just like the on-screen MOX button. ⚠ Bench-verify before enabling. Some HL2 units (notably most observed HL2+ / AK4951 units) carry a non-zero PTT-input level at RX rest, so an always-on forwarder would mis-read it as a press and produce a phantom-TX surge the moment you launch Lyra. Default OFF lets you control when the read goes live: confirm with a scope or with the foot-switch unplugged that the pin reads stable 0 at rest, then tick this box. If your foot-switch press doesn't key after enabling, the issue is upstream of Lyra (HL2 connector / switch / cable / wiring) — Lyra can't paper over a dirty level at rest.
  • RX resume delay after unkey (spin box, default 50 ms, range 0 – 500 ms) — how long RX audio stays muted after you unkey, so the transmit tail still working through the receiver's DSP pipeline drains out as silence and the T/R relay settles before you hear RX again. Removes the "thud" and the quick echo of your own voice on unkey. Raise it if you still hear a bump or echo; lower it for snappier break-in. 0 resumes RX instantly (the old behaviour). Works with the Auto-mute RX while transmitting option above — the auto-mute holds RX silent during TX, this delays the return to RX after.

Why these are in Hardware, not in TX: Settings → TX is for timing knobs you might tune to match an external amp's switching spec. Settings → Hardware → Transmit is the arm/disarm surface for "ready to actually radiate" — different operational gesture, different cognitive bucket. Both honour each other: PA off ⇒ no RF regardless of timing, and the timing knobs are inert when PA is off.

Filter board (N2ADR / compatible)

If you have an external band-pass filter board on the HL2's open-collector (OC) outputs, tick Enable external filter board and Lyra switches the OC pins per band so the board follows your tuning — front-end protection against strong out-of-band signals (a nearby AM broadcaster, say). The live OC outputs readout shows which J16 pins are currently driven. Leave it off if you don't have a board — harmless either way (the pins just drive nothing).

USB-BCD (linear-amp band switching)

Drives a Yaesu-style BCD band code out an FTDI cable so an external linear amp's auto-bandswitch follows Lyra's band. Tick Enable USB-BCD, choose your BCD cable, and the BCD output readout shows the current code. Two bands have no standard BCD code of their own, with an option to borrow the adjacent band's filter:

  • 60 m uses the 40 m filter (BCD 3) — sends the 40 m code on 60 m instead of bypassing.
  • 11 m uses the 10 m filter (BCD 9) — sends the 10 m code on the 11 m / CB band (the appropriate adjacent filter) instead of bypassing.

⚠ Operate only within the maximum power and band limits permitted by your country / region's regulations. This control selects an amp filter; it does not change what you are licensed to transmit.

⚠ Verify before you key. Confirm the wiring and do a low-power test on each band before transmitting at full power — the wrong code can route TX through the wrong filter.

(If the FTDI driver, ftd2xx.dll, isn't installed, this section says so instead — install the FTDI D2XX driver to use USB-BCD.)

Diagnostics (debug log)

Lyra runs without a console window, so if something misbehaves there's no black terminal to copy errors from. Instead, Lyra keeps a diagnostic log you can read, copy, and send to us.

  • Help → Show Log… opens the log viewer — a scrolling view of this session's diagnostic messages with Copy all, Save…, and Open log folder buttons. It updates live while open.
  • Enable verbose debug logging (here in Diagnostics, also a checkbox in the log viewer) turns on detailed capture. Leave it off for normal use — the log then keeps only warnings and errors and stays small. Turn it on when you're chasing a problem: enable it, reproduce the issue, then Copy or Save the log.
  • A copy of the log is always written to a file on disk (…/N8SDR/Lyra-cpp/logs/lyra-log.txt, reachable via Open log folder), refreshed each launch — so even a crash leaves a trace.

To capture a log for a bug report:

  1. Open Help → Show Log….
  2. Tick Verbose debug logging (bottom-left of the viewer). Leave the window open.
  3. Reproduce the problem — make it happen, and let it run for 30–60 seconds so it's well captured.
  4. Click Save… (pick a filename like lyra-log.txt) — or Copy all and paste it into your message.
  5. Send the log with a one-line note of what it was doing and what you expected instead.

Getting help / reporting a bug

Testers and bug reports are welcome — Lyra is in active development.

  • Discord (preferred for questions & quick help): discord.gg/nbJEqvFQ — questions, feature ideas, and getting unstuck.
  • Bug reports: file a GitHub issue (or post in Discord). Attach the log as a text file (use Save… in the log viewer — don't worry about the on-disk copy, the saved .txt is easiest to attach).

To make a report actionable, please include:

  • The diagnostic log — saved as a .txt and attached (see the capture steps above).
  • Lyra version — Help → About, or the installer filename.
  • Windows version (e.g. Windows 11 23H2) and your PC basics (CPU, RAM) if it's a performance or audio-glitch issue.
  • Your radio — HL2 or HL2+, and your gateware version if you know it.
  • What you did and what happened — the steps to reproduce, and what you expected instead.

Settings → Audio

Where Lyra sends received audio:

  • HL2 audio jack (AK4951) — the default on HL2+ hardware. Audio is decoded on the PC, sent back to the radio, and played from the HL2's own headphone jack. Single-crystal, lowest latency, bypasses the PC sound card.
  • PC sound device — pick any output Windows offers (sound card, headphones, a virtual audio cable to WSJT-X / FLDigi, etc.).

Pick your output device here; everyday Mute and Vol stay on the Audio panel.

Filter Low edge (RX + TX) — single shared low cutoff for the SSB / DIG audio bandpass on both receive and transmit. Range 0–500 Hz, default 100 Hz.

  • 100–200 Hz suppresses 50/60 Hz mains coupling on the mic path and reduces low-end rumble on receive — safe choice for narrow comms.
  • 50–70 Hz preserves chest-resonance / low-end body for ESSB-style wide audio — verify your station isn't picking up mains hum at very low cuts.
  • 0 Hz opens the filter all the way down to the carrier (no low cut) — some operators want this for ultra-wide ESSB into a clean RF environment.

Applies to SSB and DIG modes only (USB / LSB / DIGU / DIGL — the asymmetric passband case). CW is pitch-centred and AM / DSB / FM are symmetric around DC; those modes ignore this setting.

You can also drag the low edge of the passband rectangle on the panadapter (left edge on USB / right edge on LSB) to set this value in real time. Dragging below 0 just pins at 0.

Profiles carry their own bandwidth. A saved profile stores its own RX + TX bandwidth + filter-low edge and applies them on recall (manual or per-mode-family auto-recall). This control is the live value used when no profile is active — save it into a profile to make it stick per setup.

Virtual Audio Cable (VAC1)

VAC1 bridges audio between Lyra and a PC sound device — typically a virtual audio cable (VB-Audio CABLE, VAC, etc.) — so a digital-mode or soundcard program can hear Lyra's receive audio and feed Lyra its transmit audio. As of v0.3.0 both directions run on one full-duplex audio stream, and receive audio is automatically muted out of the cable while you transmit (no open-mic monitor feedback into the cable). For the end-to-end digital-mode wiring see Digital modes over VAC; the controls here are:

  • Enable VAC1 (RX→PC and PC→TX) — master switch; powers both directions at once.
  • Auto-enable for digital modes (disable for others) — when ticked, VAC1 turns on automatically when you switch to a digital mode (DIGU / DIGL) and off for every other mode, so moving into a digital setup opens the cable for you.
  • Driver — the audio backend (PortAudio host API: WASAPI, DirectSound, MME, or WDM-KS) the VAC devices live under. WASAPI is the right choice for virtual cables. Changing the driver repopulates the Output and Input device lists below with that backend's devices; existing selections carry over by name where the device still exists.
  • Output device — the PC output Lyra sends RX audio to (the cable's playback endpoint your digital app records from). Pick the virtual cable, not your speakers. (none) leaves the RX→PC direction off.
  • VAC RX gain — trims the level of the RX audio Lyra feeds into the cable.
  • Input device — the PC input Lyra reads transmit audio from (the cable's recording endpoint your digital app plays into). Used only when Settings → TX → Mic source = "PC Soundcard (VAC1)". (none) leaves the PC→TX direction off.
  • VAC TX gain — preamp on the captured PC mic audio before it enters the transmit chain.
  • Combine input (mono) — sum the captured left + right channels to mono (use when the app puts its modulator audio on a single channel).

For a full receive-and-transmit bridge, select BOTH an Output and an Input device — leaving either on (none) disables that direction. Transmit also requires Settings → TX → Mic source = "PC Soundcard (VAC1)"; with the mic source on anything else (the codec mic, or TCI) a VAC transmit produces no power. The Digital modes over VAC section walks the whole setup, including the no-power fix.

Settings → TX (Mic + ALC + Leveler, TR sequencing + cos² fade)

⚠ Read Operating with an external amplifier FIRST if you're driving a solid-state HF linear from the HL2. The TR- sequencing + fade defaults on this tab are hot-switch-safe for typical 1 kW SS linears; reducing them without knowing your amp's T/R relay settle spec can damage the PA. Tooltips on the most dangerous knobs carry the warning; don't dismiss it.

Layout (v0.2.x §15.28 polish): the tab is now organized in two columns with cyan column headers at the top — TIMING (left: TR Sequencing + Amplitude Envelope + Tune — set once for your amp + station) and AUDIO + GAIN (right: Mic + ALC + Leveler — operating gain stages you tune actively). All values persisted across Lyra restarts; live-apply (changes take effect on the next MOX edge).

Mic + ALC (TXA input + output gain stages)

The full operator-tunable TX-input-to-modulator-output gain chain, rendered top-to-bottom in signal-flow order — what the audio sees first is at the top, what it sees last is at the bottom:

Mic source → Mic Boost (+20 dB HW) → Mic Gain (SW) → Leveler (optional) → bp0 → ALC → wire
Knob Default What it controls
Mic source Mic In (codec) Picks the audio source driving the TX chain. Mic In = the HL2 / HL2+ codec mic input (the v0.2.x default; this is the hand-mic / headset-mic / desk-mic path). TCI = inbound TX_AUDIO_STREAM from a digital-modes TCI client (MSHV / JTDX / FlDigi); pick this for digital-mode operation so the client's modulator audio replaces the hand-mic. PC Soundcard (VAC1) routes TX audio captured from a PC audio cable (a Virtual Audio Cable) into the TX chain — pick this to transmit digital modes whose audio comes over a soundcard/VAC instead of TCI (see Digital modes over VAC); it needs VAC1 enabled with an input device on Settings → Audio. Line In / VAC2 anchor entries are visible for layout but reserved for a later release. A TCI client that sends TRX:0,true,tci auto-selects TCI — the picker tracks it.
Mic Boost OFF HL2 hardware +20 dB analog mic preamp (codec PGA, single bit on the wire — C0 0x12 C2 bit 0). Pure hardware boost ahead of the digital chain. Enable when your hand mic / headset mic is genuinely too quiet to hit the modulator at a reasonable level even with the Mic Gain slider near max. Hardware is 2-state (off / +20 dB); intermediate trim comes from Mic Gain stacked on top. Only affects the codec mic input — PC mic / TCI sources bypass the codec PGA entirely, so this checkbox has no effect on those routes. Persisted across launches.
Mic Gain 0 dB The mic-into-modulator gain (WDSP TXA PanelGain1 — TXA chain stage #3, before phrot / EQ / leveler / CFCOMP / bandpass / compressor / OSCtrl / ALC). Bidirectionally bound with the TxPanel front-UI slider — slider for quick QSO-time adjustments, spin-box here for typed precision. 0 dB = WDSP unity; +10 to +20 dB typical SSB; +25 to +35 dB ESSB with headroom. Range −90 dB to +40 dB matches the reference's Default TX profile. Stacks on top of Mic Boost — if Mic Boost is ON, the modulator sees Mic Boost +20 dB + Mic Gain combined.
ALC Max Gain ⚠ 3 (LINEAR) The ALC (Automatic Level Control) max-gain ceiling — the always-on output limiter that catches peaks the leveler and compressor didn't bound, before the I/Q reaches the wire. LINEAR amplitude factor (NOT dB) — units corrected in §15.27: 1 = unity (limiter cannot amplify, only attenuate); 3 = the verified reference's default = 3× amplitude headroom = +9.54 dB of allowed amplification before the ALC pulls down. Earlier Lyra builds shipped this property as dB and called dbToLin(3.0) = 1.413 — capping the ceiling at 47% of the reference's value and producing a ~6 dB power deficit on continuous mic-input tones (the §15.27 / #79 root cause; fixed 2026-06-03). Range 0..120 LINEAR matches the reference spinner exactly. Operator tuning: lower (1–2) for tighter splatter protection at the cost of headroom; higher (5–20) for ESSB-style program-level headroom.
ALC Decay 10 ms The ALC release time constant — exponential-curve tau, NOT an absolute time. Sets how quickly the limiter releases gain reduction after a peak. Default 10 ms matches the verified reference's Setup-load value EXACTLY. Operator tuning: lower (3–5 ms) for snappier release that lets program material breathe but can sound 'pumpy' on aggressive content; higher (30–50 ms) for smoother release that holds gain steadier but compresses dynamics more. Range 1..50 ms matches the reference spinner exactly. Attack stays at the WDSP create-time default (1 ms) and is not exposed (reference UI doesn't expose attack either).

The ALC ceiling is a SAFETY knob, not a daily-use one. Set it once to match your mic + voice + amp combination, then leave it. The daily-use control is Mic Gain — that's what you tune per QSO. Watch the ALC meter as you raise Mic Gain; if ALC is engaging hard (more than ~3 dB of gain reduction visible on the meter), you're driving past the limiter ceiling and creating splatter risk — either reduce Mic Gain or carefully raise the ALC ceiling.

Leveler (TXA pre-ALC amplifier stage)

The Leveler is a pre-ALC amplifier stage that boosts weak input signals up toward unity before the always-on ALC limiter sees them — particularly helpful for quiet passages of voice, or for ESSB operators who want consistent on-air loudness without riding the mic gain knob constantly. Sits in the chain BEFORE bp0 (the SSB bandpass) and the ALC — so on a quiet syllable, the Leveler can amplify by up to its Max-Gain ceiling, then bp0 + ALC produce a wire-level signal that's much closer to full scale than the raw mic level would otherwise allow.

Operator-preference default: Leveler is OFF in Lyra. The verified reference's UI ships this Enabled checkbox ON by default (and silently auto-enables it when you create a new TX profile), but some operators (including the project's primary tester) prefer it off — typical reason is that always-on leveler interaction with predistortion / PureSignal calibration can be unpredictable. Tick the Enable checkbox if you want reference-parity gain behaviour; leave it off if you prefer to ride mic gain manually.

Not recommended for digital modes (FT8 / FT4 / MSK144 / Q65 / RTTY, etc.). Digital-mode software already outputs a controlled, constant level, and the modes need a clean, linear TX chain. The Leveler rides gain on the envelope — on a digital signal that pumps the level and adds distortion, which widens your signal, raises IMD, and makes your reported levels inconsistent. Leave the Leveler OFF for digital. It's a voice/ESSB tool. The easy way to keep this straight is a per-mode-family profile: a digital/VAC profile with Leveler off, a voice profile with it set how you like — switching mode recalls the right one.

Knob Default What it controls
Enabled OFF (Lyra) / ON (reference UI default) Master Leveler on/off. Default OFF in Lyra by operator preference; tick this if your reference profile has it on and you want Lyra to match the reference's signal behaviour exactly. Mostly noticeable on quiet voice content — the Leveler does little when input is already loud.
Max Gain 15 (LINEAR) Maximum amplitude factor the Leveler will amplify weak signals by. LINEAR factor (NOT dB): 1 = unity (no boost); 15 = the reference's default = 15× amplitude ceiling = +23.5 dB of amplification headroom for weak input. Same unit-correction class as ALC Max Gain (the WDSP API takes LINEAR; the reference's "(dB)" label on its UI is misleading — the value is passed straight through with no conversion). Range 0..20 LINEAR matches the reference spinner exactly. Operator tuning: lower (5–10) for gentler boost that preserves natural mic dynamics; higher (15–20) for ESSB-style consistent loudness. Has effect only when Enabled is ticked.
Decay 100 ms Leveler release time constant (exponential-curve tau, NOT absolute time). Sets how quickly the Leveler releases its boost after a stronger signal subsides. Default 100 ms matches the verified reference's Setup-load value EXACTLY. Operator tuning: lower (30–50 ms) for faster release that follows voice envelope more tightly; higher (200–500 ms) for smoother release that holds boost steadier across syllables. Range 1..5000 ms matches the reference spinner exactly. Has effect only when Enabled is ticked.

When to enable Leveler: if your reference setup has it on (most reference TX profiles do — check Setup → DSP → AGC/ALC → Leveler in the reference for your active profile), enable it in Lyra and set Max Gain + Decay to match. With Leveler on at typical values (15 LINEAR / 100 ms) you'll see Lyra produce reference-parity actual RF on the same mic input — the missing pre-ALC gain stage was the root cause of the §15.27 / #79 "Lyra produces less power than the reference on the same whistle/voice" investigation; the Leveler closes that gap completely.

Phase Rotator (PHROT)

The phase rotator is an all-pass network that symmetrizes asymmetric speech waveforms. Human voice peaks much harder in one direction than the other; evening that out lowers the peak-to-average ratio, so more average talk power gets through for the same ALC / peak ceiling. It's a classic SSB voice-processing trick and matches the reference's Setup phase-rotator control.

Setting Default What it does
Enabled ON Master phase-rotator on/off. Default ON (the WDSP / reference posture).

Auto-off in digital modes. Phase rotation distorts FT8 / FT4 / RTTY / other digital waveforms — they need a clean, linear TX chain — so Lyra automatically disables PHROT whenever you're in DIGU / DIGL, even if the toggle is on, and re-enables it when you return to a voice mode. The Enabled checkbox is therefore your voice-mode intent; you don't have to remember to flip it for digital.

PHROT and wide / ESSB audio (4–10 kHz)

Phase rotation is tuned around the voice fundamental range (its corner is down in the low hundreds of Hz), where speech asymmetry actually lives — so most of its peak-flattening benefit is in the low end regardless of how wide your TX filter is opened. On a communications-grade wide passband it still earns its keep: more average talk power without raising your peak/ALC ceiling, which is exactly what cuts through on a busy band.

On high-fidelity ESSB (wide, natural-sounding audio for its own sake) the trade-off flips for many operators. PHROT is an all-pass network, so it imposes frequency-dependent group delay across the band; on a 4–10 kHz passband that can smear transients and take the "natural" edge off the audio that the wide filter was opened to capture. ESSB-focused stations commonly leave PHROT off and lean on the multiband processor / leveler / careful gain staging instead, reserving PHROT for when punch matters more than fidelity. Because it's a single toggle, the honest answer is to A/B it on your voice and your passband — keep it on if it sounds punchier, turn it off if it muddies your wide audio.

AM Carrier (AM / SAM modulation)

AM and SAM are double-sideband-with-carrier modes — they put a steady carrier on the air plus your audio in both sidebands. This control sets how much power goes into that carrier, as a percent of the standard AM carrier:

Setting Meaning
100 % (default) Standard full-carrier AM. The carrier sits at one quarter of your peak (PEP) power — on 100 % modulation peaks the envelope swings up to full power, the textbook AM relationship.
< 100 % Reduced / controlled carrier — softens the carrier and puts relatively more of your power into the sidebands (talk power / efficiency). Many AM operators run 40–85 % here.
0 % Suppressed carrier (DSB-like).

The percent is a power ratio (it maps to the modulator coefficient as √(pct/100) × 0.5), so the number tracks carrier power linearly and "100 %" is the standard carrier. The control affects AM and SAM only — DSB is always suppressed-carrier, and FM / SSB / CW ignore it, so you can leave it set and it only bites when you key an AM/SAM signal. The value persists across sessions.

Carrier vs PEP: at 100 % (standard AM) the carrier amplitude is half the peak envelope amplitude, so carrier power = 25 % of PEP. On a rig rated for 100 W PEP that's a ~25 W carrier, with the sidebands swinging the envelope toward 100 W on modulation peaks.

FM (deviation & CTCSS)

FM transmit has two operator knobs in Settings → TX → FM. Both affect FM only — they're inert in SSB / AM / CW, so you can set them and they only bite when you key FM. Both persist across sessions.

Setting Default What it does
Deviation 5.0 kHz Peak FM deviation. The spin box flags the two standard presets — 5.0 kHz — Wide (US) and 2.5 kHz — Narrow (US/EU) — and reads plain kHz at any other value. Too much deviation splatters into adjacent channels; too little sounds weak and quiet.
CTCSS sub-tone Off Transmit a sub-audible CTCSS tone to open a tone-protected FM repeater. Tick enable and pick your repeater's tone from the standard list (67.0–254.1 Hz). Leave it off for simplex.

Deviation by region (rule of thumb — match your band plan / the repeater):

Region / use Deviation
US ham FM (10 m / 6 m / VHF–UHF, wide) 5.0 kHz (≈16 kHz channel)
US narrowband 2.5 kHz
Much of Europe & elsewhere 2.5 kHz narrow is the common norm (some use 3.0 kHz)

When in doubt, match what the repeater or local band plan specifies — running wide into a narrow channel splatters your neighbours; running narrow where everyone else is wide makes you sound quiet and distant.

CTCSS is a transmit sub-tone only (Lyra sends the access tone; it doesn't decode incoming tones). If you can hear a repeater but can't bring it up, the tone is the usual culprit — set it to the repeater's published CTCSS / "PL" frequency.

HL2 FM is 10 m / 6 m. On a bare Hermes Lite 2/2+ (no transverter), FM lives on 29.5–29.7 MHz (10 m) and the 6 m FM segment. CTCSS only matters when you're working a tone-protected repeater there.

ATT on TX (RX-ADC protection)

While you transmit, your own TX carrier couples back into the receiver. Without protection it can drive the RX front-end ADC into overload — the panadapter goes wide / off-scale and the S-meter pegs on key-down. ATT on TX forces the HL2 step attenuator (drives the AD9866 RX LNA to minimum gain) for the duration of every transmission, then restores your RX setting on key-up. This mirrors the reference's Setup → General → Ant/Filters → "ATT on Tx" + "ATT: 31".

Knob Default What it controls
Enabled ON Master ATT-on-TX. Default ON (the reference HL2 working posture). Turning it OFF removes RX-ADC protection during TX — only do so for a specific reason.
ATT 31 dB Step-attenuator value forced on the RX front end while transmitting. 31 dB = maximum attenuation (LNA to minimum gain) = strongest protection and the reference default. Range 0..31. Effective only when Enabled.

Front-panel "ATT" lamp. The TX panel shows a live ATT lamp (in the gap between the Mic and Tune sliders) so you can see the protection state at a glance:

  • gray ATT off — disabled.
  • orange ATT 31 — enabled + armed (on RX): the value it will apply on key-down.
  • red ATT -31 — engaged (keyed): the attenuation now applied to the front end.

Click the lamp to toggle ATT-on-TX (same control as the Settings checkbox). The lamp snaps orange → red on key-down — your visible confirmation that the front end is protected. (Note: the LNA gain readout itself keeps showing your RX setpoint — the ATT lamp is the TX-state indicator, not the LNA number.)

External TX Inhibit (lock out all transmit)

A hard safety lockout for when sensitive gear — a second receiver / SDR, a scope, a spectrum analyser — shares your antenna or bench and you must be sure the radio can't key while it's connected. Tick Settings → TX → External TX Inhibit and the radio cannot transmit by any means: MOX, foot switch / hand-mic PTT, CW, Tune, and TCI are all blocked at the source. Engaging it while you're transmitting drops you straight to receive.

  • It lives in Settings → TX on purpose — not a one-click front-panel button — so an accidental click can't release it; you must open the dialog to turn it back off.
  • It is remembered across restarts (fail-safe): leave it on and it stays on until you consciously clear it.
  • While it's active a red ⛔ TX INHIBIT badge shows in the top toolbar so you always know why keying is dead.

SWR protection & TX power limiting

Two operator-set guards that protect your PA / finals and a downstream amplifier. Both live in Settings → TX (the safety column, next to ATT-on-TX); SWR protection also has a front-panel PROT lamp on the TX panel.

SWR protection (auto-cut / fold on high reflected power). While you transmit, Lyra watches forward/reflected power and acts if the SWR stays above your limit — protection against a bad antenna, a disconnected feedline, or an ATU that didn't latch. It's deliberately hard to false-trigger: a key-down blanking window skips the T/R + ALC settle, forward/reflected power floors ignore the low-power regime where the ratio is just noise, and the over-limit condition must persist for a short dwell before it acts. The SWR reading is calibration-free (it's a power ratio), so it works without the PWR-meter calibration. After it acts it latches — re-key (MOX or TUN) to resume once you've fixed the antenna; it never recovers on its own while keyed.

Knob Default What it controls
Enabled ON Master SWR protection.
Limit 5 : 1 SWR at/above which it acts once sustained. 5:1 is conservative — most antennas run under 3:1. Range 1.5..10:1.
On high SWR Cut TX Cut TX unkeys immediately (safest). Fold back power halves TX drive in steps to try to bring the SWR down while staying on the air, escalating to a hard cut if it reaches the fold floor and the SWR is still over the limit.
Fold floor 10 % Lowest TX drive the Fold action steps down to before it gives up and cuts. Used only with the Fold action.
Protect during tune (TUN) ON Whether the SWR cut also applies to a deliberate ATU tune carrier.

Front-panel "PROT" lamp (TX panel, next to the ATT lamp):

  • gray PROT off — disabled.
  • green PROT — enabled + armed (watching reflected power).
  • red SWR x.x:1 — it acted (cut or folded): the latched ratio that tripped it. With Fold, the live TX Drive % readout shows the reduced level. Re-key to reset. Click the lamp to toggle enable.

Max TX drive (drive cap). A hard ceiling on TX drive % — your drive slider, the TUN tune drive, a recalled per-band drive, and TCI DRIVE commands are all clamped to it. This is the always-safe way to protect a low-drive amplifier whose input can't take the HL2's full output: a pure preventive clamp — it never cuts or trips, it just won't let drive exceed the ceiling, and it needs no telemetry or calibration. 100 % = no cap (the default). Lowering it re-clamps the current drive down immediately; raising it leaves the current drive where it is (drive back up yourself to use the new headroom).

TR Sequencing + Amplitude Envelope (timing knobs below)

Seven operator-tunable knobs that control the timing of the MOX → RF edges and the amplitude shape of the TX I/Q at the start and end of every keying event. All values are in milliseconds; live- apply (changes take effect on the next MOX edge — no restart, no MOX cycle required). Persisted across Lyra restarts.

TR Sequencing (PTT → wire-MOX → RF timing)

Four scheduling knobs. They unwind in this order on every keying event:

Knob Default What it controls
MOX Delay 15 ms From operator-PTT (your click / space-bar / TUN) to the wire-MOX bit going hot. Gives the RX-protect step-attenuator + external filter-board relays a window to settle into TX configuration before RF appears.
RF Delay ⚠ 50 ms From wire-MOX hot to the "RF settled" edge (when actual RF appears on the antenna). This is the hot-switch protection window for external SS linears — their T/R relay needs typically 30–50 ms to settle. The default is bench-safe for typical 1 kW SS HF linears. Reducing this below your amp's T/R settle spec can destroy the PA.
Space MOX Delay 13 ms Keyup re-key window: the time between operator-keyup and the wire-MOX bit clearing. Allows a mic-clip / CW-dot-tail re-key in this window to collapse-stay-TX (no on-the-air drop, no extra T/R cycle). Also sets the upper bound on Fade-Out Duration below — fade-out must fit inside this window or it gets truncated at MOX-clear.
PTT-Out Delay 5 ms Final cleanup window after wire-MOX clears — before step-att restores, OC pattern flips back to RX, and moxActive emits false. Lets external relays finish switching back before the RX front-end re-opens.
TX-Stop Delay 10 ms In-flight UDP datagram clear window. Time between the TX-DSP channel stopping (blocking flush) and the wire MOX bit clearing on keyup. UDP datagrams already-sent (or sitting in your OS network buffer) carrying MOX=1 + non-zero TX I/Q need this window to actually reach + be processed by the HL2 BEFORE the wire MOX state flips — otherwise the gateware could see momentary MOX=0 with stale TX I/Q from a previous datagram. Default 10 ms matches the verified-reference value. Reduce only on a very low-latency NIC + LAN where you're confident no datagrams sit in OS buffer.

Amplitude Envelope (cos² fade on TX I/Q)

Two knobs that shape the amplitude of the TX I/Q at the EP2 wire-pack stage. The shape is a cos² half-cycle (raised cosine — smooth, no high-frequency content, the gold-standard envelope for PTT-onset shaping).

Knob Default What it controls
Fade-In Duration ⚠ 50 ms The cos² ramp from zero to full amplitude at keydown. Belt-and-suspenders amp protection — even if RF Delay is right, the soft amplitude rise INSIDE the RF Delay window adds redundant protection against any residual MOX-bit / relay timing skew. Default matches the default RF Delay so the ramp completes exactly when "RF settled" fires. Reducing this without knowing your amp's switching behaviour can expose the PA to hot-switch transients.
Fade-Out Duration 13 ms The cos² ramp from full amplitude to zero at keyup. Must fit inside Space MOX Delay above — the gateware DAC stops consuming TX I/Q the instant wire-MOX clears, so a fade-out longer than Space MOX Delay gets truncated mid-ramp (audible click). RF going DOWN doesn't damage amps (the relay disengages cleanly), so this is shorter than Fade-In — purely click-prevention.

The asymmetric default (50 ms in / 13 ms out) reflects the asymmetric risk: RF coming UP into a still-switching relay can destroy amps; RF coming DOWN cannot.

Restore hot-switch-safe defaults

A single button that resets all seven values to 15 / 50 / 13 / 5 / 50 / 13 / 10 ms — the bench-validated profile that's safe for typical 1 kW SS HF linears (and reference-faithful for the in-flight UDP datagram clear). Use it any time you've experimented with values and want a known-good starting point.

The two layers compose into one "clean PTT onset" story. The TR-sequencing values control scheduling of the MOX → step-att → RF → cleanup edges; the amplitude envelope shapes the I/Q amplitude itself. At defaults the fade-in completes exactly when "RF settled" fires (50 ms after wire-MOX hot), and the fade-out completes exactly when wire-MOX clears (13 ms after operator-keyup).

Live-apply behaviour: changes take effect on the next MOX edge, not the in-flight one. If you change a value while the radio is keyed, the in-flight transition finishes at the prior rate; the new value applies at the next keydown or keyup. So you can A/B values mid-session by changing then re-keying — no MOX cycle, no app restart.

Tune drive (what the TUN button keys at)

A 3-way Tune drive picker decides the power the TUN button uses when you key it, plus the two values it can draw from:

Mode TUN keys at
Use TX Drive slider your live TX Drive % — same as a normal transmit (the classic behaviour).
Use Tune slider the separate Tune slider % below — a per-band, live-adjustable level (remembered per band, and also shown inline on the TX panel while armed).
Use fixed drive the Fixed drive % below — one value, the same on every band, ignored sliders.

In the two non-slider modes Lyra stashes your TX Drive on key-down and restores it when you un-key, so tuning at a safe low power never disturbs your voice-TX setting. Only the spinner the active mode uses is enabled.

TUN can never exceed your Max TX drive. Both the Tune and Fixed spinners are capped at your Max TX drive ceiling (Settings → TX), and the wire enforces the same ceiling on every drive write regardless — so a tune level can never overdrive past the maximum you've set. The typical workflow: set a low tune level (e.g. 25 % into a dummy / tuner) and a higher voice-TX drive, and TUN tunes safe while your QSO drive is untouched.

Settings → Network (TCI)

TCI (Transceiver Control Interface, the Expert Electronics protocol) lets logging, cluster, and digital-mode programs drive Lyra over your local network — set frequency, mode, and filter; read your current state; and pull DX-cluster spots onto the panadapter. SDRLogger+, Log4OM, N1MM, WSJT-X and others speak it.

Lyra runs a TCI server; the other program connects to it as a client.

  • Bind address — which network interface to listen on. Leave blank / 0.0.0.0 to accept connections from any interface (e.g. another PC on your LAN); use 127.0.0.1 to allow only programs on this same PC.
  • Port — the TCI listening port (default 50001, the Expert default). Match this in your logger's TCI settings.
  • Rate limit — minimum gap between repeated broadcasts of the same value, to avoid flooding a client during fast tuning.
  • Send full state to clients on connect — push the current frequency/mode/filter the moment a client connects, so it starts in sync.
  • Add "CW" to the modulations list (CWL/CWU alias) — some clients only understand a bare CW; enable this so they can select it.
  • Emulate ExpertSDR3 / Emulate SunSDR2 PRO — report an Expert protocol/device name. Enable these only if a client refuses to talk to Lyra unless it sees a SunSDR/ExpertSDR rig.
  • TCI server running — the master on/off. When on, the header shows the ● TCI indicator (green with a client count, amber when idle).

Audio / IQ streaming is automatic: if a connected client asks for an audio or IQ stream, Lyra sends it the receiver audio (or raw I/Q) as TCI binary frames — no extra toggle needed. Lyra advertises the audio format (48 kHz / float32 / stereo / 2048-sample frames / 50 ms TX-buffer hint) at connect so the client decoder configures itself correctly the moment it attaches.

RX2 over TCI is deferred until Lyra has a second receiver. Today the server advertises a single channel.

CW keying over TCI

A TCI logging or contest program can key CW through Lyra — it sends the text, Lyra's keyer generates the Morse and the radio puts it on the air (the same path the on-screen CW Console uses). Lyra implements the Expert Electronics TCI CW commands:

  • cw_macros — send a plain message ("CQ TEST DE N8SDR"), the everyday "send this text" command.
  • cw_msg — the contest exchange as prefix / callsign / suffix (e.g. TU / N8SDR / 599 004), with $N to repeat the callsign.
  • cw_macros_speed — set the keying speed (WPM); a bare query reads it back.
  • cw_macros_stop — abort the current send immediately.

Keying only happens in CWU/CWL (in any other mode the commands are ignored). Set your logger's TCI keyer to Lyra and it sends straight through. SDRLogger+, N1MM and similar work this way.

Digital modes over TCI (FT8 / FT4 / MSK144 / Q65 / etc.)

Lyra is a fully bidirectional TCI partner for the digital-modes clients operators already use — MSHV, JTDX, WSJT-X and similar. The client both receives Lyra's RX audio over TCI and sends its modulator audio back over TCI for Lyra to transmit; no VAC, no virtual cables, no host-side sound card needed.

One-time setup:

  1. Settings → Network (TCI) — make sure the server is running and the port matches what your digital-modes client expects (default 50001).
  2. Settings → TX → Mic + ALC → Mic source — pick TCI. This routes the digital-mode client's audio into Lyra's TX chain in place of the hand-mic. (The client can also auto-select TCI by sending a TRX:0,true,tci command — supported, but having the picker on TCI means manual TUNE buttons in the client also work.)
  3. In the client (MSHV / WSJT-X / JTDX) configure: TCI server 127.0.0.1:50001, sample rate 48 kHz, block size 2048, buffering 50 ms. Most clients set these defaults out of the box; just confirm.

Operating flow:

  • The client tunes Lyra's VFO and sets the mode (typically DIGU for FT8 on the standard 14.074 / 7.074 / 21.074 / … MHz dial frequencies).
  • RX audio streams to the client continuously; its waterfall decodes the band exactly as if the client were attached to a Thetis-class radio.
  • When the client wants to transmit, it sends a TRX-on command. Lyra engages MOX, the client's modulator audio is fed through the WDSP TXA chain (with your TX mic gain, ALC, leveler, TX bandpass, and any EQ active), and onto the HL2 wire. At keyup the client sends TRX-off; Lyra returns to RX.
  • The Mic gain slider on the TX panel still applies to TCI audio — the same chain handles voice and digital. Profiles now save mic gain (and the TCI gains), so you can keep an SSB-voice profile and an FT8/MSHV digital profile each with their own trim and bind them per mode family — switching mode then recalls the right trim automatically.

Dedicated TCI-only gain sliders (Settings → Network → TCI server group). Two independent ±dB knobs sized for the common digital-mode mismatches, so you can dial the TCI path without disturbing your voice mic gain:

  • RX-out gain (−40 … +10 dB, default 0 dB = unity) — attenuates or boosts the audio Lyra sends to TCI clients. Drop this if MSHV / JTDX / WSJT-X show an unusably hot waterfall and the client-side RX gain slider isn't bringing it down enough. 0 dB = byte-identical to Lyra's RX level. Takes effect at the next emitted audio packet (~43 ms at 48 kHz / 2048-sample frames).
  • TX-in gain (−40 … +10 dB, default 0 dB = unity) — attenuates or boosts the TX audio Lyra receives from the client before it hits the WDSP TXA chain. Drop this if your client outputs audio hotter than Lyra's ALC handles gracefully (the common case — digital-mode software often sends near full-scale by default and overdrives Lyra's TXA limiter slightly). Boost it for an unusually quiet client. 0 dB = byte-identical to the client's stream level. Takes effect at the next received audio packet.

Both sliders are the live, always-available adjustment. The TCI RX and TX gains are also saved in profiles, so you can store balanced ESSB-voice and digital setups and recall them — manually or via per-mode-family auto-recall — instead of retouching the gains every time you switch.

Troubleshooting:

  • MOX engages but the client says "no audio" — confirm Mic source = TCI on Settings → TX → Mic + ALC; without it Lyra processes audio from the configured hand-mic source while the client's audio gets dropped.
  • Client RX waterfall looks unusably hot — Lyra advertises the format at connect so the client's RX gain slider should land in a sensible position. If your client doesn't honour the advertised parameters, drop Settings → Network → RX-out gain (Lyra side, works for all clients at once) or the client's own RX gain slider until the waterfall sits in the normal −20 to −10 dB range.
  • MSHV / JTDX TX overdrives Lyra's ALC — drop Settings → Network → TX-in gain by 3-6 dB (the client's modulator is louder than Lyra's TXA chain wants by default). Watch the MIC and ALC bars on the multimeter while keying — MIC should peak around −10 to −6 dBFS with ALC barely budging.
  • You're transmitting but nobody's decoding you (no PSKReporter spots) — usually means a frequency / band / power issue on the station side (wrong dial, antenna fault, low drive). Check the external watt-meter, confirm the band is open, and try a known-good digital-mode sked partner. The TCI audio path itself is verified reference-faithful end-to-end.

Digital modes over VAC (Virtual Audio Cable)

If you'd rather wire audio the classic way — through a Virtual Audio Cable instead of over TCI — Lyra has a built-in VAC path. This suits clients you prefer to run by soundcard, or any setup where TCI handles control (PTT, CAT, frequency, band) while the audio rides a cable. That's the recommended split for MSHV: let TCI key the radio and follow the band, and route the audio over VAC.

VAC carries audio only — it does not key the radio. Keying still comes from TCI (or CAT). TCI control and TCI audio are independent; using TCI to PTT does not mean you're using TCI audio.

You need two cables (e.g. VB-Audio "CABLE" + "CABLE-B", or VAC's "Line 1" + "Line 2") — one for each direction:

Direction Lyra side (Settings → Audio → VAC1) Client side
RX (decode) Output device = cable A (e.g. Line 1) Input = cable A
TX (transmit) Input device = cable B (e.g. Line 2) Output = cable B

Setup:

  1. Settings → Audio → VAC1 — tick Enable (or Auto-enable for digital so it follows DIGU/DIGL), set the Output device to the cable your client reads (RX), and the Input device to the cable your client writes (TX). Leave RX/TX gain at the defaults to start (0 dB / +3 dB). The status log shows [vac1] LIVE: out='…' | in='…' when it's up — if in='(none)', no input device is selected and TX audio can't reach the radio.
  2. Settings → TX → Mic + ALC → Mic source = "PC Soundcard (VAC1)". This is the step that catches people. Without it the TX chain reads a different source (the codec mic, or TCI) and you get no power out even though everything else looks right.
  3. TCI for control: keep your TCI client connected for PTT/frequency (Settings → Network). In MSHV's audio panel, point Output at the TX cable and Input at the RX cable (the reverse of Lyra), and pick the channel (Left) your cable carries.
  4. Leave the Leveler OFF for digital (see that section).

The fastest fix when a VAC transmit produces no power: check the Mic source — if it's on TCI (e.g. your TCI/voice profile left it there), the TCI side claims the TX-audio path and pulls from an empty TCI stream → silent → no RF. Set it to PC Soundcard (VAC1). Saving a digital/VAC profile (which stores the mic source and the VAC enable) lets you flip the whole setup with one recall instead of toggling these by hand.

DX-cluster spots

When a TCI client (a logger wired to a DX cluster, RBN, or Skimmer) sends spots, Lyra paints them right on the panadapter at each spotted frequency — callsign-tagged, with the spotter's country abbreviation. CW spots are placed allowing for your CW pitch so they sit on the actual signal, not zero-beat. Click a spot to jump there. Controls live in the same Settings → Network tab:

  • Show spots on the panadapter — master on/off for the overlay.
  • Max spots — cap how many are drawn at once.
  • Spot lifetime — how long (in minutes) a spot stays before it ages out.
  • Highlight my callsign when spotted + Highlight colour — draw your spots in a color you pick (default pink/magenta) so they stand out.
  • Pop up a notification when I'm spotted — show a toast (and the header ★ Spotted! badge) when your own callsign is spotted.
  • Re-notify after — how long to wait before notifying again about your callsign, so you're not spammed (set to every time to disable the cooldown).
  • Clear spots now — wipe the current spot list.

Settings → Visuals

Everything that controls how the panadapter looks lives on the Visuals tab of Settings (Ctrl+,). Changes apply live — you see them immediately. Your choices are saved between sessions.

Trace color

How the spectrum trace (the moving signal line) is colored. Pick a mode from the dropdown:

  • Solid color — one fixed color for the whole trace. Choose from the preset color chips, or click Custom color… for any color you like.
  • By signal strength — the trace color changes with how strong each part of the signal is, like a heat map (weak = dark/cool, strong = bright/hot). Pick a palette and a preview strip shows it (weak left, strong right). Choose Custom color… in the palette list to build your own dark-to-bright ramp from a base color.

Spectrum fill

Show fill beneath the trace — fills the area under the signal line with a soft gradient for a richer look. Turn it off for a clean, line-only trace. (You can pick a separate fill color in solid mode.)

Peak markers

Highlights the held peak of each signal across the tuned passband — a running "high-water mark" so you can see the strongest a signal has been. Drive the mode (Off / Live / timed / Hold) and Decay from the Display panel; the look lives here:

  • Show peak markers — master on/off (the Display panel's Peak Hold combo also turns this on when you pick a mode).
  • Style — Line, Dots, or Triangles (default Dots).
  • Show dB — label the strongest few peaks with their level in dB.
  • Colour — the marker color (default warm amber).
  • Decay — fade rate in dB/s for the timed hold modes (the Display panel's Fast/Med/Slow are presets for this).

Peaks are drawn only inside your RX filter passband, so they track the signal you're actually listening to.

Noise-floor line

Show noise-floor line — a dashed reference line at the current noise floor, with an "NF −NN dBFS" label. Handy for judging how far a signal sticks up out of the noise. Pick its Colour (default sage green). On by default.

Trace smoothing

Smooths the trace over time so it's less jittery. 0 = Off (rawest, most responsive); higher values (up to 10) give a calmer trace. This is time-based smoothing — it does not flatten or hide real peaks.

Peak glow

Adds a luminous bloom around strong peaks so they pop off the screen. 0 % = Off; raise it (up to 100 %) for more glow. Costs a little graphics work only when it's on.

Glass sheen

A subtle glassy highlight across the panadapter for the "floating glass" look. 0 % = Off; 20 % is the default. Raise for a stronger sheen.

Gridline brightness

How bright the reference grid lines are, 0 (no grid) to 100 (bright). Default 35.

Frame rate

How many times per second the panadapter redraws, 1–240 fps. Default 60. Higher is smoother but uses more graphics power.

dB range (floor / ceiling)

The exact numbers for the bottom (floor) and top (ceiling) of the signal-strength scale. Most operators just drag the scale on the panadapter edge, but you can type precise values here.

Waterfall dB range (RX and TX)

The waterfall has its own dB floor / ceiling, independent of the spectrum scale above, so you can tune the colour map for detail (a dark waterfall with colours that POP on weak SSB) without changing how the panadapter looks. Four numeric spinboxes plus an Auto switch:

  • Auto-fit the waterfall dB range — tracks the band automatically (noise floor − 15 dB to peak + 15 dB). When on, the four manual rows below gray out. Off = use the floor/ceiling values you set.
  • Waterfall dB — RX floor / RX ceiling — active when MOX is OFF. This is the scale your normal listening uses; drag the waterfall's right-edge during RX and these update automatically. Defaults −120 / −20 dB.
  • Waterfall dB — TX floor / TX ceiling — active when MOX is ON. Separate from the RX pair so a key-down doesn't blow out your carefully-tuned listening scale. Defaults −70 / +30 dB, which frame a clean TX-tone line at typical HL2 drive levels (matching the reference's TX-side waterfall convention). Drag the waterfall's right-edge during MOX to tune from the panadapter instead — the spinboxes follow the drag live.

The RX and TX backings live on separate QSettings keys, so each pair persists independently across sessions; existing operators who already tuned their RX waterfall keep their settings on the same keys (no upgrade migration needed).

The MOX edge switches which pair is live instantly — your RX preferences (dark with pop) come back the moment you un-key, and the TX scale snaps in the moment you key. If the live waterfall still looks too hot on TX after first try, drag its right edge down a few dB while keyed (or tighten the TX ceiling spinner) and it'll stick for next time.

Watermark

Show Lyra constellation watermark — a faint Lyra (the lyre / constellation) image with a gently pulsing Vega star, over the panadapter. On by default. Untick to hide it.

Meteors

Occasional "shooting star" streaks that drift across the panadapter — ambient sky-weather, deliberately rare.

  • Show occasional meteor streaks — master on/off (on by default).
  • Meteor frequency — average gap between meteors, 5–120 s (default 30 s). Lower = more frequent.
  • Gold fireballs — percent chance a meteor is a warm-gold "fireball" instead of cool blue, 0–100 % (default 15 %).

Graphics backend

Advanced — restart to apply. Which graphics engine Lyra renders with. Leave it on Auto (recommended) — on Windows that's Direct3D 11, the most compatible. Vulkan / D3D12 / D3D11 / OpenGL can be forced if you know your card prefers one. (If panels ever fail to draw or crash when you drag them, set this to Direct3D 11 or Auto and restart.) This setting stays on the machine — it isn't carried in an exported profile.

Settings → Weather

Configure the weather alerts here. Nothing runs until you accept the disclaimer and tick Enable.

  • Disclaimer — tick to acknowledge the alerts are advisory only; this unlocks Enable weather alerts.
  • Sources (enable any combination):
    • Blitzortung — global lightning network, free, no key. Uses your location.
    • NWS / weather.gov — US wind + severe-storm alerts, free, no key.
    • NWS METAR — live wind from a nearby station (set its ICAO below).
    • Ambient Weather — your own station (needs API + Application keys).
    • Ecowitt — your own station (needs Application key + API key + the gateway MAC).
  • Thresholds:
    • Lightning range — how far out to consider strikes (shown in your chosen distance unit).
    • Wind sustained ≥ / gust ≥ — the speeds (mph) that raise the wind tier.
    • METAR station — the ICAO id (e.g. KTOL) for live wind.
    • Distance unit — Miles or Kilometres (also used by the ⚡ badge).
  • Notifications:
    • Desktop notification on alert — a system pop-up on a new alert.
    • Audible chime on alert — a beep on a new alert.
    • Send test alert — lights the badges + fires one notification for a few seconds so you can check it all works.
  • Station API credentials — Ambient API/Application keys, Ecowitt Application/API keys, and Ecowitt gateway MAC (only needed for those sources).

Remember to set your location in Settings → Hardware → Operator / Station — without it, the location-based sources can't tell what's nearby.

Credits and References

Lyra is a native C++23 / Qt 6 / Vulkan rebuild written from scratch by Rick Langford (N8SDR). The projects, documents, and conventions below were studied for ideas, ballistics, and protocol structure while building it. No source code was copied — each is referenced as "how the standard idiom works," and Lyra implements each idea natively in C++.

Inspiration and references (studied, not copied)

  • Thetis SDR (openHPSDR) — primary reference for HPSDR Protocol 1 wire format, TX-chain ordering, meter ballistics, ATT-on-TX policy, TR-sequencing conventions, AAmixer routing.
  • openHPSDR project — HPSDR Protocol 1 / 2 specifications, the authoritative wire-protocol documents.
  • PowerSDR — Thetis's predecessor; convention provenance for many UI idioms (per-mode bandwidth memory, AGC profiles, etc.).
  • HermesLite 2 wiki + ak4951v4 gateware (RTL) — the gateware- designer's authoritative register documentation, plus the Verilog source of the operator's specific HL2+ variant. The RTL is the ground-truth source for EP6 telemetry slot decoding, PA-enable mechanism, and TX-I/Q wire gating on the AK4951 gateware revision.
  • pihpsdr — cross-reference for HL2 PA-enable bit, TX-drive nibble, and the generic Protocol-1 HL2 wire path.
  • Quisk — cross-reference for HermesLite hardware register conventions (hermes/quisk_hardware.py).
  • linHPSDR — additional cross-reference for the Protocol-1 HL2 wire path (protocol1.c).
  • EESDR V3 — UI convention reference and the public TCI (Transceiver Control Interface) protocol specification that Lyra implements against.
  • Behringer X-Air mixer series — operator-supplied screenshots drive the upcoming Lyra-native Combinator + 5-band parametric EQ design (lands in v0.2.1). The X-Air's multiband compressor + EQ behaviour is the reference for Lyra's TX dynamics chain.
  • SparkSDR (binaries only — no source) — referenced for the HL2 push-pull PA bias procedure documentation.
  • Lyra (Python predecessor) — the author's earlier PySide6 SDR application. Several Lyra-cpp modules (band table, band-plan data, open-collector pin tables, grid-square math, frequency-display widget) are explicit ports from the Python predecessor — same author, same project lineage, internal port.

Lyra's source tree intentionally keeps these names out of code, comments, commits, and operator-visible UI strings (the "no-attribution rule"): the references inform the design, but every line of Lyra is Lyra-native C++. This Credits section is the single operator-facing place that names them, openly and once.

Licensed components (GPL v3+)

Lyra is GPL v3 or later and is therefore license-compatible with the GPL-licensed components it depends on:

  • WDSP — DSP engine by Warren Pratt (NR0V). GPL v3+. Lyra links to the WDSP shared library (wdsp.dll + FFTW companions) and calls its public C API through C++ wrappers. No source modifications. WDSP powers the RXA chain (noise reduction, AGC, bandpass, demod) and the TXA chain (modulator, ALC, leveler, bandpass, future EQ/compressor).
  • TCI protocol (Transceiver Control Interface) — public specification from Expert Electronics (EESDR). Lyra implements a TCI server compatible with the v1.9 / v2.0 spec so external logging / cluster / digital-modes software (SDRLogger+, any TCI-aware client) can drive Lyra.
  • WDSP FFTW (Fastest Fourier Transform in the West) — GPL. Used by WDSP internally; bundled as libfftw3-3.dll / libfftw3f-3.dll. Lyra's first-launch FFTW WISDOM build optimises FFT plans for the host CPU and caches them under %APPDATA%\Lyra\fftw\.

Contributors

  • Rick Langford (N8SDR) — project lead, architecture, all code.
  • Brent Crier (N9BC) — co-contributor (joined during v0.0.9.1 testing on the Python predecessor; continues into the C++ rebuild).
  • Timmy Davis (KC8TYK) — tester (v0.1 tester flight).
  • W5UDX — DSP2024P Plate Reverb presets and verification (lands with the Plate Reverb in v0.2.1).

License

GPL v3 or later. Source repository: github.com/N8SDR1/Lyra-SDR-cpp. Full license text: LICENSE / NOTICE.md in the source tree. See the About Lyra dialog (Help → About Lyra…) for the version

  • build date of the running binary.

Support Lyra — buy the developer a coffee ☕

Lyra is free, open-source (GPL v3 or later — see the License), and primarily built by Rick Langford (N8SDR) in his spare time, with Brent Crier (N9BC) joining as co-contributor during early testing and Timmy Davis (KC8TYK) joining for the v0.1 tester flight. There are no ads, no telemetry, no subscription tier, no "pro" upsells.

If Lyra has saved you from a clunky SDR workflow, helped you work a new state on FT8, or just makes your shack a little more comfortable, a small donation goes a long way — it pays for the development hardware and keeps the project moving through the long TX-path work still ahead.

☕ Donate via PayPal

Any amount is welcome — $5 buys a coffee, $20 buys a pint at the hamfest, $100 keeps the development bench rolling for a month. You can also reach the donate page any time from Help → About Lyra.

Built by a fellow ham, for the community. Free to use, free to share. A small donation keeps the code flowing. 73 de N8SDR.

Last updated as features ship. Sections are added when their feature lands — see the maintainer note at the top.

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