Greetings, I'm a first time user of gnuradio. Kudos to the developers, it only took me about a day to build gnuradio + gr-osmosdr (for my el-cheapo rtl2832 dongle) from source, including getting a basic FM broadcast receiver sort-of running. Host Ubuntu 14.04 on a very fast Dell 8-core server platform.
I've prototyped an FM receiver as described in the tutorial at the bottom of this page:
However, when I run it, and set the center frequency to a close-by FM station, although I can hear actual broadcast audio snippets, meaning that it's actually receiving a coherent signal, it is very choppy, with audio snippets being played in a very choppy, almost rhythmic fashion. The console window on gnuradio-companion shows a continuous series of aUaUaU, etc.
I'm guessing this might be an underrun situation somewhere, but that is speculation. I'm using parameters provided by the tutorial including a sample rate 250K. I've tried moving the sample rate around, but without much improvement. Dropping it down significantly destroys all hints of intelligence in the signal ;) Am I overtaxing the capabilities of this rtl-sdr dongle?
I have a reasonable (and growing) understand of the core concepts, but could use some help on the learning curve.
Any advice appreciated.
-Chris
--
Life is like Linux - it never stands still.