Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting

No Audio Output

Symptoms: FFT and waterfall render, but no sound from speakers.

Check the log (~/.config/AetherSDR/AetherSDR/aethersdr.log) for:

Log message	Cause	Fix
AudioEngine: output device does not support 24kHz	Sound card doesn't support 24kHz natively	Fixed in v0.4.10 — auto-fallback to 48kHz
No audio device detected	Qt multimedia backend missing	Install gstreamer1.0-pulseaudio or use the AppImage
failed to open audio sink	Audio device busy or misconfigured	Check system audio settings, try a different output

Ubuntu/Debian: Install GStreamer audio plugins:

sudo apt install gstreamer1.0-pulseaudio gstreamer1.0-pipewire

AppImage users: Use v0.4.10+ which bundles all audio plugins.

Empty Audio Device Dropdowns

Symptoms: Settings → Radio Setup → Audio tab shows blank Input/Output dropdowns.

Cause: Qt6 multimedia backend plugin not loaded.

Fix:

• Use the v0.4.10+ AppImage (bundles Qt 6.7 with proper multimedia plugin)
• Or build from source with qt6-multimedia-dev installed

Radio Not Discovered

Symptoms: No radio appears in the Discovered Radios list.

Causes:

• Radio not on the same subnet (UDP broadcast doesn't cross routers)
• Firewall blocking UDP port 4992
• enforce_private_ip_connections=1 on the radio and you're on a different subnet

Fixes:

• Verify the radio's IP is reachable: ping <radio-ip>
• Check firewall: sudo ufw allow 4992/udp
• Use Manual Connection — enter the radio's IP in the Manual Connection section

Waterfall All Red / Wrong Colors

Symptoms: Waterfall displays but colors are wrong (all red, all blue, etc.)

Cause: Multi-Flex issue — AetherSDR is receiving another client's panadapter stream with different dBm scaling.

Fix: This was fixed in v0.2.2+. The app now filters VITA-49 packets by client_handle.

Application Crashes on Launch

Check the log for the crash location. Common causes:

Issue	Fix
error while loading shared libraries: libOpenGL.so.0 (Ubuntu 26.04)	sudo apt install libopengl0 — see below
SEGV in isConnected	Fixed in v0.3.90+ (recursive call bug)
libfftw3-3.dll not found (Windows)	Install FFTW3 or use v0.4.10+ which bundles it
MangoHud crash on exit	Not our bug — disable MangoHud: MANGOHUD=0 ./AetherSDR

Ubuntu 26.04 — missing libOpenGL.so.0

Ubuntu 26.04 LTS no longer pulls in libopengl0 by default for the desktop image. AetherSDR (via Qt6 + QRhi for the GPU spectrum and waterfall) explicitly links against libOpenGL.so.0, so the binary refuses to start with a missing-library error if the package isn't installed.

sudo apt install libopengl0

This is the modern GLVND-split desktop OpenGL runtime, not the legacy libgl1 monolithic library. Both packages can be (and usually are) installed side-by-side; they cover different parts of the OpenGL ABI and don't conflict.

If you're building from source on 26.04, the apt install line in the README already includes libopengl0 so this only bites users who install only the AppImage.

Reported by Glick11 on the FlexRadio community forum.

No FFT After Profile Load

Symptoms: Loading a global profile shows the VFO but FFT/waterfall is blank.

Cause: Panadapter state flags not reset after slice recreation.

Fix: Fixed in v0.3.0+. The app now re-requests panadapter info after profile loads.

SmartLink: Radio Not Listed

Symptoms: Logged into SmartLink but no radio appears.

Causes:

• Radio not registered with SmartLink (register in SmartSDR → Settings → SmartLink Setup)
• Port forwarding not configured (TCP 4994, UDP 4993)
• You're on the same LAN as the radio (SmartLink only lists radios for remote access)

Capturing diagnostics

Before raising a bug, open Help → Support… — it has live log-category toggles, a tail of aethersdr.log, "Open Log Folder" and "File an Issue" buttons (the latter builds a support bundle and copies an AI prompt to your clipboard). See Support and Logging for the full reference, including what each category covers and when to enable it.

Log File Location

The log file is at:

• Linux: ~/.config/AetherSDR/AetherSDR/aethersdr.log
• macOS: ~/Library/Preferences/AetherSDR/AetherSDR/aethersdr.log
• Windows: %APPDATA%/AetherSDR/AetherSDR/aethersdr.log

The log is overwritten on each launch. Share it when reporting bugs (and skim for serials / IPs first — see Support and Logging privacy notes).

Settings File Location

• Linux: ~/.config/AetherSDR/AetherSDR.settings (XML format)
• Delete this file to reset all settings to defaults.