Theremino MCA or Beqmoni ?

[Sebastien_billard]

Hi ! I would like to have your opinions on those two MCA softwares : Theremino MCA and Beqmoni. Which has your preference and why ?

Personnaly I am more familiar with Theremino.

What I like :

- The easiness of the user interface
- The radionucléide librairy and the possibility of presets that activate many rays in one click
- The customizable smoothing of spectrums
- The customizable X and Y scales (you can even change log value)
- The automatic centering of cursor on peaks with right clic

What I don't like :

- The energy equalizer that is quite powerful but tricky to use

I also recently discoverd Becqmoni.

What I like :

- Easiness of calibration, but it is less powerful IMHO than Theremino
- Smoothing of spectrum
- The better looking spectrums

What I don't like :

- The totally obscure settings for pulse analysis
- The lack of documentation
- The lack of radionucleide librairy (you have to type your own) and the lack of presets.

And you ?

[pilgrim]

I agree with you about Theremino's advantages.
IMHO the main lack is the impossibility to calibrate the spectrum with more than just one energy, besides it needs a "smooth" peak to give you a quite real FWHM.

I've never used Beqmoni but i'd like to start to use these days.

[Sebastien_billard]

Hi Pilgrim, not sure to understand what you mean by "the main lack is the impossibility to calibrate the spectrum with more than just one energy" ?

[pilgrim]

Hi Sebastian,
with Theremino MCA you can only calibrate the spectrum matching just one peak, with its energy, using the energy trimmer.
Other peaks should automatically match with their own energies, but if not, because of the lack of linearity of the system, you couldn't do much.

With PRA instead (with Beqmoni I don't know) you can do the calibration with more peaks.

[Sebastien_billard]

Ok I understand now. But you can still calibrate for other energies in Theremino MCA by using the energy linearizer / equalizer.

[pilgrim]

Yes you can, but if you calibrate using the energy equalizer, the next spectra you will take with other isotopes won't be so linear as the first...

[Sesselmann]

Why not PRA?

PRA is the original MCA software for sound card and in my opinion still the best. Marek listens to requests and releases regular updates, we are now on version 20...

The only thing PRA does not have is isotope identification, otherwise I think it's great.

Steven

[Sebastien_billard]

Well, my last experience with PRA 2 ou 3 years ago was not a good experience. Setting are obscure and the user interface is a pain in th ***. I hate the multiple Windows. For me using PRA is like having to use a linux distribution and battling with settings when a Windows OS is immediately usable. It is for engineeers IMHO, not user. I might give it a new try though, perhaps things have changed since. But it should produce sensibly better spectrums for me to keep using it.

Or is there an additionnal user-friendly free or open source software that would allow me to play with the spectrums acquired with PRA and to identify radioisotopes ?

[pilgrim]

I agree with you about the multiple windows, but for the rest I think it's a great software, with a professional approach to the pulse analysis and to the spectra.
I suggest you to make yourself use it.

[brehwens]

BeqMoni or PRA. To me they complement each other well and are designed for slightly different purposes. While PRA is an good all-round MCA, BM is designed to do activity calculations.

To me, Theremino is just too many thing that "distort" the spectra, all kinds of strange settings just to get nice spectra, but it adds little of value.