[Elecraft] K2 playing second fiddle to TT Orion?

[Rick Commo]

Yes, a third party measurement could make a difference - we'll just have to
wait and see.

I suspect that the "stiffness" (stiffer is better) receiver in terms of
overload are primarily related to the quality of the front-end/filter/IF/LO
design and components.

My gut feeling is that whether or not DSP is an audio or IF unit it will act
only to degrade what performance is there to start with.  Clearly Eric and
Wayne will have the last say on this matter though; after all this is what
they do for a living!

I think that the more telling story is that two **ham-bands only** rigs are
kicking butt in the receiver performance area.  Bells and whistles are nice
to be sure but a transceiver is an RF device first and a computer last!!
(Note that the "all-band" receiver of the Orion is a sub-receiver - not the
main receiver.)

For a deeper understanding of the last paragraph reads the articles by
Ulrich Rhode and others on strong signal resilient receivers.

Interestingly the noise floor characteristics of the LO are very important;
and this is where the K2 and Orion differs significantly from all the other
rigs.

Then there is the issue of the roofing filter.  With the K2 and Orion it is
at the IF frequency.  With the other rigs it is up over 30 MHz, often around
70Mh or so.  It's very hard to get really good, narrow bandpass
characteristics at those higher frequencies.

Now add the noise floor increase of most DDS type VFO/LO chains (comparative
to the way the K2 and (I suspect - I've not seen the schematic at this
point)) and you have two factors that allow more "junk" into the IF chain.

Cheers,
-ricK7log