[Elecraft] K3: Voice pitch adjustment on SSB

[W6NEK]

Hi Oliver,
How about the NET meets on a specific frequency and everyone tunes to that 
specific frequency.

That will work too,
Frank - W6NEK

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "O. Johns" <ojohns at metacosmos.org>
To: <Elecraft at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2008 4:41 PM
Subject: [Elecraft] K3: Voice pitch adjustment on SSB


> Folks,
>
> I read the web pages about ESSB, after seeing on the reflector that  the 
> K3 now supports it.  It struck me that even ESSB doesn't solve one  big 
> issue with voice transmission: PITCH.  Tuning the SSB receiver  changes 
> the overall pitch of the received voice.  Unless you have met  the sending 
> ham or at least talked to him/her on the phone (or on  AM!!), you have no 
> real idea how high- or low-pitched the voice really  is.  One can only 
> guess, and get a sort of feel for what a reasonable  tuning is.
>
> One way to solve this may seem a joke, but it isn't.  Everyone should  buy 
> a little 440 Hz pitch pipe, the kind used to tune musical  instruments. 
> Then, say, the net control could blow his pitch pipe at  the start of the 
> net and all the listeners could blow their little  pitch pipes while 
> listening to net control.  They would all then  adjust their receiver 
> tunings until the pitches matched.  Like a  shortwave orchestra tuning up. 
> (Of course, this might violate the FCC  rule against music on ham radio, 
> but maybe not if the pitch pipe was  near a pure sine wave.  Then the 
> signal transmitted by net control  would be just an ordinary CW signal, 
> but at 440 Hz from the net  control's suppressed carrier.)
>
> A refinement would be to build a pure 440 Hz tone generator into the 
> microphone preamps of radios.  Net control pushes a button while 
> transmitting and it goes out over the air.  The net members push  another 
> button while receiving to produce a 440 Hz tone in their  speakers along 
> with the received signal from net control.  Then the  receiving operators 
> adjust their receiver tuning until the pitches  coincide.  For the tone 
> challenged among us, the receiver tuning could  even be automated, much 
> like the K3 already does for sidetone on CW.
>
> This scheme came to me when I was adjusting the audio parameters on my 
> K2.  I had the K2 running into a dummy load, and was listening to it  on 
> headphones plugged into a TenTec RX320D across the room.  Since the  K2 
> was on a dummy load, I tried whistling and was surprised and  pleased to 
> find that the PITCH of my whistle didn't match the one I  was hearing on 
> the phones.  But I could adjust the RX320D tuning until  they did match. 
> Guarantee of zero beat and realistic pitch in voice  reception.
>
> Doesn't seem that this would be too hard to do.  Maybe the K3 could  even 
> do it in firmware?
>
> 73,
> Oliver Johns W6ODJ