[Elecraft] K3: Voice pitch adjustment on SSB

[Jim Miller]

I didn't think is was LEGAL to transmit music, "tones" or  even whistle for
that matter.

73, de Jim KG0KP

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "O. Johns" <ojohns at metacosmos.org>
To: <Elecraft at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2008 6:41 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
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