[Elecraft] future ham gear and Sound perception

[Charles Harpole]

Future ham gear, given our advancing ages, should include:

-larger and single function buttons for Parkinsons folks, and 

everyone else, too.

-high freq audio boost and eq. and "balance" control to feed

more to one ear than the other.

-footswitch option is easy to add (feet work, hands do not).

-LARGE dial and large clear-contrast print on sw labels.

-Big RTTY/data readout on front pannel for those that can not

hear much anymore or for those whose speech is now impaired.

-Lots of automatic functions for often-repeated items.

Notice now few of these factors are on the K3, sad to say.

73,


Charles Harpole

k4vud at hotmail.com





> From: brian-wb6rqn at lloyd.com
> To: JimMiller at STL-OnLine.Net
> Subject: Re: [Elecraft] Sound perception
> Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2008 20:00:58 +0000
> CC: elecraft at mailman.qth.net
>
> On Nov 4, 2008, at 6:12 PM, Jim Miller wrote:
>
>> IMHO, Sound perception is probably one of the most variable things
>> of all. For instance, MY hearing is 10 dB down up to about 1500 Hz
>> and by 1700 Hz it is 50 dB down for the remainder of the spectrum.
>> I asked the audiologist what was considered totally deaf - she said
>> 70 dB was deaf. (and I thought I could hear just fine, almost,
>> except for my wife (higher frequency and softer voice)and I didn't
>> need to hear her anyway, LOL)
>>
>> Does anyone think the way I adjust my audio would be the same as the
>> way they like it. I doubt it. Trying to answer a question of what
>> is the best for audio for any one person OR situation is virtually
>> impossible.
>>
>> I do use the original Heil headset with the HC4 element and the
>> original Goldline with the HC5 and full-range elements.
>
> Well, there are two parts to this. One is a function of frequency
> response and the other is a function of distortion products. Many of
> us are suffering from varying degrees of hearing loss. I suffer from
> tinnitus (ringing of the ears) which can mask some of the high-
> frequency content from the voice, usually women's voices. (My wife
> occasionally accuses me of selective hearing. :-) Anyway, I do benefit
> from using headphones and providing a bit of a boost to the higher
> frequencies, e.g. starting at around 1KHz with boost increasing to
> around +6dB at 3KHz. You can make this sort of improvement with a
> graphical or parametric equalizer. (I prefer parametric myself but
> they are hard to come by.)
>
> Distortion products typically impart either a "warm, fat sound"; i.e.
> low order, mostly 2nd harmonic; or a "hard, edgy sound"; i.e. high
> order. Either can obscure readability to some extent. One of the
> reasons the old tube rigs were so pleasant to listen to is because
> they had almost no high-order distortion. It was almost all 2nd and a
> touch of 3rd. I could listen to my Hammerlund HQ-180X all day and all
> night very happily with no ear fatigue.
>
> If you suffer from that hard, edgy, fatiguing sound, try stealing the
> signal before it gets to the built-in audio amp and feed it to a good
> hi-fi amp to see what you hear. Get the signal right from the detector
> if you can. It can make a *huge* difference. (My experience is that
> most manufacturers of ham gear really skimp on the quality of the
> audio chain.)
>
> Brian Lloyd
> Granite Bay Montessori School 9330 Sierra College Bl
> brian AT gbmontessori DOT com Roseville, CA 95661
> +1.916.367.2131 (voice) +1.791.912.8170 (fax)
>
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