[Elecraft] W2IHY 8 band equalizer and EQ Plus

[Guy Olinger K2AV]

I personally have just as much trouble as anyone else remembering to
think of the K3 as digital.

On Wed, Apr 28, 2010 at 4:03 PM, Lu Romero <lromero at ij.net> wrote:
> Don, I never suggested that this be implemented by an analog
> stage or in an analog fashion.  I dont know where you guys
> are getting that idea!

Other than taking what you said as what you meant?  Tough reading your
mind at this distance. You said:

"...a Pre-DSP two band audio leveler/AGC and handles for Attack, Decay
and Ratio on the RF Clipper."

That is, prior to Digital Signal Processing, or before analog is
converted to digital.

In your headroom explanation, is there a common instance of microphone
ADC saturation that needs to be reported?  That's a pretty
seventh-grade mistake on Wayne's part if it's true.  (Yeah, I know,
the first Hubble lenses, and the unit snafu on the Mars landers, also
very seventh-grade.)

You also said:

"What I was suggesting is an AGC funtion before the RF
Clipping section touches the audio waveform.  Something to
smooth out the dynamic range of the audio input so that the
DSP processing engine would not have to work so hard dealing
with peaks and valleys and can be "let loose" some."

Elecraft is already accomplishing envelope leveling and shaping with
digital functions that don't appear to resemble the sledge and wedge
of RF clipping and AF variable band amplifiers. SOME folks get
excellent results using the K3's leveling and shaping processes for TX
audio.  I would hate to bring up RTFM on setting up K3 mic gain and
compression, but the manual procedure does seem to work.

AND, since there is NO analog audio band circuitry in there anywhere,
BUT there ARE banded TX and RX equalizer functions being done in the
number soup, whose gains are being set by NUMBERS we enter in the
menu, what makes us think he hasn't already done something proprietary
about "banded gain" which he is developing further and is not about to
reveal so the competition can't copy it for free?

My grandchildren are growing up digital.  My having my brain trained
on analog is my problem, certainly not theirs. Grandkids think number
soup and audio that turns analog as close as possible to the speakers
is the good stuff, especially if the last stage is a big tube followed
by a transformer (go figure).

You should have seen the look I got from the oldest one when I asked
him if the audio actually went through all the slide pots on one of
those big digital mixers he was running, the look that says "Please
don't talk like that when my friends are around."

Just a couple of the plentiful opportunities for mental disconnects,
there is no K3 RX AF analog circuit controlled by AF gain.  There is
no K3 RX RF analog circuit controlled by RF gain. The AF and RF pot
settings are immediately turned into "advice" numbers and passed along
to the MCU.

There is a lot of misadventure to be had thinking of the K3 in analog terms.

73, Guy.