[Elecraft] K3 Mic adjustment - How not to do it. :<)

[Bob - W0GI]

Well K3 number 3903 has been online for 12 days now. I bought it mostly for
CW and digital, but a few days ago, I figured I should wire up a mic. So
since I have a few Yaesu hand mics, I rewired the 8-pin plug for the K3.

That worked fine, but setting the EQ has been a nightmare. Monitoring from
the K3 headphone jack and the receive on the Mark-V sounded weird, like it
was through DSP noise reduction. I tried other dynamic mics in the rear
panel and still, just a strange hollow sound.

Tonight, I decided to make an MP3 recording to send to Elecraft tomorrow, to
see what is wrong with my otherwise perfect K3. Guess what, nothing is
wrong? It sounds normal.

Now I realize that there is a small delay as the audio is run through the
ADC, DSP, then DAC. It is only a few milliseconds, but when the headphone
audio is mixed with your actual voice through bone conduction to the
eardrums, you have a weird audio effect that is not true to the actual
sound. The EQ is also impossible to adjust properly. My on the air reports
were not good, as I had way too much high end EQ set to counter the lows
from bone conduction.

So my conclusion is that the only way to do it right, is to transmit to a
seperate receiver that is feeding audio into a soundcard. Record the audio,
then play it back.

This effect doesn't seem as significant with an analog (no delay) audio
chain, but I bet I can get the Mark-V sounding better by recording reception
of the Mark-V on the K3. 

Maybe I can get on the Elecraft SSB net next Sunday to see if this all
works. :>)

Hope this makes some sense, and helps others with audio setup.

73 - Bob 



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