[Elecraft] Use of external speakers/amp

[Mike Harris]

G'day,

All this high quality digital audio is encoded and decoded in a 
clean background, high S/N ratio environment.  Seven and eight bit 
coded telephony has a surprising quality but there again the 
background noise is low.  I have long had the feeling that signals 
in the presence of noise just don't work so well.

Certainly a lot of magic can be accomplished in DSP.  Is it the 
answer to life the universe and everything, I feel the jury is still 
out.  There is a danger of falling for the digital hype, if it's 
digital it must be better.  Unfortunately what we get is a steady 
erosion of quality in the name of progress.  Good analogue design is 
an art but once built a particular design is set in stone compared 
to pushing bits and doing math.  Much of the good stuff in the K3 is 
still in the analogue domain.

Regards,

Mike VP8NO


> Some DSP based receivers are capable of producing great audio.
> Consider that CD audio is an implementation of DSP.  How close to 
> CD
> quality any practical receiver can come depends on the sampling 
> rates
> and the number of bits in the A-D and D-A conversions.