[Elecraft] SSB transmit audio - Where's the punch?

[Jim Brown]

  On 10/4/2010 7:24 PM, Joe Subich, W4TV wrote:
>   >  Could this be alleviated when using a Turner +3 microphone.
>   >    in the case of a soft spoken operator?
>
> Only of the "soft spoken operator" is in a very quiet shack.
> The typical problem is that the operator's voice is barely
> louder than the background noise ... blowers, fans, other
> radios, etc ... and the amplified microphones bring up that
> background noise as much as the operator's voice.

There are several good solutions for background noise, and they can be 
used in combination.

1) ALWAYS work VERY close to the mic, and turn down the mic gain to 
compensate. Sound levels drop by 6dB for each doubling of distance, so 
your voice gets louder while the background noise remains the same.

2) ALWAYS roll off the low frequencies (below about 350 Hz). They 
provide NO useful intelligibility, but contain a lot of the noise (and 
they waste TX power).

3) Use a directional (cardioid) microphone, and speak straight into it. 
A directional mic rejects roughly 6dB of the noise.

4) Use only enough compression so that the compression meter on your rig 
indicates 10dB compression on peaks. Do NOT use your SWR meter to gauge 
compression. Compression "turns up the gain" during the quieter part of 
your speech, so it makes background noise louder.

Dave, AB7E, said:

>I was running and the caller had so much compression that I couldn't
>make out his suffix even after a few tries. I told him to back down the
>mic gain, he did, and he sounded way better.

I have the same problem in every SSB contest. I find that at least one 
third of all callers are so badly overdriven that they are hard to copy. 
And I make a point of telling each of them to turn down their audio to 
make it easier to copy.

73, Jim K9YC