[Elecraft] K3 Filter question - SSB

[Al Lorona]

I'm glad this came up because it is an aspect of filtering that seldom is 
addressed.

Many folks seem to think that you can arbitrarily close down the bandwidth of a 
receiver to eliminate QRM and improve intelligibility. 


1.8 kHz is deemed better than 2.1 kHz, and 1.5 kHz is deemed better than both.

But at some point intelligibility itself suffers because you start to eliminate 
the signal you're trying to copy in the first place.

I for one suffer from a type of listener's fatigue when forced to copy SSB 
signals in anything less than about 2.2 kHz or so. 


Others folks suffer from hearing loss and need to hear as much of the voice 
frequencies as possible. 1.8 kHz just doesn't work for many of these folks.

If you're okay with such narrow bandwidths, more power to you, but you can't 
make blanket statements about them being equally effective for everybody.

As Bill, Dave, and Barry alluded to, the ear-brain filter is the most effective 
of all, and it would do us all good to exercise it more often. The more you use 
it, the better you get at it.



>>  Bill W4ZV wrote:
>>    3. It *WILL* require very careful tuning for intelligibility.