[Elecraft] Hearing aids and K3

[Fred Jensen]

That's exactly what I did, on the advice of the below quoted author, and 
it is very effective.  Admittedly, my hearing is probably worse than 
many, and I'd gladly take a few more dB of equalization, but what the K3 
provides is free [not counting the cost of the K3 :-)] and it does work. 
  Just go slowly when working with it.  I was pretty much giving up on 
it until Jim counseled me, "One change at a time, try it out under 
varying conditions."  I keep a station journal [separate from my log] 
with notes and things, I used it to record my subjective results and the 
settings I made.

I don't think an external equalizer is any easier to adjust than the K3 
internal one, it just may give you more gain.  At some point, more gain 
becomes a non-starter, my Heil headphones or the speaker start to overload.

73,

Fred K6DGW
- Northern California Contest Club
- CU in the 2013 Cal QSO Party 5-6 Oct 2013
- www.cqp.org

On 8/9/2013 4:35 PM, Jim Brown wrote:

> The RXEQ built into the K3 is capable of about 36 dB of combined high
> frequency boost and low frequency cut.  This won't be enough to
> compensate for really severe hearing loss, but it can an effective
> solution for the majority of folks. As a starting point, set the four
> lowest bands to maximum cut, leave the fifth band at zero, and the
> remaining bands gradually increasing in boost until it sounds good to
> you. Those with more serious loss will usually want boost be greater on
> those higher bands. The most important octave for speech is 2 kHz, 1 kHz
> is next, then 4 kHz. So with severe hearing loss, you will generally
> want the top three bands up full.
>
> I would do this before I would consider an external equalizer.