[Elecraft] CW Pitch Resolution

[Fred Jensen]

On 10/19/2013 2:36 PM, Al Lorona wrote:

> Changing the pitch probably has more to do with the self-resonant
> frequencies of your speaker enclosures or headphones, and room.

or in my head.  Getting somewhat empty up there as I accumulate 
birthdays, lots of room to create echoes and other artifacts. :-) 
Truthfully, most of my hearing [and a lot of my sense of balance] 
disappeared in one event in my mid-20's and for some reason, I have a 
narrow peak in an otherwise depressing audiogram at about 570Hz, so 
that's my sidetone.  K3 makes it easy.  I'm stuck with 915Hz on AFSK 
which isn't close to ideal but I make it work.
>
> When I was a kid 750 Hz was the most popular sidetone frequency. I
> have noticed a steady decrease in the consensus spot frequency over
> these 40 years. I don't know why. Maybe it has to do with hearing
> loss. Too many 'The Who' concerts.

The answer is in the JARTS RTTY now in progress.  Exchange is RST and 
age.  So far, the youngest I've gotten is 41 [not counting the "00's"], 
and he's all alone in the 40's and even lower 50's.  The numbers really 
start climbing in the 70's, oldest so far has been 80.  Shows up in the 
ARRL SS also, but more indirectly.  In the later 1950's, I think us kids 
were closing in to a majority of the hams on the air.  Might have been a 
majority in the early 60's.
>
> The letter published in QST about this was bordering on junk science.
> To single out "432 Hz" as some magical sidetone frequency is very
> like the New Age videos on YouTube claiming that listening to certain
> magical frequencies can heal your mind and give you holistic peace.
> It's simply nonsense.

432 is outside my WWSP passband. :-)  Important to remember however that 
a 10Hz change at 400Hz is 2.5%, whereas 10Hz at 750Hz is half that which 
makes quite a difference.

73,

Fred K6DGW
- Northern California Contest Club
- CU in the 2014 Cal QSO Party 4-5 Oct 2014
- www.cqp.org

WWSP: "Wet Ware Signal Processing"