[Elecraft] [K3] A speaker for the K3

[Jim Brown]

On Wed,8/27/2014 11:31 PM, Bill Frantz wrote:
> On 8/27/14 at 11:02 PM, jim at audiosystemsgroup.com (Jim Brown) wrote:
>
>> It's silly to spend big bucks for a speaker (or mic) for the ham 
>> shack. We don't need extended response, but we do want FLAT response 
>> and reasonably low distortion in the voice range.
>
> I'm not even sure that flat response is absolutely necessary if the 
> distortion is low. You can certainly loose the base frequencies in a 
> voice without impacting understandability. Raising the distortion on 
> the other hand will have bad effects almost immediately, and they will 
> get worse as the distortion rises.
>
> One of the reasons I've been able to get through the W1AW/n pileups is 
> the low distortion of the K3 and KX3, and the use of your (K9YC's) 
> non-flat response recommendations to get maximum intelligibility for 
> my 100 watts.

Note that I said flat response in the voice range. That's 200 - 4,000 
Hz. Cheap speakers have bumpy response in the midrange, which produces 
phase distortion, which reduces speech intelligibility. My recommended 
low cut on TX gets rid of stuff in the <400 Hz range before it wastes TX 
power.  I generally recommend response flat down to 100 Hz on the RX 
end, except with KX3, whose speaker output stage is current limited, to 
about 300 Hz to increase headroom (that means it can be louder in your 
headphones or speaker before it gets distorted).

73, Jim K9YC