[Elecraft] DESK MICROPHONES FOR K3

Jim Brown jim at audiosystemsgroup.com
Wed Jul 9 15:02:08 EDT 2014


On 7/9/2014 11:19 AM, Ray Sills wrote:
> The good audio operators, know how to adjust their audio mixing 
> consoles to optimize the sound, and how it "sits" in the mix.  It's 
> more an art, than a science.  And, one of the concerns when adjusting 
> things was "how would this audio sound on a TV or radio with a small 
> speaker".  Those types of operators are referred to as having "golden 
> ears", since they made the audio sound good on tiny speakers, as well 
> as high quality audiophile speakers.

Like you, I'm retired from pro audio, and I did a lot of live music 
mixing.  I also did a lot of sound reinforcement for difficult acoustic 
spaces.  One thing I had to learn is that human speech contains nothing 
useful below about 200 Hz, and nothing below 400 Hz contributes to 
speech intelligibility.  Those lower frequencies simply provide "body" 
to the voice, but also burn significant audio power (and TX power).  One 
technique that good live sound mixers use a lot is to roll off the low 
end of all the vocal mics (and most instrument mics) to minimize stray 
sound pickup of bass and drums. So while a live sound mix will have a 
lot of low end, it is NOT coming from vocals!

Likewise, there is little content in speech above 4 kHz, and 3 kHz is 
pretty much the standard limit for speech communications. That's partly 
because the higher frequencies also waste TX power, but mostly because 
they also cause QRM to adjacent QSOs on a crowded band.

> So, I also prefer broadcast audio for broadcasting, and communications 
> audio for communicating. 

Yep.  I've still got a closet full of very nice broadcast and recording 
mics, but my ham rigs are optimized for 400 Hz - 3 kHz.

BTW -- it's also a good move with the KX3 to roll off the low end with 
RXEQ to improve headroom in the audio output stage.

73, Jim K9YC


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