[Elecraft] ESSB

[Al Lorona]

I'm glad K9YC answered your question. If you heard Jim's signal during the SS this weekend then you got to hear what the shaping he is describing sounded like. His audio was very piercing but clean. It's not what I would want to hear during a long ragchew with him, but his purpose was to project his intelligibility across 40 meters for the purpose of a 30-second contact. 

Another way to look at this is that our ear is most sensitive to frequencies around 2 kHz (roughly) and so you really want to put as much of your power in that region as you can. In this way, you're using the response of the other op's ear to your advantage. 

To further paraphrase what Jim said, when it comes to compression, "A little is good, but more is not better," as evidenced by so many shockingly bad signals this weekend. I wish someone would undertake a project to send contesters recordings of themselves. I happened to be listening when a station with especially egregious audio called K9YC, who gave the op a quick but honest report at the end of his exchange. Who knows if that station will heed the advice for the next contest.

Al  W6LX