[Elecraft] K3 Audio reports

[Don Wilhelm]

Mike,

If you turn compression off and talk into the microphone (you can do 
that in TX TEST and no RF will be generated) how much deflection do you 
have on the ALC meter.
It should be 5 to 7 bars for proper audio drive and power control (which 
can affect the audio quality).  After setting the Mic Gain to achieve 
that level, you can add in some compression - about 10 dB is right for 
most operation.

If you have the DVR option, you have a good tool to evaluate your audio 
signal.
Record some audio and then play it back.  That way you avoid the bone 
conduction problem of listening to yourself live in the monitor and 
eliminate the subjective element of on-the-air reports which are 
dependent on the other ops receiver and his personal opinion of how you 
"should" sound.

73,
Don W3FPR

On 1/3/2015 1:27 PM, Michael Sell wrote:
> New to the list, looking for some input on Audio Quality and a 
> discovery made by myself and another owner.  This may be old hat, but 
> hope to find out the cause.
>
> Since buying my K3 secondhand, I have always received audio quality 
> reports from "sounds like rf in your audio" to "rough sounding audio, 
> especially at the peaks", or "your audio sound hollow or distorted"
>
> I've been all over the place trying to fix this.  Grounding mods, 
> ferrite filters, sold the KPA500 and got a new amp, even got rid of my 
> EV RE 20 and Symetrics 528E and went with a Heil Pro 30 straight into 
> the radio.  Still the same reports!
>
> Finally got on with two other K3 owners and did some testing.  We 
> found that for two of us, we had the same problem and same audio. One 
> did not.  We found that for two of us the problem was solved by 
> advancing the compressor setting to at least 16 with 21 being the best 
> setting.  The audio in both our K3's smoothed out and now sounded 
> excellent.  Below a 16 setting the audio issue began and progressively 
> got worse down to 0.
>
> My questions is why?  I have never been a proponent of running 
> compression.  I'm doing it and since I started, I'm now getting 
> excellent audio reports.  The other odd thing is that the 3rd ham in 
> this test did not experience bad audio with the compressor turned down 
> or off.  We are all running the same firmware version.  Could it be 
> something in the set up of the ALC in the audio section or is this a 
> known bug?
>