[Elecraft] CW listening pitch

[Vic Rosenthal]

At 72 I've discovered that my left ear is pretty much worthless above 1 kHz while my right one works up to about 8 kHz. They both seem to have about the same sensitivity "below cutoff." When I was a kid I could hear the 15 kHz TV horizontal oscillators clearly (and do a lot of other stuff better, too). My best CW pitch seems to be around 520 or 530 Hz.

Vic 4X6GP/K2VCO 

> On Mar 2, 2015, at 8:35 AM, Jim Brown <jim at audiosystemsgroup.com> wrote:
> 
>> On Sun,3/1/2015 10:25 PM, Rick Tavan N6XI wrote:
>> Yes, I've noticed this. I have no real knowledge of why low tones seem to
>> make for better copy in QRM but I have guessed that it has to do with the
>> relative difference in interfering tone for a given offset from the desired
>> signal. If you listen to 1000 Hz (which many ops do) and the interfering
>> signal is 100 Hz away, the difference is only 10%. But if you listen to 400
>> Hz, the difference is 25%. So the filter in your brain may be more
>> effective distinguishing 400 from 500 Hz than it is in distinguishing 1000
>> from 1100 Hz. Just a guess.
> 
> That's my audio professional's best guess too. In general, we humans hear logarithmically. Also, we hear differences in sounds that are separated by some "critical bandwidth" that is in the range of 1/3 to 1/6 of an octave. An octave is a 2:1 frequency ratio. So figure 2 to the 1/3 power and 2 to the 1/6 power.
> 
> I set my radios between 500 - 550 Hz. Those with severe high frequency hearing loss might want to try even lower frequency settings. Most (but definitely not all) hearing loss is greatest at the higher frequencies.
> 
> 73, Jim K9YC
> 
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