[Elecraft] K3 audio quality

[Jim Brown]

On Fri,9/16/2016 7:20 AM, Vic Rosenthal wrote:
> High frequencies propagate in a straight line from a speaker, so a speaker facing upward loses 'presence'. Also the K3 speaker is a small speaker in a small box. An external speaker, facing the operator, will help a great deal.

This is exactly right.

Someone else wrote:
> The reason behind is the artifacts from K3 DSP.

False. ALL audio goes through DSP. If it sounds good on headphones or an 
external speaker, bad sound is NOT the result of DSP -- unless it's been 
badly adjusted, like pushing up the low end or pushing up highs. But 
that's a USER problem, not a problem with the radio.

It's all very simple physics. Look at the size of the loudspeaker. Its 
low frequency output is limited by its size as a fraction of a 
wavelength. The K3 and K3S are designed as compact, light weight radios. 
The speaker used is quite good for its size. If you want big bass, you 
need a big loudspeaker (or at least one a lot bigger than the little guy 
in the K3 and K3S).  BUT -- ham radio is NOT about high fidelity, it's 
about COMMUNICATIONS quality sound. Nearly a century ago, Bell Labs 
learned through a lot of research that all it takes for communications 
is smooth (flat) response between about 500 Hz and 3 kHz, and the 
telephone system was designed around that bandwidth.

Most hams I know use headphones for serious operation, and use the 
speaker only for monitoring while doing something else in the shack, or 
for tuning in digital modes like RTTY, or listening for meteor pings 
with WSJT modes. If you want better sound through a speaker, buy a 
decent front-facing speaker and plug it into the rear panel jack.

73, Jim K9YC