[Elecraft] K3 & Voice Keying From N1MM+

[Graydon Jensen]

I’m hoping someone on the reflector can tell me what I’m missing.

I want to use my K3 with N1MM+ to play voice keying and record on-the-fly.

I have found and successfully gone through a few different articles about doing this, only from the aspect of N1MM+ and the computer are detailed, but not to the radio (understandably since radios can differ greatly).  My K3 does not have the sound card module in it.  It is not a K3S

I am using two 1/8” stereo cables I had on-hand, to go between the radio and the computer sound card.

I have a cable from the K3, rear Speaker or Phones jack (both work) to the computer sound card Mic jack.  Recording from the radio to N1MM+ seems to work fine.  

The other cable comes from the computer sound card (regular) speaker jack to the K3.  If I put this in the (rear) Line In jack and turn on Spkrs+Mic, I get nothing.  No audio, nor keying the radio when having N1MM+ do playback.  If I put this cable into the K3 rear Mic jack (changing the K3 to the rear mic), it does key the radio and I hear audio when having N1MM+ do playback.  It sounds a bit distorted, but that could be a level adjustment from the computer.  The problem with this, is in using the rear Mic jack for the computer audio, I then have no front mic to use for my headset to actually carry on other parts of the QSO.

I know that it is possible (I’ve seen it) to feed the computer audio sent from N1MM+ to a K3 *and* use a headset as well.  But I’m not able to get both to work.

I have asked another ham, that successfully has this configured, how to do it, and he told me I only need 2 audio cables, to go between the computer sound card and the jacks on the rear of the K3.  That’s all.

Any help would be greatly appreciated as I’m trying to get prepared for Field Day and started wrestling with this a week ago.

Graydon
N7RXL