[Elecraft] K3 sidetone level

[Bob McGraw]

Al:

There are lots of poor to very poor SSB signals on the bands. When I say 
poor to very poor I am referring to proper spectral balance.    Hams 
rely too much on "what others say" with regard to their signals and 
audio.  Best is to use a remote SDR receiver, and there are many on line 
around the world, to record and listen to the audio.  Monitoring ones 
voice with headphones or speaker is far from accurate.  There is too 
much sound transmitted via bone conductivity in the head to judge ones 
signal.

The recommendations of Jim, K9YC and of Joe, W4TV, and on the Heil 
website is very valuable information.   Bottom line, the is little need 
for audio below about 300 Hz. Should your radio have EQ or LF TX 
roll-off, attenuate the low frequencies and preferably not boost the 
high frequencies.    Hams always seem to think boost this and boost 
that, and give very little thought to attenuate this and attenuate 
that.  It all works best if one attenuates the excessive energy first.

Just comments from and old retired recording studio sound engineer of 
30+ years.  Made a darn good living at it too.

73

Bob, K4TAX


On 12/4/2024 2:20 PM, elecraft-request at mailman.qth.net wrote:
> Message: 7
> Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2024 17:15:21 +0000 (UTC)
> From: Al Lorona<alorona at sbcglobal.net>
> To:"elecraft at mailman.qth.net" <elecraft at mailman.qth.net>
> Subject: Re: [Elecraft] K3 sidetone level
> Message-ID:<2084454641.4155753.1732900521268 at mail.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> Tuning around on 40 meters today, I saw a signal on the P3 where the energy from 0 - 400 Hz was 15 dB higher than the energy above 400 Hz. I see a lot of signals like this. You probably do, too.?
>
> I did the math... (taking into account power spectral density) if his output power was 100W, then 80 W were in the frequencies below 400 Hz, and 20 W were in the frequencies above. That poor guy was operating QRP without even knowing it, in the frequencies that really matter for speech. He could be quite a bit stronger without spending a single dollar, merely by equalizing his audio.
>
> I notice that SSB signals that appear more or less flat across their bandwidth, as seen on the P3, are extremely articulate and seem to pop out of the speakers. To get a signal like this, you have to follow Jim's (K9YC) EQ'ing guidelines or make some kind of measurements to tell you what your transmitted passband looks like.
>
> Al? W6LX/4