I think this gets debated because the downside of audio processing bothers some repeater ops more than others.
If you used 20 dB of audio compression in the audio path, you could give pretty much all users the same deviation on the output. You'd also suck up 20 dB of noise on weak signals with low audio, and have a really annoying "pumping effect" on fully-deviated users unless a long delay was used on the decay side. If you used multi-band audio processing to make the spectral distribution of various users' audio more consistent, it can have some really odd artifacts. Back in the 70s, many AM broadcast stations began processing bass separately to deal with the annoying pumping effect common when playing disco records. Later, as processors evolved to more bands, this technique became a popular weapon in AM broadcast "loudness wars." Now that most AM broadcast stations have moved to spoken-word formats, they've kept their multiband processors, and many of them make newspeople sound like they always have a cold at best, and like trained ducks at worst. One downside I haven't seen mentioned regarding the use of outboard equalizers is the greatly increased potential for ground loops in the cabling. Three-foot unbalanced coaxial audio cables terminated in RCS plugs can be bad news at a site with lots of RF around. If your own FM transmitter gets into the audio harness, it can cause very subtle distortion which isn't always intuitive to track down. I think the best thing we could do to make repeaters sound consistent would be annual "green screwdriver nights" to get everyone's rigs set up properly with a service monitor. Clubs used to do this all the time, but it seems to have gone out of style. If we could make all users sound great with audio processing on the repeater, what happens when the user whose audio is 20 dB low has to operate simplex from a fringe signal area during an ARES activation? 73, Paul, AE4KR > Mike, > > I have the same general question about repeater audio. What does it > really supposed to sound like? In my systems, I try to make it so the > repeater output sounds like the repeater input. In other words, it's > close what you would hear if you were simplex. This is definitely a "religious" debate amongst folks.
