That is exactly what I was going to write, Phil. DON'T use ALC to set drive level. And make sure you follow the directions in the K3 manual EXACTLY when setting up a new mic. Meter the ALC voltage on the K3 and set the mic gain to produce 4-5 bars of INTERNAL ALC, no more. Then add compression as desired for the best effect. You might also want to experiment with the transmit equalization, especially by removing the first two (lowest) octaves of response. Cut them all the way down as far as they will go. You don't need or want any audio energy at those low frequencies. Jim probably covered all that in his earlier post that he referred to. All mics should be set up using this same procedure.
This was your original question -- and the answer as to how much compression: IT DEPENDS. Compression fills in the "valleys" in your natural speaking voice, so how much compression depends heavily on what you own voice sounds like. Since you're asking about a contest, you will want to be a little more aggressive on compression than you would for ordinary QSOing, but not to the extent that your voice becomes distorted. There is no substitute for intelligent on-air reports -- but if you are using locals for reports, make sure they turn down the sensitivity of their receivers (back off on the RF gain) so they are not creating internal IMD products that would give you a false impression of your audio. Bill W5WVO -----Original Message----- From: Jim Brown Sent: Saturday, October 30, 2010 08:19 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Elecraft] [K3] How much compression for contest use? On 10/29/2010 6:30 PM, Phil Lonzello - WA6LDI wrote: > Any suggestions as to the proper > mic/compression settings I can use to prevent overdriving my amp? Thank > you > for whatever suggestions you can recommend. The instructions are exactly the same as I posted two days ago for the other mic. Your TVI problems may be the result of using ALC to control power. That is a very bad idea. NEVER use ALC to set the amplifier power. ALWAYS set the drive power to the amplifier by adjusting the POWER control on the K3 to get the desired power out of the power amp. Use ALC ONLY to protect the amp from problems when something goes wrong (like something breaks in your antenna system, or you goof in tuning or switching the antenna (we all do that). 73, Jim K9YC ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
