Sverre, thanks for the interesting information on CW pitch! About 15 to 20 years ago, myself and maybe some 15 other USA hams got into QSO'ing at QRQ. (In my opinion, QRQ is anything over about 60 wpm) I had served in the Navy for 11 years, with six of those years spent on Navy aircraft carriers, mainly in the Gulf of Tonkin. Our berthing spaces were always immediately below the flight deck, toward the rear of the carrier; in other words about ten feet below where Navy aircraft were landing on the steel deck. My 'normal' hearing suffered greatly! When operating QRQ, sometimes with QSO's at around 120 wpm, but mostly >80 wpm, I found that a pitch frequency of about 520 hz was best for me; however as the years wore on, I found going down to around 480 hz was much better (as my hearing continued to decrease due to age!). Now, at age 76, I finally had hearing test done and found my hearing peaks at 375 hz, and 1 kc and 185 hz is 12 dB below that. The so-called "advantage" of this is that our hearing now also acts as filters for atmospheric static noise above about 800 hz.
I think that as we age, all of us lose most of the high frequency audio spectrum and the typical manufacturer's classic sidetone frequency of 700 hz is seldom optimum for the 'over 45' age group. Still, IMO, the 'best' CW pitch is only determined by the individual. 73, Tom - W4BQF -----Original Message----- From: Elecraft [mailto:elecraft-boun...@mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Sverre Holm (LA3ZA) Sent: Sunday, March 1, 2015 10:33 PM To: elecraft@mailman.qth.net Subject: Re: [Elecraft] CW listening pitch There is evidence that it is advantageous with a low tone for the pitch (asuming normal hearing). Some studies give evidence for an improvement in recognition rate as the pitch is lowered and it more or less seems to level off at 500 Hz, except for the lowest SNRs where recognition even improves at a pitch of 250 Hz. Some of the research is summarized here (look for paper 2): http://la3za.blogspot.no/2013/10/studies-on-morse-code-recognition.html ----- Sverre, LA3ZA K2 #2198, K3 #3391, LA3ZA Blog: http://la3za.blogspot.com, LA3ZA Unofficial Guide to K2 modifications: http://la3za.blogspot.com/p/la3za-unofficial-guide-to-elecraft-k2.html -- View this message in context: http://elecraft.365791.n2.nabble.com/CW-listening-pitch-tp7599535p7599630.ht ml Sent from the Elecraft mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to alderm...@windstream.net ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com
