-----Original Message----- From: Phil Kane This may sound trite, but I tried my "hi-fi" stereo headphones instead of my "communications" headphones. Boy. what a difference!! I suspect, though, that all it does is to allow more white noise and overtones to be heard. My desk mike (Adonis 308) has switch settings for "SSB" and "FM" - same theory. ---------------------
Listening with hi-fi headphones can be a real eye (ear) opener. It can show you how noisy the IF and AF sections of your rig are. It can really start to show the difference between good sounding SSB and poor sounding SSB. I hear many signals out there that sound terrible, often from contesters or DXers who think that they'll get more QSOs by turning "that" knob up further. I've also heard some stunningly lovely signals from guys running studio mics and processing (e.g BBE Sonic Maximizer). To me, hi-fi SSB is a bit misleading. I'm not interested in super-wide bandwidth CD quality sound on 40 meters. On the other hand, having limited bandwidth does not mean the signal has to sound thin / muffled / distorted / etc. I think there is a lot that can be done with the signal to make the quality better while keeping "talk power" up there and not making the bandwidth overly wide. I don't like the phrase "communication quality". It lower's the bar to accept anything that is marginal. I think about the difference in quality between cel-phones and wired phones. Both are about the same bandwidth but the wired phone sounds better. Both are communication quality. One of these days I'll get the SSB option for my K2, set the bandwidth wide, and play with some of my mics / mixer / compressor / parametric EQ. The problem is, I'm having so much fun with CW that I just don't have the motivation to get on SSB. - Keith KD1E - - K2 5411 - _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
