-----Original Message----- From: Darrell Bellerive [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Keith, I would be interested in reading about your observations on the differences between receivers. Please consider posting them to the reflector. ------------------------- I did my comparisons a few years ago so what follows is my recollection of my tests. Omni V vs. 830s. The TenTec rig had a harsher, more distorted sound on CW and SSB. It had a noticeably tighter passband resulting in less splatter and of frequency noise as well as a more bandwidth limited sound. My Omni V with twin Inrad 2.8 KHz filters sounded almost as good as the 830s with it's stock SSB filters. The Omni with stock filters was noticeably narrower than the 830s. It was clear that part of the 830s' great sound was the wide receiver passband. From an AGC point of view, both rigs were similar with aggressive AGCs with no real slope. 830s vs. K2 This test was done during a CW contest. The 830s with twin 500 Hz filters had less selectivity than the K2. The aggressive flat-top AGC of the 830s amplified the background noise so it "sounded" S-9. Consequently, the rig was always screaming at me. If it wasn't loud signals, it was loud band noise between the signals. The K2, with it's sloping AGC, allowed the background noise to stay in the background. Overall, the rig was just quieter and cleaner to listen to. Also, the K2 receiver did a better job of keeping things clean between stations. The holes between 2 big stations sounded like holes in the K2. In the 830s, those holes were filled with garble, grunge, junk. Drake 2B vs. K2 The Drake is a fabulous sounding rig. Very clean, smooth, sweet. Unfortunately, it has a very aggressive AGC so you'll never hear a quiet band as the AGC ramps up the gain when there is no signal to provide a constant full-blast noise floor. Filtering, of course is not nearly as good as the modern K2, but fidelity and sonic quality is better. The wide filtering made strong SSB signals a joy to listen to and CW stuff came through very clean and pure. Still, for AGC reasons, I found the K2 to be more relaxing to listen to in general even though it didn't sound as good. I also recorded CW signals and examined their waveform. The Drake's AGC was rather slow to kick in so the leading edge of each dot/dash had a 1/2 to 1 cycle spike that was 2x the height of the rest of the signal. After a cycle, the AGC had caught up and the rest of the waveform was much more controlled. Interestingly, this leading edge spike of sorts did not add any nasty artifacts to the audio. After seeing it on the screen, I could hear it in the audio but the little edge at the beginning was not bothering at all. The K2, on the other hand had no such edge and in the headphones did sound a bit smoother than the 2B's CW tone. Omni V vs. K1 I had a K1 for a while and compared it to the Omni V. K1 sounded much (much) better. Smooth, pure, nice. Of course the AGC caused loud signals to pop and the filtering was not nearly as good, but the K1 sure sounded nice. My recollection is that the K1 sounds better than the K2 (less IF noise, for instance) but I never had both rigs at the same time so I can't say for sure. - Keith N1AS - - K2 5411.ssb.100 - - K3 Wave 3 - _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: [email protected] 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
