n4lq wrote:
It seems that without the compressor it is difficult to obtain full SSB
output. I'm listening to a guy right now on 160m in QSO. He had is
compression on and as can be expected, was picking up plenty of fan
noise from his amplifier. He was advised to "turn off the
compression". This he did and the fan noise went away but he complained
about insufficient drive to his amp and his K3 was only putting out 38
watts now.
I don't have a decent peak reading wattmeter
but I think weak RF output is a common complaint.
It's rather surprising that the K3 doesn't have the option of a
peak-holding RF output display, like the S-meter has.
I just wonder if Elecraft expects everyone to run some degree of
compression? Or are we interpreting the PWR meter on the K3 incorrectly?
Mainly the latter.
When the K3 says "no compression", it's telling the truth. In contrast,
most other rigs are using compression all the time - even when the
speech processor is turned off - because there is peak limiting due to
heavy ALC.
The K3 is one of the few rigs that does it right... and because no good
deed goes unpunished, it then suffers complaints of "weak audio"! To
equal the compression that's always taking place in most other rigs, you
probably *do* need to turn the K3's compression up a little. No harm in
that - unlike most other rigs, a moderate amount of compression will
simply make you sound louder.
However, the complaint about fan noise is a valid one. As the
compression is increased, the peak audio stays the same but the
background noise comes up. Any transmitter with effective compression
will also benefit from a "noise gate" or some other kind of nonlinear
threshold, to reduce the noise background when there's no actual speech.
This would be something like VOX, but with a different configurable
threshold and hold/release dynamics.
To obtain full value from the K3's highly effective compressor, could a
noise gate be added to 'Lyle's List', please?
--
73 from Ian GM3SEK
http://www.ifwtech.co.uk/g3sek
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