On Nov 4, 2008, at 6:12 PM, Jim Miller wrote:
IMHO, Sound perception is probably one of the most variable things
of all. For instance, MY hearing is 10 dB down up to about 1500 Hz
and by 1700 Hz it is 50 dB down for the remainder of the spectrum.
I asked the audiologist what was considered totally deaf - she said
70 dB was deaf. (and I thought I could hear just fine, almost,
except for my wife (higher frequency and softer voice)and I didn't
need to hear her anyway, LOL)
Does anyone think the way I adjust my audio would be the same as the
way they like it. I doubt it. Trying to answer a question of what
is the best for audio for any one person OR situation is virtually
impossible.
I do use the original Heil headset with the HC4 element and the
original Goldline with the HC5 and full-range elements.
Well, there are two parts to this. One is a function of frequency
response and the other is a function of distortion products. Many of
us are suffering from varying degrees of hearing loss. I suffer from
tinnitus (ringing of the ears) which can mask some of the high-
frequency content from the voice, usually women's voices. (My wife
occasionally accuses me of selective hearing. :-) Anyway, I do benefit
from using headphones and providing a bit of a boost to the higher
frequencies, e.g. starting at around 1KHz with boost increasing to
around +6dB at 3KHz. You can make this sort of improvement with a
graphical or parametric equalizer. (I prefer parametric myself but
they are hard to come by.)
Distortion products typically impart either a "warm, fat sound"; i.e.
low order, mostly 2nd harmonic; or a "hard, edgy sound"; i.e. high
order. Either can obscure readability to some extent. One of the
reasons the old tube rigs were so pleasant to listen to is because
they had almost no high-order distortion. It was almost all 2nd and a
touch of 3rd. I could listen to my Hammerlund HQ-180X all day and all
night very happily with no ear fatigue.
If you suffer from that hard, edgy, fatiguing sound, try stealing the
signal before it gets to the built-in audio amp and feed it to a good
hi-fi amp to see what you hear. Get the signal right from the detector
if you can. It can make a *huge* difference. (My experience is that
most manufacturers of ham gear really skimp on the quality of the
audio chain.)
Brian Lloyd
Granite Bay Montessori School 9330 Sierra College Bl
brian AT gbmontessori DOT com Roseville, CA 95661
+1.916.367.2131 (voice) +1.791.912.8170 (fax)
PGP key ID: 12095C52A32A1B6C
PGP key fingerprint: 3B1D BA11 4913 3254 B6E0 CC09 1209 5C52 A32A 1B6C
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