On Sun, 27 Jun 2010 12:52:47 -0400, Steve Ellington wrote: >The K3's audio is just fine and there's plenty of it.
I agree. There are at least seven problems. First, Elecraft has a design philosophy of minimizing current drain so that a rig works well from batteries. That is a good thing, but it places limits on how loud the audio outputs can get. Second, hams, and those who design ham products, generally don't understand the concept of impedance, nor do they understand audio. Third, hams as a general population are a bunch of old farts (like me), and we have hearing loss for a variety of reasons. As an audio professional, I must be aware of that. I had my hearing tested several years ago, and I had at least 15dB of loss then. Fourth, some hams seem to confuse their ham rig with their high futility sound system. Fifth, hams seem to confuse the setting of the front panel controls with how much audio the rig can put out. Sixth, there are several places within both the K2 and the K3 where audio gains can be adjusted for various conditions like filtering and bandwidth. Seventh, because the K3 has much less IMD than other rigs, it is much quieter under crowded band conditions than other rigs, so it gives the illusion of not being loud. Even with my hearing loss, I've never felt that ANY ham rig I owned was weak on RX audio, and the Elecraft radios I've owned (K2, K3) are no exception. They are quite sufficient for communications purposes for anyone without serious hearing loss (that is, enough to need a hearing aid). My K2s and K3s happily drive Sony MDR7506s, the Yamaha CM500, Etymotic Research ER4s, Shure in-ear headphones whose model numbers I've lost, and a variety of miscellaneous elcheapo headphones I've got laying around. Now, a stock K2 IS weak on TX audio, and there are several well documented mods to improve that considerably. As to those gain adjustments -- there are the RXEQ settings that Fred mentioned, and there is gain adjustment to compensate for the loss in each of the roofing filters. One must be careful with pushing either of these too far -- depending on the internal design of the K3 RX audio path, that could result in clipping within the signal chain. My guess is that you could safely add a total of 10dB if you wanted. If I were Elecraft, and if I hadn't already done so, I would be looking at RX audio gains and trying to figure out if there might be another 6-10 dB available. That won't increase the maximum audio level without clipping, but it will mean that you won't have to turn the front panel gain up so high, and I suspect that dumb reason (which doesn't matter) is who most folks are complaining. :) 73, Jim Brown K9YC ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
