Skipp, I generally agree, but it's not the fault of the user's voice. It's a lack of training in mic technique, sometimes combined with audio circuits that aren't easily user-accessible. Compression on the repeater eliminate's the user's need to get things right at the source, and one day, he's going to need to operate simplex.
I've worked with broadcast compressors for many years, and agree they could play a useful role in repeater audio chains. But I always wanted to design one that was a little different, and digital control of an analog signal path seems like a good candidate. Specifically, I'd like to have something like a compressor with very fast attack and infinitely long release, immediately dropping gain as needed to accommodate voice peaks, but not releasing until COS dropped. This would essentially set the audio gain individually for each user at the start of a transmission, without any ongoing compression to create the obnoxious "pumping" artifact we all know and hate. The downsides would be additional background noise before the first syllable, and difficulty in distinguishing users with low audio from users with inadequate signal strength. Both would feature increased background noise as a symptom. Then again, IRLP users hand out S-meter reports from a thousand miles away, so maybe it doesn't matter...(sigh) Just running the audio gain 6-10 dB hotter into a fast limiter still allows great disparity in perceived loudness, but at least the guys with low audio can be heard. 73, Paul, AE4KR ----- Original Message ----- From: skipp025 To: [email protected] Sent: Sunday, August 09, 2009 9:07 PM Subject: [Repeater-Builder] An advocate for a little audio compression ...a number of operators don't seem to have voices that drive their radios with adequate audio...Consider 6 to 10dB of audio compression in your repeater system... .
