I enjoy copying CW up to about 60 wpm, then problems. And I can offer a theory for why.
The mind, not the ear, has a built in echo suppressor. When the ear hears the same sound soon again, it sends its message to the brain, but the brain interprets it, if the time between sounds is very short, as an echo. the most common brain, I will refrain from saying normal but I am thinking it, interprets the new message arrival as the same message, only louder. so the arrival of the echo causes an interpretation of louder, NOT a new character or dit. Were it not for this, what you hear in a typical indoor room (or cave) would be unintelligible. this is known as the Haas Effect, and you can find it on the web, and find examples of it. they will play a melody in one of your speakers, and delay the same sound to the other speaker 5 ms, and you, I should say, I, can not hear a thing coming from the second speaker, but if I put my finger on the speaker I can feel it making sound. this echo effect impacts hearing, or I should say, interpretting sound, up to about 1,500 cycles. High frequencies don't echo very much, and so the brain does not have an echo suppressor for them. i find I can not copy above something like 56 wpm, 59 on a good day. BUT, if I readjust the radio to receive the CW above 1,500 cycles (not pleasant), then I CAN !!! Anyone who can just copy at 100 wpm has a hearing/brain problem. their echo suppressor doesn't work. What they hear, day in and day out, is very, very different from what most people hear. And they probably don't realize it. I feel confident saying, be happy you are stuck at 60 wpm. 72, Fred KT5X K2 # 700 _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net 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
