David,
The well-tempered scale is logarithmic, in a sense. Each semitone
frequency is gotten from the just-lower one by multiplying by the
twelfth root of 2. That way 12 semitone steps automatically make a
perfect octave (factor of 2 in frequency). If you're gonna have
twelve notes in a chromatic scale, and gonna have all the musical keys
sound more or less the same (all equally bad according to the purists)
then you pretty much are stuck with this irrational ratio.
Hey, I just RTFM. On page 9 of the K3 Owners Manual C1 it says that
the sidetone is adjustable from 300 to 1000 Hz. Is that really so? I
can't find anything in the manual about increments. I haven't ordered
a K3 yet, so can't check. Is the increment really 50 Hz, anyone?
I'd be happy if the K3 sidetone/offset just went up to 880 instead of
stopping at 800. Of course, 880 requires 10 Hz increments. I wonder
if the problem here is memory register space. From 300 to 1000 with
50 Hz increments would be 15 different pitches, just shy of two bytes
of memory space to record. The same range with 10 Hz increments, it
would be 71 different pitches, requiring nine bytes of memory space to
record.
73,
Oliver Johns
W6ODJ
On 17 May 2008, at 4:36 AM, David Woolley (E.L) wrote:
O. Johns wrote:
Also, 740.0 is within a fraction of a Hertz of a correctly tuned
(well-tempered tuning) F#. So there is good reason to have the
increments of sidetone pitch be 10 Hz rather than 50 Hz.
Might it not be better to use a logarithmic scale (e.g. equal
tempered semi-tones) or a near logarithmic scale, with rational
frequency ratios (natural (is this "well tempered"?) semitones).
--
David Woolley
"The Elecraft list is a forum for the discussion of topics related
to Elecraft products and more general topics related ham radio"
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