Hi fellow Elecrafters,
The K3 is the best & pleasant radio I ever had, but it also is one of the most ear fatiguing I've ever listened to on voice. I'm very surprised about this because Wayne's brilliant design should be able to sound like the very finest sound equipment. The DACs and audio stages are all top-notch. I did a couple of tests in my audio studio and came up with the following (ridiculous?) idea: -The white atmospheric bandnoise (we all love her) should somewhere down the line be converted to (near) pink audio noise before it hits our ears. In the K3 and maybe many other receivers this doesn't happen, white RF noise is linearly translated to white audio noise, sounding "high emphasized" to the human ear. I have a feeling in older receivers this was "mildened" by the electronics that somehow gave a natural roll-off up the spectrum. Too simple,right? I thought so too. So I built an accurate 3db/octave downsloping filter (in software) and fed it with the K3's RX audio. A -3dB/octave downslope converts white noise (equal energy per Hz) to pink noise (equal energy per octaveband) For our ears pink noise sounds "flat" since we listen to frequencies in a logarithmic manner. How did it sound with or without ?To me, like night and day. -K3 in "pink mode" sounds round,smooth and balanced out. RX EQ now works correctly and is able to really shape the sound to many different "flavours". -K3 in "white mode" to me sounds mean,agressive and sharp.RX EQ can hardly correct this. Could anyone else give this a try? There are quite a lot of software EQ's able to make a -3dB/octave slope. Or milder slopes if you wish as long as it's quite precise in dB/oct. I wouldn't like a new discussion about different tastes of audio/speakers/headphones/etc but I would be very interested in other people able to copy this experiment and comment on it. I have a feeling the K3 can do way(ne) better then it does in the audio department. Please excuse my english 73' Paul PD0PSB ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
