Importance of good audio on tabletops
 

In article
,
wrote:

The question of decent audio is generally a much debated topic on this
newsgroup. In years gone by I had a very fancy Sony graphic equaliser
that had a marvellous audio spectrum analyser. In that era there was
no doubt that the Kenwood R5000 was tops by a furlong with really
stupendous audio, however it lacked synchronous detection and was thus
superseded by the Drake R8B which was superb, but did not have a wide
audio spectrum like the Kenwood R5000 did. Still, the R8B was rock
steady when listening to fine orchestral programs like the famous
"Proms" which I love to listen to.

I have two phases in my radio listening life with my table tops.
During the nightime hours it is mostly hunting for those faint far off
exotic DX, but during the day I want my table top to produce lovely
sound on AM whilst either listening to BBC or other major broadcasters
on SW, and produce flawless audio on my favourite AM BCB MW station. I
think in the upper price class to me the Drake R8B is still tops with
the AOR 7030 a close second, but then there are the super high priced
tabletops like the Watkins Johnson, NRD 545D and Ten Tec, which when
coupled to the Sherwood synchronous detector are alleged to have super
rock solid audio of AM on SW. Alas, no Sherwood has ever entered South
Africa so I have no experience there. But I would really like to see
an opinion on how a Drake R8B in synch mode shapes up to a Sherwood
detector?

So I really did myself a disservice when I sold off my R8B, something
I regret very much now, because in my shack now are an older version
Drake SW8 (without synch) and my super Icom IC-756 PRO III, which has
great audio on AM SW, but with no synch detector, suffers terribly
from fading and multipath distortion, so I am forced to listen in ECSS/
SSB which doesn't produce as nice and full audio as my old Drake R8B.

Then there is the other side of audio requirement, that of the serious
DXer who is trying to dig out ID's from the faintest most garbled
signals. After years of doing this and going over recordings post DX
session, I can attest to the fact that very good audio helps a lot in
IDing those very difficult stations, because of their broader audio
spectrum allowing you to hear the full spectrum of audible sound with
sibilants and harmonics that help you decipher that very difficult ID.

Here I can truly say that the audio on a wide 3 Khz SSB setting on my
756Pro3 is just awesome, and those who have heard my recordings of
faint far off exotic stations will attest to that, helping make
getting that crucial ID easier. There are two strains of thought on
getting difficult ID's though: there are the AM purists who insist
that a better ID results from a good AM recording, obviously aided by
good filters and a good frequency offset facility. Then there is the
other camp, which includes me, that require superb wide band audio on
their SSB. Again the Drake R8A/B are superb on AM and my 756Pro3 is
superb on SSB.

But having said the above, I challenge anyone to produce better
recordings than my MW DX buddy Gary Deacon on his Yaesu FRG-7 frog -
his recordings of exotic DX are simply awesome.

More ramblings on my audio experiences with the Drake and Icom can be
found at:
http://www.dxing.info/community/viewtopic.php?t=1655

My dream had been to win the Lotto and get a top range tabletop that
would have Sherwood like AM reception and be superb in SSB DX as well,
so I had pinned all my hopes on the newly released Icom IC-R9500, but
alas!, Passport 2008 knocks it's synch detector into the ground, so I
am still searching for my dream receiver. Perhaps I will get another
R8B from eBay?

I don't have experience listening to the Kenwoods but I bought the
radios I currently own Drake R8B, AOR7030+, and Ten-Tec RX340 for the
good audio they produce.

For me it was finding the right bookshelf speaker and headphones with
good audio range for these radios to sound really good.

The drake and AOR each have a wide filter and passband tuning to take
full advantage of them for wide audio bandwidth response. The RX340 has
digital filters out to 16KHz.

These radios all have the functions necessary to tailor the audio as
needed depending on conditions and so can still sound pretty good even
when conditions are not.

I really don't understand why some people think speakers and headphones
that limit the audio response are the way to go for intelligibility as
you are stuck with the limited audio response even when conditions are
good. That is like buying a car that does not have 3rd and 4th gear
because you only use 1st and 2nd to go up hill.

--
Telamon
Ventura, California

Importance of good audio on tabletops
 

On Nov 18, 3:37 pm, Telamon
wrote:
In article
,





wrote:
The question of decent audio is generally a much debated topic on this
newsgroup. In years gone by I had a very fancy Sony graphic equaliser
that had a marvellous audio spectrum analyser. In that era there was
no doubt that the Kenwood R5000 was tops by a furlong with really
stupendous audio, however it lacked synchronous detection and was thus
superseded by the Drake R8B which was superb, but did not have a wide
audio spectrum like the Kenwood R5000 did.

The R-5000 does indeed have fine audio, and I found that weak DX
signals were made more copyable because of that, in addition to
enhanced enjoyment of local MW and strong SW stations.

After years of doing this and going over recordings post DX
session, I can attest to the fact that very good audio helps a lot in
IDing those very difficult stations, because of their broader audio
spectrum allowing you to hear the full spectrum of audible sound with
sibilants and harmonics that help you decipher that very difficult ID.

Amen!

Here I can truly say that the audio on a wide 3 Khz SSB setting on my
756Pro3 is just awesome

It's great when you find a receiver or general coverage transceiver
with great audio using SSB. The AR-3030 that I owned for a while had
terrific sound from a good bass response to a clear and crisp midrange
and high end, without overdoing any of it. Both music and speech were
better here than any other receiver I've used on SSB.

For me it was finding the right bookshelf speaker and headphones with
good audio range for these radios to sound really good.

I really don't understand why some people think speakers and headphones
that limit the audio response are the way to go for intelligibility as
you are stuck with the limited audio response even when conditions are
good. That is like buying a car that does not have 3rd and 4th gear
because you only use 1st and 2nd to go up hill.

You're right about this. I used to think that my Kenwood HS-4
headphones were the perfect DX cans, limited audio from about 400 to
3000 herz or so, blocking out anything to keep me from IDing a
station. Recently I bought a Kenwood TX that came with a pair of
modified full-range Radio Shack stereo (now mono) headphones that the
owner used with it, much better than the HS-4 in every respect.

Importance of good audio on tabletops
 

"Telamon" wrote in message
...

[snip]


I really don't understand why some people think speakers and headphones
that limit the audio response are the way to go for intelligibility as
you are stuck with the limited audio response even when conditions are
good. That is like buying a car that does not have 3rd and 4th gear
because you only use 1st and 2nd to go up hill.


Maybe it's a leftover from the days when most serious SW communication was
done with Morse code. A very sharp audio peak would help supress
interfering signals, as nearly all those signals would come in at different
audio frequencies. Peaky, narrow audio bandwidth headphones were the best
for helping the communication pros dig signals out of the noise.

And who wants less than "the best"?

Frank Dresser