On Thu,12/10/2015 8:34 AM, Darrell Bellerive VE7IU wrote:
but I did not care for the audio, the complexity, or the ergonomics.
These issues are very personal, and depend a lot on what we're used to
and what we've experienced.
I'm retired from a career in pro audio, and am a Fellow of the Audio
Engineering Society. Except for casual monitoring while I'm doing other
stuff in the shack, I use headphones for 99.9% of my operation. My
headphones of choice are Sony MDR7506 and Yamaha CM500. Both provide
excellent communications quality RX audio. I don't use ham RX to listen
to broadcast audio -- I have other radios for that purpose.
As to user interface -- Elecraft has done a great job of learning what
controls most hams need on a daily basis and which can be on menus.
Everything that I've ever needed to adjust while operating is either a
button or a knob on the front panel, or can be assigned to either of two
"soft" buttons on the front panel. In 8 years, I've found only one
function I wanted to assign -- toggling the speaker on and off with my
Yamaha CM500 plugged into the rear panel.
Indeed, the "complexity" is nothing more than giving the user more
control of how the radio works than do most other radios. This control
is on menus, AND menus are only needed when you want to change how the
radio works. The K3 and K3S work just fine with no adjustments to any of
those menus to work SSB or CW with a mic and paddle plugged into the
front panel! Exception -- VOX Gain and Anti-VOX are on a top-level menu.
If you want to plug your CM500 (or other boom mic headset) into the rear
panel, you'll need to go to a menu to select rear panel mic and hit a
button (2 on the keypad) to turn on bias. Again, that's a one-time setting.
More complexity -- the K3 and K3S have TX modes optimized for digital
modes and for RTTY. You need to select the right method for the way you
want to TX these modes. These are, for most of us, one-time settings.
Less complexity -- both K3 and K3S have a Line Input to feed digital (or
SSB messages) from a computer, so you don't need adapters to the mic input.
But all the controls you need while operating are on the front panel --
IF bandwidth and shift, Mic Gain, CW speed, Audio Compression, Power
out, RF gain, AF Gain, RIT/XIT, preamp on/off, Atten on/off, Ant1/Ant2
toggle, Tune button, Ant Auto Tune, Mode, Band, Spot, Notch, NB, NR, are
all on the front panel. Want to go into Split Mode? Hit A>B twice in
succession to copy A VFO settings to B VFO, then push and hold A>B to go
into split, then tune the B VFO where you want to TX.
Hope this helps to correct some misconceptions.
73, Jim K9YC
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