[Amps] Audio/RF compression

[Jim Brown]

I agree with Steve -- having retired from a career in pro audio and 
broadcasting, I know quite a lot about audio processing. Manfred's 
description is requirements is wildly exaggerated, and Jim Thompson's 
processing rig is wretched excess. It's the sort of thing I might do in 
a broadcast station for the mental midgets who do most of the talking, 
but never for ham radio.

If you're working close to a well-chosen microphone and rolling off the 
low end, 10 dB of compression is quite good for ham radio.  I have a 
closet full of world class microphones and signal processing gear to to 
with them. I'm a contester and a DXer, and find that I'm quite 
competitive with a Yamaha CM500 boom mic headset and that level of 
processing, all of which is built into my Elecraft K3. Indeed, I even 
push that to the limits by running QRP in most DX contests!

73, Jim K9YC

On Tue,1/10/2017 2:44 PM, Steve Wright wrote:
> On 11/01/17 06:53, Manfred Mornhinweg <manfred at ludens.cl> wrote:
>> The problem with that is that 10dB of control range is far too small to
>> accommodate the variations in the audio level coming from the
>> microphone, as the operator moves closer or farther away, and speaks up
>> or speaks softly. And to maintain the 10dB compression you first need to
>> have a stable audio signal. So, in order to achieve that 10dB
>> compression, you need to place this compressor after an automatic gain
>> control system
>
> Operators are cleverer than that.  It's easy to keep an eye on the 
> metering and keep the Po and the ALC in the ballpark - that's just 
> normal use of a SSB radio - for those who get it anyway.