[CQ-Contest] Contesting Technology - Phone Skimmer Nears Beta Test

[alannottage--- via CQ-Contest]

I'm glad you mentioned this, Randy.  When voice keyers first became popular, the audio from them was often ropey (not news).  Now in 2015 (2014 if I include CQWW SSB) I'm starting to hear the opposite.  Mostly, both are good nowadays (also not news), BUT *some* DVK audio is now sounding better than the real thing!  It's not that it's super-whizz or anything - just that box-standard mic audio is getting real dire these days, unless the appropriate adjustments are made. Fortunately many on here are heeding Jim's advice; it's just the others now :>)   Perhaps that's a tad unfair though.  Sets are coming *out-of-the-box* sounding like this...


Al G0XBV

-----Original Message-----

From: Randy Thompson K5ZD <k5zd at charter.net>
To: cq-contest <cq-contest at contesting.com>
Sent: Sat, 4 Apr 2015 5:16
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] Contesting Technology - Phone Skimmer Nears Beta Test


It would seem the use of computer sound cards as voice keyers is the root
cause
of most SSB modulation and clarity issues.  It took me several sound
cards
before I found a combination that sounded good.  

We have several choices as
a community.  We can simply not work guys with
bad audio.  Or we can work them
and then tell them their audio is bad.
Perhaps if enough people said something,
they would work on it.

Randy, K5ZD


> -----Original Message-----
> From:
CQ-Contest [mailto:cq-contest-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of
> Jim
Brown
> Sent: Friday, April 03, 2015 7:35 PM
> To:
cq-contest at contesting.com
> Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] Contesting Technology -
Phone Skimmer Nears
> Beta Test
> 
> On Fri,4/3/2015 11:25 AM, Marijan
Miletic wrote:
> > Five years ago there was a hope that mature speech
recognition
> > technology would be applied to limited vocabulary hamradio
contesting.
> > It has become April fools joke instead sadly illustrating
dumbing of
> our hobby.
> 
> Having just endured another weekend of truly
awful audio with WPX SSB, I
> couldn't even get my ear/brain to decode many of
them. I heard at least
> 50 stations with audio so badly distorted, muffled, or
wildly
> overprocessed that I could not copy them, and at least a hundred
more
> where the poor audio quality made me take twice as long to complete
the
> QSO.
> 
> I'm not suggesting that we don't use
processing/eq/compression -- these
> are excellent techniques if done WELL, but
they destroy speech
> intelligibility if done badly. I run my K3 with the three
lowest
> frequency bands set for maximum cut and some cut of the fourth (400
Hz)
> band. The remaining bands are set flat. I have compression set for 10
dB
> on peaks, and I carefully set computer playback level so that the radio
>
is not overdriven.
> 
> PLEASE -- the next time you are setting up for a SSB
contest, either
> listen to your own audio on another rig or get another ham to
listen
> critically to your audio.
> 
> 73, Jim K9YC
> 
> 
>
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