[TenTec] Orion Microphone choices and monitor function

[Don]

Hello All,

Thanks to all for your responses, most of which were constructive and 
instructive.

For those who are interested, I have ordered a Heil Goldline with the HC-5 
element.
Should've gone with it first, rather than the Studio One, which produces 
excellent audio,
just not the particular sound that I'm looking for. (Which is punchy DX 
type audio, but not
as pinched as the HC-4...creating sociable rag chew audio with the Studio 
One is a breeze.)

With regards to the muffled monitor problem I had mentioned, it was fixed 
by re-updating
the radio with 1.367 again. One respondent to my original post postulated 
that my actual
audio must be muffled if it sounds muffled in the monitor. This in fact was 
not the case. Using
other radios in the shack to monitor my audio, my actual transmitted audio 
sounded just fine.
I was also receiving excellent audio reports on the air. As I was having a 
couple of other anomalies
with the radio, (that I thought were just quirks in the firmware to be 
ironed out in the future), and
master resets didn't seem to help, I decided to re-install 1.367, even 
though the original update
appeared to take as it should.

The new install of 1.367 did the trick! All of the "quirks" are gone, and 
monitored audio, although
it could be louder in my opinion, has lost the muffled sound that it had.

For those of you who may be experiencing some firmware issues, you may want 
to give a
re-installation of the firmware a try. Did the trick for me.

Certainly isn't a problem to learn a radio when it works like it should. 
Just like other radios
I have owned through the years, learning a new radio is one of the most 
enjoyable parts of the hobby.

Thanks again for your responses.

73 de Don
W0DJC