[TenTec] Headphones for ORION I?

[Joe Roberts]

On 8/11/2010 8:02 PM, Jim Brown K9YC wrote:
> Almost everything in this email is wrong.



Yes and no. After trying MANY MANY headphones, I settled on a 300 ohm 
RACAL/Astrolite aviation headset, 300 ohm Telephonics TDH-39 
audiometer/aviation phones, and good old 300 ohm Western Electric ANB-H1 
WWII style cans on an HB-7 headband for all of my modern IC chip amp radios.

In the latter two cases, the 300 ohm elements are in parallel for 150 
ohms mono.

These give me the best combination of sensitivity and frequency 
response...that is moderate sensitivity and restricted frequency response.

I have had Sennheisers, fancy Beyerdynamics, Sony MDR-7505, etc hooked 
up but the hi-fi frequency response is hard to take with most radios, 
especially on a noisy band or with IF/AF hiss in the equation.

The cans I mention above are communications bandwidth or a bit better 
(TDH-39s are good to maybe 7k) but strike me as very low distortion and 
provide highly intelligible sound.

So I am with Stuart in going for the higher-Z old school headphones and 
leaving the MDR-7505s for my kid to play World of Warcraft on the PC.

The only way to know how they'll jive with a given radio is to hook them 
up. On the whole, though, I can skip the hi-fi headphones for HF.

Joe N5KAT