Topband: Rig Question

[Guy Olinger K2AV]

K3's underwent an extended evolution on sound issues in the first two or
three ears. There are a lot of sound mods, including an outright
replacement of one circuit board. A lot of K3's do *not* have this mod, as
those with typical age related loss of high range hearing may not hear the
distortion, as I would guess might be true for the Elecraft principals.

New K3's and K3's with all the mods can have quite decent audio when set up
to *personal taste*.

A lot of RX satisfaction simply depends on an appealing sound. Though there
are some very fuzzily defined common preferences, a lot of what "sounds
good" is personal preference and varies over the map. And discussions about
this comparing rigs, because the elements of the discussion are terribly
poorly defined, often turn into a "Nyah, nyah, na nyah, nyah" or "My rig is
better than your rig" verbal p***ing contest.

Some things we do know...

o Younger operators on average hear highs much better than older ops. This
can cause two ops listening at the same time to the same RX to perceive the
audio in completely different ways. Confusion reigns.
o Band noise from a voice-width passband, reproduced with utter fidelity,
is commonly unbearable, and at very least, nearly uniformly unpleasant.
With a quiet circuit, a gradual rolloff over 2.5 kHz is near universally
preferred for voice. This preference is frequently the opposite for a noisy
circuit.
o High fidelity noise, due to some common poorly understood human stress
mechanism, is usually tiring and sometimes tiring to an extreme.
o The part of the communications voice bandwidth most important for
comprehension, syllibants, is the upper range, which is also the most
irritating for noise energy.
o For contesters, what they prefer for SSB contesting and prefer for casual
SSB ragchews are often violently different, *Particularly* in terms of how
loud they push the upper octaves in RX audio. This is also true for filter
bandwidths. Contesting is usually set for intelligibility alone, and
ragchews for pleasantness of sound.

An exhaustive list of these issues is fairly long. I almost never see these
elements transacted in a discussion of rig audios.

I bought my K3 so the RX front end would not be creating the noise base on
40 meters listening to a 5 element wide spaced quad on a 200 foot catenary.
Crushing signal levels. Now I can clearly pick out solar noise at certain
times. I use 1.8 kHz filters for SSB contesting with the passband shifted
up for maximum intelligibility, a setting I cannot stand to listen to for
casual ragchewing :>)

"Sound horrible" can be for so many reasons. On a K3 you need to know the
settings of filter, shift, audio passband shaping, NB & NR settings,
whether all the audio mods were done, in order to qualify what "sound
horrible" might come from.

Some folks can't stand K3's because they can't stand the small knobs and
buttons. Some others hated K3's until they used them as a guest at a
contest station. Others just do not like the sound no matter how adjusted.
I have more than one acquaintance who "hated" them until they got one.

Early on in K3 history, at the first WRTC with the K3 shipping, fully half
of the rigs brought to the WRTC championship in Europe were K3's. It was
clear that the contesters had found something they wanted. The next largest
contingent was FT1000MP's. At roughly that time, operators at NY4A had
owned or did own eleven FT1000MP's. Over a period of time, this list of
hams replaced the MP's with 15 K3's and one Orion, nothing else. Nobody was
coerced, and for sure each of that crew comes to his own independent views
and purchases.

Far and away, even now, the K3 is the common choice for serious contesters.
The sub RX is electrically identical to the main RX, just on a differently
shaped PC board to fit in its space. If those looking for rig opinions are
or will be contesters, a used K3 sent back to the factory to have all the
mods checked/done and firmware set to production levels will be a long
lasting choice. Audio on a K3 has to be set to something, making a
contesting setup and a casual setup possible.

One firmware revision a while back made a huge improvement in audio
quality. This was because prior firmware DSP calculations for AGC did not
use enough significant digits and were introducing digitalization
distortion to the audio. THis varied with AGC settings and signal strength
making trouble ID and fix exquisitely difficult. A K3 that is not up to
date can have some interesting issues. There *are* K3's out there that have
never had a firmware upgrade or had a mod done.

Having said all that, a lot of hams ONLY do casual operating, making some
number of rigs *without* a lot of settings nicely decent for their
purposes. I have recommended K3's a lot, but after listening to some
fellows talk about their operating, recommended a TS590S. At this writing
there were no K3's listed on eBay, and seven TS590S.

My advice to anyone trying to get close to a "keeper" is to locate someone
who has one and will let you come over and operate it, and get familiar
with the settings and how you do with the layouts and knobs. Do this for
all the rigs that tempt you. If you contest, include an up-to-date K3 and
an Orion no matter what anyone says. Otherwise buying a rig on reflector
advice is still going to be a cr*p shoot because you will not have HEARD
all the choices yourself. No matter what the science, if YOU don't like how
it sounds, you won't be happy.

73, Guy.