Audio Equalizers

[Onelasttime]

You are entitled to an opinion but something is not a waste just because it doesn't interest you. If you only want to listen 2.8khz wide that's your business. There are no specific laws about transmit bandwidth but a person does need to be considerate when the band is crowded. Don't think too badly of the guy in the video I posted. He doesn't even have a ssb transmitter...or coax.

No it is a waste. Not because it does not interest him but scientifically it is a waste of power, it is a waste of bandwidth, it is a waste in almost every way if 95% of the radio's on the band can not receive 30% of your transmitted data becasue it is too wide for the receivers to detect. If you look at the reason the purpose and utility of SSB than it is a waste on every level and violates the spirit of two way radio communication. Amateur and CB radio's are not intended to mimic commercial broadcast radio on AM or FM. You are supposed to use as little power and bandwidth as you can to be heard and not interfere or pollute the RF spectrum. I am not anti eSSB for local rag chewing at QRP power levels. Once you start to add power though you need to knock it off with the eSSB or hifi AM so you do not pollute the band or interfer with other's. It is kind of like listening to loud music in your home or car. It is not right to force your music upon other's with excessively loud music. Even if it is legal up to a certain time it is not being a good neighbor or good citizen!

Look at all those selfish nitwits on Ch. 6!! That channel is functional useless!

 

[Onelasttime]

The eq can be used on tx audio and receive audio. Since the noise floor and voice of the person you are listening too is not static it is nice to be able to eq them! On top of that if the radio is just slightly modified you can use the eq to completely change your transmit audio from rag chewing to pile up busting. It also allows you to match almost any mic to any radio. In fact adding a switched audio transformer to the eq would again allow for a huge variation of mics to be used and would give you gain control with out always using electronic amplification. Depending on the mic and the radio you can get upward of 10db of gain -/+ with just an audio transformer. The trick is choosing one that is not going to hurt the fidelity of the audio!

Anything you do to the tx audio can be done to rx audio too. Depending on where you place your gear in the circuit this can be easy or difficult to do. If you stop and think about this if you need to bias your audio freq. and use compression to break through a pile up why would you not want to do the same thing on receive?!?!?

It never stop amazing me how stupid so much of the hobby can be when it comes to constantly trying to improve tx audio with no real interst in improving rx audio! It is the same type of lack of forsight that you see on ch. 6! Pumping out 10k watts or more of rf signal but can not hear another station 50 miles away!

None of those guys ever spend any time improving sensitivity or selectivity of the receiver. They do not spend any time filtering either. It is like putting a 800hp engine in a 1979 Ford Pinto with stock brakes, tires, steering etc....Does not take a rocket scientist to see the futility of doing such a thing! Although in my example the Ford Pinto does not make it difficult for other drivers trying to share the road with it like eSSB and hifi AM audio does for those wanting to share a band let alone a channel of adjacent channel!

If people where not selfish inconsiderate nitwits than using power and eSSB and hifi AM audio would not be an issue. It is because 99% of these people are jerks that we have this issue. It is not different than how most people drive today or how they push a shopping cart at Walmart. Some common COURTSEY and just being a good neighbor and citizen would solve all of this! Not going to happen though!

In the case of amateur radio their is no bandwidth limit in place it is just a gentleman's agreement. On CB though their is in fact clearly stated bandwidth limits! So while it is legal to do as an amateur it is not legal to do on CB.

Also with regard to old school broadcasting I have a cousin that was a DJ before joining the Air-Force. He is retired from the Air Force so he is no spring chick. They spent a lot of time on voice training back in the day to get that deep smooth broadcast sound it was not all down to electronics and bandwidth they spent time training their voice!

 

[543_Dallas]

No it is a waste. Not because it does not interest him but scientifically it is a waste of power, it is a waste of bandwidth, it is a waste in almost every way if 95% of the radio's on the band can not receive 30% of your transmitted data becasue it is too wide for the receivers to detect. If you look at the reason the purpose and utility of SSB than it is a waste on every level and violates the spirit of two way radio communication. Amateur and CB radio's are not intended to mimic commercial broadcast radio on AM or FM. You are supposed to use as little power and bandwidth as you can to be heard and not interfere or pollute the RF spectrum. I am not anti eSSB for local rag chewing at QRP power levels. Once you start to add power though you need to knock it off with the eSSB or hifi AM so you do not pollute the band or interfer with other's. It is kind of like listening to loud music in your home or car. It is not right to force your music upon other's with excessively loud music. Even if it is legal up to a certain time it is not being a good neighbor or good citizen!

Look at all those selfish nitwits on Ch. 6!! That channel is functional useless!

Ok, but hear my side of this. You're opinion is that it is a waste of bandwidth. A person that only uses CW or digital modes may think using phone in any mode is a waste. I feel like contests are the biggest waste of bandwidth. The mentality is not that different that the guys on ch 6 except they spread across the band and call cq for hours waiting on one of their fellow contesters to find them. As annoying as that is I respect their right to enjoy amateur radio as they see fit as long as they aren't causing deliberate interference to someone that was using the frequency first.

This is turning into a thread against essb. I try not to use ssb unless I have to. When I do use ssb I keep my signal 3khz wide or less. As you say there are those that can not receive "30%" of my signal but I am not making a broadcast for all of those people's enjoyment. I am talking to people with similar interest with equipment that hears 100% of what I'm transmitting. My usual rig is an anan and I have puresignal wrapped around whatever amplifier I am using at the time. I don't splatter but I see the ones that do on my panadapter. Most are running stock ssb rigs with some kind of amp they barely know how to use.

Unless you follow all rules in part 95 and part 97 for their respective bands you have no leg to stand on when it comes to what others should be doing. This thread's original purpose has been overlooked and became a place for narrow minded people to bash someone else for not obeying laws that don't exist. Some of it is just jealousy when it comes to the big amplifiers or expensive equipment. Not everyone with an equalizer connected to their rig is playing music on ch 19 with it or splattering 40 channels. I would like to see what the little mosfet amplifiers you were talking about building look like on the waterfall. We all need to be good neighbors and it starts with the manufacturer / builder.

 

[Onelasttime]

Well, I do not have waterfall built into any or my radio's and do not have software defined radio with it either. I do have reasonable spectrum analyzer function as FFT under common math functions on my 200Mhz scope while not of the highest resolution I can see any obvious harmonics on my own gear I just have no way to see it in the rx from other rigs.

I never said it was against the law or rules relating to amateur radio but it is a no-no for CB radio.

I assure it is not jealousy. I could build an insanely powerful tube amp if I so desired. I seriously do not like people running power all the time or using far more power than is needed to get the job done. I am a very principled person and have felt this way since high school. For the recorded, I graduated high school in 1992 so that has been some time ago. My principals have not changed much since then.

No one wants to be a good citizen or neighbor anymore that is the problem. We have stupid rules because stupid people can not play nicely with other's so net result is stupid rules. Maybe you have noticed but bureaucrats and bigots do not usually come up with good rules that get tot he root of the problem. So we all get punished because a few people can not behave themselves.

My judgment was not an opinion it is rooted in hard cold unfeeling non-subjective numbers. Any excessive power no matter how clean or excessive bandwidth is always pollution no matter how much you like. The only reason you support being able to do this is because you like it not because it benefits most people in the radio hobby. Crack whores think crack should be legal. Pedophiles think they should be able to have consensual sex with a minor. Gambling facilities are always for the expansion of gambling. So the very fact you do something makes you absolute biased and not at all able to be intellectually honest or subjective. I do not have a dog in the fight so to speak. Everyone in the hobby benefits by not allowing excessive use of bandwidth but no one benefits from excessive bandwidth. In fact, nothing you do is done better with more bandwidth. Your gear becomes less efficient and if you want to talk the same distance with twice the bandwidth you need to use far more power. So not only is it a resource hog but it is less green and the more power you dump into the environment the greater the noise floor becomes for everyone in the area. It is just like being in a class room if everyone is quite even a fairly low volume audio signal like a person speaking can easily be heard. As more and more people in the room start talking to each other even if they are using a fairly quiet voice you can no longer understand what the original speaker is saying. An electronic signal in the electromagnetic spectrum work in much the same manner. The crazy noise floor we have today on CB, for instance, is not some benign thing that is part of nature that is man-made. If you went back 100 years on powered up a radio on 27mhz you would not have the huge noise floor we have today and could be heard around the world with a decent dipole and 4 watts of power.

If like what you do was a definitive guide to anything the key down contest idiots would have a leg to stand on.

I too hate contesting it is a waste of bandwidth. I like talking to other human beings not contesting. I also would never want to collect QSO's or attempt to talk to every continent on command with EME.

We all have to agree to give up some individual freedoms for the greater good of society. Just because you can do something and you are not breaking any laws does mean it is a good thing and worthy of pursuit.

So we will have to agree to disagree. Anything that is selfish and inconsiderate of other's and works against the hobby, in general, is bad in my book even if perfectly legal! Sooner or ladder your peers are going to decide that eSSB is bad and they will outlay it I am sure or they will set bandwidth limits at some point.

Even though I am into CB I would love to have current CB system outlawed and replaced with digital audio and less bandwidth and more channels packed into the band. I want to talk to people and have fun! A system like that would make hifi and eSSB instantly a thing of the past for good. I much prefer analog audio and rf to anything digital but people get up to no good the way things are now too easily.I tired of all the games and bs in the hobby!

 

[Shadetree Mechanic]

Digital CB? No, no, no. AM will never die. If AM is outlawed then only outlaws will have AM. LOL

 

[543_Dallas]

Digital CB? No, no, no. AM will never die. If AM is outlawed then only outlaws will have AM. LOL

He still thinks this thread is about essb. I guess he would rather ramble about pedophiles and crack whores because those are things he can relate to. I'm not sure if he knows what I meant when I mentioned digital modes but we'll let him run with it. He seems to have a different idea.

 

[Onelasttime]

Digital CB? No, no, no. AM will never die. If AM is outlawed then only outlaws will have AM. LOL

You can push a digital signal through AM. The first data systems used worked that way. In fact the purpose of a becan signal is to let an unmaned radio know that reception conditions are ok to transmit the data waiting to be sent. Just like the old school modems. If need be you could have the whole handshaking syncing communicating system and do the entire packet thing. You could also do the whole freq. hopping with synched date/timeline system like the Armies old Vanguard Spread Spectrum Freq. Hopping System.

 

[jon666]

bla bla bla

 

[Mustang 131]

I quite using digital after I passed my 13 words per minute.

 

[Handy Andy]

Might I make some suggestions?

First - I'd just need to know if what is meant by Audio Equalizers - is it something that you need to know as a modification for inside a radio - or are you looking for designing "broadcast quality" amplifiers instead?

Secondly - I do have some ideas - but as already came up - the issue of bandwidth for the bands is open for question regarding the bandwidth limitations the FCC has versus the rest of the world. So I don't want to get knocked around for something known already to be in a grey area - let alone the radio it's being done to.

So the above being asked, if all someone wanted to do is "open up" the audio from the radio so others can hear them better - is a subjective topic yes, with strong opinions. But a lot can be learned from it when it comes to finding the real truth about getting your voice turned in to Audio as a signal and understand spectrum range and making it work in RF realms and the limitations of the various modulation techniques.

I've seen a lot of bashing in the thread and although I'd love to join in sharing some ideas - I'd like to know if this thread can even be taken seriously after the gauntlet of critiques and criticisms that have been posted along the way...

I'll skip the thread if I'm wasting your time...just polling the waters to see if the thread can be salvaged....

 

[kopcicle]

Andy , since you said please...

I have a unique voice. You won't notice it via most telecom and most people even miss it in person. An audio spectrum analyzer doesn't miss it . I have a well defined hole in the frequencies my voice box produces. There is little or nothing between 850 and 1300 Hz . We had an FM broadcast station in High School that turned up the peculiarity. I have several voices that range from shock jock to late night DJ and some character voices in between but my normal relaxed voice has always had that hole.

So when I had a hot rod station on 11m it consisted of a
ALPINE ERE-G180 with ~ flat to the 1k and 2.2k maxed and the 4.5 and 18K turned off. For a bit more bite I'd roll off 125 and down.
The microphone was a Shure Brothers R5 element in a Turner Super Sidekick chassis with a source follower to mate to the EQ.
From there it varied , a lot. The nasty driver was a PTBM049AOX with a ECG340 Pre, 2SC2166 Driver and 2SC1969 final. Getting the NPN/PNP ALC to work was a bit of voodoo. I managed to tame it down to 4W max and 100% mod. Waste of a good SSB final? Not in the least. The headroom was necessary.

PA was a pair of 6KV6A @ 700V and a quad of 6MJ6 @950V in GG with a bit of bias. Normal grounded-grid 6MJ6 amps require only 5-10v bias, and are more stable along with having better IM performance. Connecting a grid to the cathode or "floating" a grid for RF to make it "super cathode driven" is a bad idea in any cathode driven amp.
The result into a broadside array was "noticeable".

Now fast forward to your specific question . The R5 cartridge has shows a steady rise in frequency response from 50 to 200 and is reasonably flat from there to 2,800. Easy so far as the target is 3k. Attenuate below 1k and above 2.2k then plot the resultant response with a audio signal generator. It follows the intended equalized curve, so far so good. Now add my voice. I saw a rise from about 50 to 200 and flat to 2.8k as predicted. 6db down points were about 100 and 3k. With the level out of the eq too low the effect wasn't noticeable and the hole in my voice was still there. Raise the eq output and I was very nearly overloading the TA7205 input. I had to play with a resistive divider at the base of the PNP/ALC to get it in range for any kind of worth wile adjustment.

In lay terms my voice was flat from 100 to 3k. Nearly all of my frequency response could be heard by ANY receiving station other than a communications receiver with optional tight filters. Seems like a lot of work and brain sweat but to me it was worth it .

Time for the math section . The human voice is , with exceptions, approximately a 1 in 4 duty cycle. AM carrier is just that a carrier only. Average is the same as PEP because, absent amplitude modulation, the carrier level is unchanging over time.

Unmodulated carrier = 100 watts (PEP or) average carrier power.


100% steady modulated 5w carrier = 20 watts PEP or 7.5 watts average or "heating" power. Of this 7.5 watts average or "heating" power, 5 watts is in the carrier, and 1.25 watts average power is in each of the two AM signal's sidebands.

Carrier average power = 2/3 of the total 100% modulated average power

Total of both sidebands, average power = 1/3 of total average power under 100% modulation

Average power one sideband = 1/6th average power with 100% modulation

Peak Envelope Power 100% symmetrical modulation = Four times carrier power.

And we're back to the human voice having a 1 in four duty cycle.
All this is worthy of note because the TA7205P only can dissipate 7.5w @ 9.5w into 2 ohms @ 10% THD.
http://pdf1.alldatasheet.com/datasheet-pdf/view/31259/TOSHIBA/TA7205AP.html
Holding the carrier down to 4w allows the audio amp to be backed off to take the heat stress off and get the THD down to single digits. For extra credit figure out the audio power needed to fully modulate a 4w carrier
Any further audio output necessary to modulate more than a 4w carrier would have to come from an outside source bypassing the TA7205P . Keep in mind that the 2166/1969 pair is capable of at least 12w carrier.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it unless I made some brain dead math mistake.

 

[Handy Andy]

Greetings!

That's my story and I'm sticking to it unless I made some brain dead math mistake.

Nope no "math mistake" here - wonderful story - and where do I begin?

Wow, I guess I just wanted to say --:

There are no wrong answers here...

Foe each one that has replied in the thread has taken the ball that much further - if not out of the park - beyond the parking lot and settled into low-earth orbit...

(some people call that skip...but anyways)

Although a lot of what you have used, modified and worked on - not too many people have access to or even know how to use - my questions were of a very basic -rudimentary and simple nature. So anything I may be able to provide or add in any way to this thread PALES in comparison by your experience alone.

I admire someone that takes their gift and uses it to fill gaps.

The problem with a lot of the CB radio realm is - getting there - where you're at, when they are way over here - at the Walmart getting a Cobra 29...

That's where I'd like the thread to go - because of the commentary (as a cautionary tale to be heeded in lieu of local enforcement of nuisance and rights to be at peace) defiantly tells of woes and drawbacks of the CB radios inherent, if not just plain cheap, limitations to the spectrum both by audio and channel needs require that many would rather enjoy in private concerts and large auditoriums.

I am processing this in my mind on how to proceed because you've take the instruments many would have not even known to exist and used them - I'm just trying to figure out a way to keep the application simple yet effective to improve upon a design - just not putting the cart before the horse - because both serve a function - its the ability to provide a means of care in one form, cannot be applied to the other so readily.

I guess I can put it this way, The Market works in ways that seem expensive. You can buy a bag of oats and pay a high price, or you can buy used oats that have gone thru the horse - at a much lower cost...

So in light of the many suggestions - I will abstain. Simply due to the complexity, in weave, this thread has been woven into. It has turned into a beautiful fabric that I myself cannot afford to buy..

Only to read and wish...

Thanks!
I can easily see I'm in over my head.
Regards!
:+> Andy <+: