W2IHY 8 Band Audio Equalizer / Noise Gate

[KB4MNG]

Will the W2IHY 8 Band Audio Equalizer / Noise Gate improve my transmit audio with my heil gold line and kenwood ts 830. It's kind of pricey but willing to try if it works.

kb4mng

[W4INT]

Yes. It will allow you to modify the sound of the Heil.

[KW6LA]

The W2IHY equalizer is a great tool to improve the audio they way you want it. May it be DX type or broadcast quality, you have control of the sound reproduction.
That said nothing will fix bad ALC overdriving or shouting into the microphone. Most Ham’s will improve their audio with just learning to set levels correctly and finding
The sweet spot ( proximity ) of a decent ! ! microphone. The next level would be a W2IHY Box for polish. The saying goes, the best noise gate is none at all. If you have
a noisy Ham shack- - - fix it and eliminate the back ground noise before going to the gate. Some ( not adjusted correctly ) sounds like a crappy vox setting and choppy.
If you want to spend the time ( learning to set it ) and money, you are in new league of Ham radio operator that only perfection makes you happy.

[W8MW]

If you want to spend the time ( learning to set it ) and money, you are in new league of Ham radio operator that only perfection makes you happy.

Much truth in that. I have many years experience with W2IHY gear and recommend it without hesitation. Having also spent time with the gold line, I found that microphone needs fine-tuning before it can sparkle. So yes, you can expect improvements.

Check out the W2IHY web site. The equipment has a 30 day money back guarantee.

73, Mike

[KM3F]

Every make and model radio has a different "total' frequency response from your voice, the mike response, and the radio's total bandwidth.
Your voice, you can't do much about but get into the habit of speaking clearly like an announcer learns to do on com. radio and TV..
The mike' ideally' needs to have a wide and nearly flat response (many don't) between about 100 hz and about 3000 hz unless the radio has been modified for a wider pass band.
The response in the radio affects the total as well.
So you see there is a lot more to this than meets your eye, as they say.
To get the best undersanding of the whole situation you need to know the mikes frequency response curve in order to make use of the expected IHY box settings.
then you still don't know the radio's response unless you test it into a dummy load with a vairable audio oscillator and plot the power output curve at a low level in the 10 to 20 watt range.
And you cannot force audio through the radio very far outside it's system limits.
If you look for instance, at a mikes response and it shows a peak at 5000 hz, you can't use it to any advange or try to force it through the radio.
If the same mike shows good output at 50 hz, normnally you can't force much of that through the radio if the radio drops off sharply after 200 hz for example.
.
If you go on the air and get deeply involved in asking others for there opinion you will hear 6 different interpetaions of what they hear and you still won't know what you sound like, only what they think sounds good to them.
Besides all this, the listening stations have different receiving frequency responses and hearing, coloring what they hear through a possible narrow band receive, to poor or small speakers etc.
Bottom line is if you enter without any reference knowledge about what you want and who you trust to tell you accurately and it becomes a debating game you never win unless you call a stopping point to it. Some will even argue over it.
Lastly, using EQing on a stock radio does not widen the bandwidth taken up all that much more.
But on a modified radio all bets are off. The BW will go wider and cause some differences of opinion with ops up and down the band. That can get a bit nasty when the BW goes from 50 hz to 4000hz wide in a crowded band.
The IHY box only goes from 50 to 3200 normally so most radios won't pass much beyond about 2800 to 3000 but you can still improve a stock setup with the box.
My attempt here is to give you some perspective about what your getting into.
Good luck.

[W3SQE]

I use the box primarily to allow me to bypass the Icom 735 mic jack and o direct to the balanced modulator. This method really only makes a little difference on SSB but much more on AM. Your radios filter width plays a big role in the sound others hear. The box will also allow better level matching between mic and radio which is a plus.

When testing the sound output if you get the EQ listening to headphones connected to the EQ is not much help. You really need to transmit and listen to that audio received by a rig or better yet record that received audio as trying to listen to yourself while you talk in real time makes judgment difficult. What I do is transmit tests legally with ID at very low wattage (5 or 10) and tune myself in on another rig with no antenna plugged into it. I then connect a recording device to its headphone jack making sure both the receive levels on the radio front end and the record levels on the recording device used are OK. I listen to that recording,make changes as needed then rerecord and listen and so on. Good luck.

ET

[KB5UBI]

Don't most of the newer rigs have an equalizer? I use an outboard compressor which includes a noise gate and a balanced and single ended IO.

KB5UBI

[WA8FOZ]

Will the W2IHY 8 Band Audio Equalizer / Noise Gate improve my transmit audio with my heil gold line and kenwood ts 830. It's kind of pricey but willing to try if it works.

kb4mng

YES. I have used the Julius-box and a Goldline with two Kenwood rigs with great success, Do read carefully what KM3F has written above. And listen to your own signal with a separate receiver and headphones as you set up.

[WA7PRC]

Don't most of the newer rigs have an equalizer? I use an outboard compressor which includes a noise gate and a balanced and single ended IO.

Exactly. Also, the expensive Heil microphones shouldn't need any outboard equalization, especially since this is amateur radio, not professional radio. If I wanted to have broadcast quality sound, I would become a broadcaster -- again.

Like you, my outboard box (a Symetrix 528E) is used to gate the audio (expander) to the rig and then flatten the dynamic range (compressor). The three band parametric equalizer is engaged only wehen DX-ing and contesting, to reduce low frequency response, and to add a peak between 1 and 2 KHz.

Most of the time, I use a headset. No matter which way I turn my head, the microphone is ALWAYS in the right position. The few times I use a boom mounted microphone (a $20 unidirectional Radio Shack on a $50 boom), many say it sounds as good as a Heil.

[N8MSA]

You're going to get bunch of different opinions, but I would say that an audio rack is worth the money if you want to optimize / control the way you sound over the air. Even with two highly-adjustable, premium transceivers (Elecraft K3 and Flex 5000A), I found that I could make more precise adjustments with a W2IHY "rack" and change settings more quickly to match conditions.

Probably the main reason I use a rack is that I can make myself sound, within the previously noted limited bandwidth, sound "casually loud": optimized intelligibility without undue harshness. My station is, as are many people's, a collection of compromises controlled primarily by where I live. This is something I can "tweak", and thus I am gonna tweak it...

Another factor is that I like to be able to switch TX audio properties quickly to suit operating conditions. I can switch very quickly between "casually loud" and "best-effort pile-up busting" very quickly, even as a DX station is responding to me so that I can go back to "normal" for the exchange.

I adjust my transceivers "to" the rack, allowing me to switch between radios very quickly and still get the same "sound" from all of my transmitters. This is important as every phone transmitter I have every used has subtle (sometime not-so-subtle) differences in the way they sound on the air.

Finally...I just want control over this set of parameters. I probably wouldn't make the investment if it were substantially more than what I spent, but as it is I'm very happy with the price/performance ratio. And that, at the end of the day, is what counts. I can't help but notice that this isn't the "cat's whisker and carbon mic" forum, so everyone here is making some kind of price-to-performance decision and I suggest that no-one's decisions in this hobby are un-assailable.