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W2IHY 8 Band EQ and EQPlus Video Review

Moleculo

Ham Radio Nerd
Apr 14, 2002
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Here is a video review / demonstration of the W2IHY 8 Band Equalizer and Noise Gate along with the EQPlus. I fed the audio chain into one of the audio channels on the camera so you can hear the audio characteristics fairly well. The video isn't perfect...the intro is cheesy, there are some misspoken words, some of audio characteristics were lost in the online conversion, and the compression demonstration overwhelmed the camera audio input a bit. Overall I think it came out pretty good, though. Make sure you put on some headphones or use some good speakers on your computer.

Let me know what you think!

 
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A real quick follow up: I borrowed an ordinary wireless lapel mic, so I'm going to shoot and post a quick and simple demonstration of how you can use this equipment to affect any ordinary mic. Stay tuned!
 
Well done Tim, very informative and well planed i really did like hearing that immediate difference in the audio as soon as you fliped that first switch on the 8 Band EQ. I almost cant wait to see what kind of impact it will have with a regular Mic.

I know what i want for Christmas hehe.
 
Well done Tim, very informative and well planed i really did like hearing that immediate difference in the audio as soon as you fliped that first switch on the 8 Band EQ. I almost cant wait to see what kind of impact it will have with a regular Mic.

I know what i want for Christmas hehe.

I kind've wanted to play with the EQ a bit on camera so you can actually hear it, but then I didn't want to mess up my settings, LOL. Maybe I'll do that with the regular mic.

To me, the best device is the EQ Plus - You get a two band equalizer, compression, downward expansion, a universal mic interface, reverb, and output control in one reasonably priced box. If I didn't have that downward expander everyone would complain about all of the background noise in my station. That thing makes it nice and quiet.
 
Outstanding run through...far too many people just fundamentally misunderstand the functions of all the modules.

One thing I would add and emphasize...do *not* drive either piece until there is indicated limiting. They distort, guaranteed.

On the 8-band, when you initially configure it, there are two pots on the bottom, input and output gain and a jumper for mic impedance. It is important you set the jumper to match the mic you are using or it will drastically affect the sound quality and performance of the mic.

1) Work the mic at a consistent distance. Form your hand like you are going to do a karate chop, place it long ways at your mouth so that you set the distance to the mic at the width of your hand. This is a good generic distance you should be from your mouth to the direct center of the mic element.

2) Set your jumper to the correct impedance and enable the phantom power *only* if your mic requires it. If you have no output at all from your mic...it may need it, otherwise always leave phantom power off.

3) Flip the 8 bander on it's edge so you can see the top of it and reach the pots underneath it. While using a very loud, almost shouting voice, bark out 'five' 'five' 'five' and 'two' two two, emphasizing the punch on two. Bring the input gain up until you see the red light on the right side top of the 8-band lighting up. It is now clipping and will definitely distort your audio. From this point slowly bring the input gain down until you no longer light the red light AT ALL during any normal and even elevated voice level. If you yell, it will light, but no normal speech or laugh should even light it up a bit...this is very important.

4) Next is the output level pot, turn it all the way counterclockwise which is off. If you are driving a rig directly, put your rig into a dummy load and SSB, and flip the rig meter to the ALC mode. Set the mic gain on the rig to its sweet spot...where it normally would give you proper (2/3 to 3/4) ALC deflection on normal speech with a stock mic feeding it. Slowly bring the output level of the 8-band up, it will be a pretty fine line, until you see proper ALC deflection. With the EQ Plus as the next device in the chain, set its input level to around 10-12 o'clock and do the same watching it's meter. You want to see maybe two yellow bars, but no indication of clipping at all.

Either of these pieces, with the 8-band being worse, will distort if you overdrive them. Same goes for overdriving the mic circuit in your rig with too much output from your outboard equipment.

This is all referred to 'gain staging' your signal path. If you find that you are cutting the drive level in the middle of the chain, you are doing something wrong. No stage should come in hotter than it goes out. There should be even levels or a gradual progression from low at the input to highest at the output of the final stage.

The single biggest mistake people make with outboard gear is fouling up their gain staging and getting either lousy audio quality or a clipped and dirty signal on the band.

I also agree that the 8-band is the lesser of the two by quite a lot. The EQ Plus, compressor and downward expander do more to transform your audio than almost anything else you can do. The bass and treble frequencies chosen on it are perfect center and width and Q for voice.

Julius did an outstanding job with taking sensible 'middle' ground averages for all the control points making this equipment FAR easier to set up than actual pro-audio rack equipment for the average Joe.

I prefer the flexibility of rack equipment myself, but I had a full time career as a sound engineer so the configuration of all the interconnects, grounding and proper attenuation into my rigs is not something I had any confusion with.

With Julius' equipment, it is FAR simpler to get things done right without that background and it's easily 9/10's or better the equivalent of budget rack equipment.

I still run his iPlus as my multi-rig interface for my single PTT switch and mic as well.

As for SSB vs FM/AM, one trick if you buy both pieces is to set up for flat, natural response without the 8-band turned on, for AM and FM use. Then for SSB, set up the EQ on the 8-band to drop the mids a bit, boost the bottom and highs. All you have to do is then flip the 'on' switch on the 8-band when you do SSB and flip it off on AM and FM.

One last parting shot. With EQ, often what you want to achieve, more highs, more bottom, can be achieved by dropping something else out of the way. If mids are too hot, it will sound like you need to boost the bass...instead, try dropping out your mids. If you feel like you need more articulation, try dropping somewhere between 160-400Hz out. If you sound boxy, look at 500-800Hz depending on your voice.

After dropping wth an EQ, it is attenuating the overall level many times, so to recover the 'volume' level, you do that with the output level after your changes.

It is _always_ the best and cleanest audio if you drop out with an EQ vs boosting. You can't always get what you want this way, but DO try it first.
 
Excellent stuff there SR385. I was thinking about shooting a demonstration on how to set up the 8 Band EQ as you described, but the video was already 18 minutes long. Perhaps if there is enough interest I can do a separate one showing just that process. When I first got the EQ and set it up, I had it set waaaaay too hot. I had to go through a procedure that was really exactly like you described to get it right. The most important part was making sure that little red LED didn't light up no matter how I talked!

You're absolutely right on about how you have set up the audio chain, too. It took a while to get that right also, but once I did, it was great! Oh, and you have to be careful when doing all this by just using the monitor function on the EQ equipment and your rig. What I did was first use the monitor on the W2IHY equipment without the transceiver to get it where I was happy, and then I used the monitor on the rig to adjust it. The audio definately changes when you introduce the transceiver. Unfortunately a lot of monitor circuits on the transceivers do not accurately reproduce what is transmitted, so you still really need to get someone to play back your sound on the air.
 
And never judge your audio with a receiver that is too narrow to hear it all....very common mistake. Some guy with a stock 2.8k rig tells you you dont' have enough bottom end heh, but you are +30db below 100Hz already....he just can't hear it because the rig is too narrow on RX passband to hear it.

I'm lucky now that I have an SDR receiver. I just TX into a dummy load and listen to myself live right out of the rig. I can make the receive filter width and pass band whatever I want. It's made things a lot easier.

And on the other side of this...if your rig doesn't TX enough audio width...you won't hear anything you change outside its passband either.

Passband for the reader is the audio spectrum width you can receive or transmit with a given rig configuration.

Take 3kHz as an example. You have 3kHz of audio spectrum width to play with.

With no offset, you would have theoretically 0Hz to 3kHz in audio spectrum range.

With offset you could have say 100Hz to 3.1kHz in range.

Each rig has different specs for this. Some are quite limited with no adjustment at all, say my TS-680 or TS-940, they are what they are, bound to the crystals inside on the boards. Some are reasonably well adjustable, like my TS-2000 which has I think 2.0 to 3.0kHz selectable widths with a few ranges inbetween. The ultimate are the Flex or similar SDR transmitters which allow you almost infinite width from 50Hz to 6kHz and some even wider.

The wider the signal, the less efficient it will be, but the wider range of audio it will pass...and potentially the more natural it will sound. The wider one is, the more space you take up on the band too, so you will interfere with a wider range than others.

My personal approach is to best what I can in 3kHz of space. For SSB, I find this an acceptable width. On crowded bands like 20m when I'm not going to chew the rag for hours, I knock it back down to 2.6 or so to give more breathing room. For penetrating DX efficiency, I knock it back to 2.0 kHz and crank up the compressor.
 
Here's a quick and dirty demo video demo using an ordinary lapel wireless mic. Please understand that absolutely zero time was spent setting up the audio equipment to work well with this mic. The end result is pretty rough, IMO. However, it does demonstrate how much change you can achieve with this equipment. So take this video demo for what it's worth and try to conceptualize what is possible as a result of hearing this. Remember, you need to put on some good earphones or use some good computer speakers with these videos.

W2IHY 8 band EQ & EQPlus Quick n' Dirty Demo on Vimeo
 
huh...
this guy
15ojfqv.jpg


loooks ALOT like this guy
April.Nice.Weather-8 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rfonewatt/3101565774/in/set-72157607738652140/

hmmmm rf attracts the same folks all over the world
 

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