Hi all:
You can indeed use another receiver in the shack to get an idea of your
received audio in the real world.
You can use either another HF transceiver, or a good quality HF receiver.
The trick is to use a 40DB attenuator or so.
You can get attenuators for dirt cheap at ham fests or on ebay.
Before radios came with built in attenuators, they were external.
So, you can use the radios built in attenuator, turn the preamp off and use
the external attenuator to reduce the signal enough to not over load the
receiver.
If you have a particular band that you want to use for testing, build a
small tuned loop or a tuned coil for that band and you'll get great results.
Put the loop on the top of the rig or on the wall and it'll be far enough
away from your outdoor antennas to reduce overloading even more.
Those audio doctors on 14.178 excetra usually use a receiver with
attenuators inline and a tuned coil or antenna of some sort to record their
audio, and to insure they are not exceeding 6KC's of real world band width
You are right though Anthony, the built in audio monitor really doesn't give
you a good idea of your actual received audio.  You cannot set the processor
properly either due to compression of the audio in the monitor and usually
guys end up setting things way way too high because they can't hear things
properly with all that compressing that goes on.
One of the best ways i have found to set audio is have a good friend locally
who can record your audio on his end and either play it back, or send you
the mp3 files online.
You conduct a series of tests using different settings...basically the ones
you think should sound good, listen to the file and then adjust things again
and have the other ham rerecord the new settings until you get it the way
you want to sound on the air.
Also, having the other ham use an audio scope on his end helps to insure you
don't have peaks and valleys in your audio if you are using an EQ.
There are lots of free frequency band scope programs for the PC available
out there.  Of course, they're all totally unaccessible with a screen
reader.
If you take an hour or two to go thorugh this, you'll sound like a million
bucks all the time.  You can also taylor settings for DX and rag chewwing
separately and remember, or write down the settings so you can adjust
quickly and accurately for the operating conditions you are under.
On the ts2000, I turn on the compressor and sometimes the HC setting in the
tx eq for DX and it works great.
For local, or rag chewwing sessions, i keep the processor off, leave the tx
EQ on the off setting, and leave the mic gain at around 70 percent with the
current microphone I am using.
I also am now using an external mixer with a 3 band graphic EQ and i have
set that the same way as I mentioned above, with a recording from a local
ham on 20 meters.
Without doing all this, usually, on the ts2000, and any microphone, set the
processor at 75 percent or so and the mic gain at 70 and it is good to go.
If you put the onboard monitor on 2, you can have it on without feeding back
into the microphone, except when you turn the processor on, you'll get a
tiny bit of feedback and you'll know the processor is on.
Use a head set, or just turn the monitor off...just two buttons
73
Colin, V A6BKX