Hello list,

This might sound strange, but I'm getting discouraged with the sound from my ST590. It's just a digital sound, and my cochlear implants (being digital devices themselves) just don't handle digitally-generated sound well. I'm seriously thinking of finding an old ham receiver with analog signal processing and putting up with poor selectivity etc. 

For example, my iPhone sounds digital, even with a good connection. To a lesser extent, my land line phone, which is actually VOIP through Comcast, also sounds digital. But the digital effect disappears when using my wife's wired landline phone (which I'm sure turns into VOIP along the network).

now the TS590 just sounds digital even with the noise limiter and blanker turned off and listening to AM broadcast stations with broadest selectivity. But my Victor Stream (which is actually digital), sounds more analog and better. In the 590, I can turn the RF gain down to keep an SSB signal from influencing the AGC, and this removes the digital effect somewhat. But I think something got lost in the audio quality (for my ears at least) of modern transceivers. Maybe I'll try building my own receiver, like the regenerative receiver I built in my novice days. That used vacuum tubes and was inspired from an article in the BTP. It wasn't much, but it was analog!

Sorry for the rant. I used to enjoy phone, but it now sounds so gross sometimes that I spend more time on CW and deal with weird digitally-generated effects, which can get rather wild with sharp selectivity.