Why so many contest stations with poor audio

[N3QE]

Switch to CW contests, then this isn't a problem!

73s John AA5JG

Gotta disagree. Keyclicks and 60-Hz (or 50 Hz for much or Europe and rest of world) hum+harmonic buzz are really irritating and common on many big contest stations. Some have a transmitted CW spectrum that's more than a kilohertz wide.

I sometimes wonder if they do that on purpose, just to occupy more spectrum and keep anybody else from coming within a kHz of "their frequency".

The gotcha with CW is that it's not unusual for leading dits to be dropped. That's gotta be embarrassing.

[KF6A]

Switch to CW contests, then this isn't a problem!

73s John AA5JG

Then you get the key-click crew which is just as annoying.

[W9KDX]

Sightly off topic, but is there some specific way you can introduce splatter?  I don't want to be doing that and I don't use any kind of compression, which sounds like it can be part of the cause.  I also tend to watch my ALC level when I speak and back off the mike when I see the level go past the bar.

Anything else I can be doing?

[W8JI]

Sightly off topic, but is there some specific way you can introduce splatter?  I don't want to be doing that and I don't use any kind of compression, which sounds like it can be part of the cause.  I also tend to watch my ALC level when I speak and back off the mike when I see the level go past the bar.

Anything else I can be doing?

Speech processing will not make bandwidth wide. Processing actually will make the signal narrower, if done correctly. Without processing and ALC , radios and the bands would be a real mess.

Getting beyond ALC system ability to limit power can make the signal wide, but the audio is so nasty I  cannot understand why anyone would do that.

A big time contestor in this area had 100 watt radios, and a radio service up in Atlanta turned the radios up to about 30-50% more than rated power. This of course makes the radios very nasty.

Mistuning an amplifier, or overdriving it, does the same.

Many people tune amplifiers incorrectly.

[KQ0C]

My favorite recent experience was hearing an English station CQ-ing with a wonderfully crisp upper class British accent, with full tonal range and a deep bass voice. After calling him, the response came from the operator with a highly compressed Eastern European accent. Thi smust either have been a club station, or our guy had a friend make his CQ recording.

On the other hand I have also recently heard an asian station use a recording for CQ-ing which was completely unintelliigeable due to poor English pronunciation... but then the operator was pretty easy to understand. His English had gotten much better since he made his recordings.