Manager


Manager - NA4M
Manager Notes

Reviews For: Clear Speech Speaker by Heil Sound

Category: Speakers for communications

eMail Subscription

Registered users are allowed to subscribe to specific review topics and receive eMail notifications when new reviews are posted.
Review Summary For : Clear Speech Speaker by Heil Sound
Reviews: 33MSRP: 210
Description:
DSP speaker for communications use. New Heil design using the technology from the NCT Group with a number of improvements over the old Am-Com design. The Heil design now includes a 5 step DSP level switch, improved speaker and acoustically tuned enclosure, increased output, variable volume and tone controls and a sensitivity input level monitor.
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.heilsound.com/amateur/clear_speech_speaker.htm
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
00333.8
HK3PZ Rating: 2005-12-07
Failed to work and without support Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
To me the Heil Clear Speech Speaker I bought from AES Orlando merits a 0 because it failed to operate properly once installed, and the manufacturer, Heil Sound, refused to give support in this case. Now that such a speaker has been discontinued by its manufacturer, I hope Mr. Heil changes his mind and comes forward with support to those buyers who received non operational speakers.
Alberto Ospina HK3PZ
KK4DW Rating: 2005-10-21
Should've done this a long time before Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I saw this speaker advertised in a Ham Radio Supplier's catalog. Shopped around, found HRO at $179.99, no sales tax no freight charges, far away by $50 the least expensive, and had it shipped in. I read the instructions, followed them, installed some ferrite R.F. chokes at the input of the speaker and the input of the wall wart. Hooked it up and WOW what a huge reduction in background noise. Adding this A.F. DSP to my Icom 746 PRO I.F. Dsp was like having a squelch on H.F.

I operate almost exclusively CW, and run an Ameritron AL-811 on 20 mtrs during this cycle. I have no problem at all with feedback. I grounded the speaker just as the instructions say. All my equipment is bonded and grounded.

As the device needs a certain level of audio out of the receive, if you set the audio output too low going to the AF DSP it doesn't have ufficient level to function properly. You'll soon find the sweet spot and just leave everything adjusted.
N3OO Rating: 2005-09-26
plug n play for me Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
I have no problems with mine...bought it at Dayton Hamvention 2005. Used it with ic735 , ft900 , ts830s and the ft1000d tied into several amps of legal power and used on all bands,with many antennas both ssb & cw.

No problem of any rf....that being rigs grounded or ungrounded with NO added chokes or beads...works just as good ( if not better ) than the Clear Speech speaker.
73 BOB N3OO
VA5SAM Rating: 2005-08-23
VERY POOR DESIGN FOR MOBILE USE Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
I bought this to use with my Icom 706 mk 2 G in my Ford F-250 diesel pickup. Boy,, what a disappointment this speaker is. First off, the size of it lends very poorly to any mobile environment even though in a pickup you can manage to find room for it. The unit actually does a very good job of eliminating noise but in a mobile environment you need some volume so that you can actually hear what is being said. If you are reading this Bob, you have to go back to the drawing board on this one as you cannot get the volume up loud enough without the speaker going into overload thus making it totally useless while traveling down the highway. Now here I am stuck with close to a $300 Canadian invested for another dust collector . Please,, someone come up with a mod to improve the sound level or better yet, Bob, come up with a fix. An amplified speaker that you cannot hear above the road noise is useless.
KB3IFH Rating: 2005-08-20
Not a plug and play speaker Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
(NOTE: I put this same review in the other Heil Clear Speech Speaker catagory since their was two of these)
I think I’m going to be the first to give this a mixed review. I first want to say that that Bob Heil and his company was quick to help. When I called for tech support, guessed who answered? Yes, Bob Heil. So the first part of my review I give them a 5+++ for customer support. My demonstration at Dayton 2005 was fantastic from pre-recorded broadcasts. SOLD, I bought one! I immediately installed the speaker in my Honda Pilot and yes it’s a little large but I was OK with this. Be sure you have space for this speaker! Right away this speaker did not work. I was able to turn the power off and would still get audio. No DSP filtering at all. Echoing with TONE control. A few lessons learned immediately. Do NOT use the cigarette lighter; you will need to run a direct line to the battery. You WILL need to ground this speaker as well. A wire is included with the speaker as well as instructions on the procedure. I was never able to get the speaker to work in the mobile properly.

Next I tried the speaker in the house. You will need a separate power supply rather than trying to use a current power source that may run your radio. This advice is given in the instructions from Heil. After installation in the house my next big hurdle was RF feeding into the speaker. Fortunately I had several snap on ferrite beads. These are also recommended in the manual. And yes I had to ground the speaker. (Special cable included that actually plugs into the external speaker jack in the back of the speaker). One other problem I noted in my mobile operation is that if you get an echoing or reverb sound as you turn up the TONE control it’s probably a grounding issue.

I hope this review helps. Most of these you see on EBAY are because of size and problems in operation that I experienced. I’ve caught a few people being misleading in their descriptions until I probed a little and asked certain questions about their operation. I will say I’m happy with the speaker now. I do use the AMCOM Clear Speech speaker in the car and was hoping to make the Heil speaker work mobile but was unable to. I know others have so it’s not the speaker. This speaker is NOT a plug and play speaker like the AMCOM speakers.


----------------------
Earlier 2-star review posted by KB3IFH on 2005-08-20

I think I’m going to be the first to give this a mixed review. I first want to say that that Bob Heil and his company was quick to help. When I called for tech support, guessed who answered? Yes, Bob Heil. So the first part of my review I give them a 5+++ for customer support. My demonstration at Dayton 2005 was fantastic from pre-recorded broadcasts. SOLD, I bought one! I immediately installed the speaker in my Honda Pilot and yes it’s a little large but I was OK with this. Be sure you have space for this speaker! Right away this speaker did not work. I was able to turn the power off and would still get audio. No DSP filtering at all. Echoing with TONE control. A few lessons learned immediately. Do NOT use the cigarette lighter; you will need to run a direct line to the battery. You WILL need to ground this speaker as well. A wire is included with the speaker as well as instructions on the procedure. I was never able to get the speaker to work in the mobile properly.

Next I tried the speaker in the house. You will need a separate power supply rather than trying to use a current power source that may run your radio. This advice is given in the instructions from Heil. After installation in the house my next big hurdle was RF feeding into the speaker. Fortunately I had several snap on ferrite beads. These are also recommended in the manual. And yes I had to ground the speaker. (Special cable included that actually plugs into the external speaker jack in the back of the speaker). One other problem I noted in my mobile operation is that if you get an echoing or reverb sound as you turn up the TONE control it’s probably a grounding issue.

I hope this review helps. Most of these you see on EBAY are because of size and problems in operation that I experienced. I’ve caught a few people being misleading in their descriptions until I probed a little and asked certain questions about their operation. I will say I’m happy with the speaker now. I do use the AMCOM Clear Speech speaker in the car and was hoping to make the Heil speaker work mobile but was unable to. I know others have so it’s not the speaker. This speaker is NOT a plug and play speaker like the AMCOM speakers.
W9ZB Rating: 2005-08-11
Clear Speech RFI Problems Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
I own the new Heil Clear Speech as well as the SGC ADSP2 and I have problems with RF pick up on both of them, whether in the shack or in the mobile. I got the SGC unit for mobile operation in my RV, but struggled with the RF problems, so bought the Clear Speech after trying a friend's earlier model which seemed clean of RF pick up. The Heil unit has severe RF pick up, probably due to the added circuitry, and now I've had to do some drastic things to allow it's use. I've communicated with Bob, and tried all his suggested fixes, but they don't work for all bands and all enviornments, especially mobile, where you can't define a "good ground". In the case of the SGC, I removed all the electronics from it's little plastic speaker box and installed them in a cast metal RCA speaker housing and that improved things some. I finally minimized the problem by bringing out an unused "volume control" line from the SGC processor to the Icom 706 keying line to mute the speaker when transmitting. For the Heil Clear Speech, I have added a relay in series with the speaker to cut it out when transmitting, and drive it with a home-brew interface circuit connected to the 706 keying line. After all this struggle, the performance of the Heil Clear Speech is very good, with a wider, smoother audio bandwidth. The SGC unit has a rather annnoying peak in response, which has required a careful selection of external speaker to make it as useful as the Clear Speech. I use them both now, especially when operating a VHF contest, with one on the 6 Meter receiver, and the other on the 2 Meter receiver.
N0JSN Rating: 2005-06-22
FANTASTIC SOUND Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
WHAT A GREAT SPEAKER, BOB HEIL HAS DONE IT AGAIN.THIS SPEAKER HAS EVERYTHING 4 LEVELS OF DSP, A TONE AND VOLUME CONTROL, ON OFF SWITCH AND A RED AND GREEN LED THAT CHANGES FROM GREEN TO RED IF YOUR RECIEVER VOLUME IS HITTING THE SPEAKER TOO HARD. SOME PEOPLE MIGHT SAY ITS A LITTLE BIG, BUT DO YOU WANT GOOD AUDIO OR DO YOU WANT SOMTHING THAT SOUNDS LIKE A TIN CAN? PLENTY OF GREAT AUDIO. AND YOU GUYS WITH THE OLD NON DSP RIGS, WAIT TILL YOU PLUG THIS SPEAKER INTO THE OLD RIGS. IF WE WOULD HAVE HAD A SPEAKER LIKE THIS TEN YEARS AGO I GUESS WE WOULD'NT HAVE HAD TO BUY THESE NEWER DSP RIGS. BOB HEIL HAS REALLY MADE SOME FANTASTIC IMPROVEMENTS TO THE CLEAR SPEECH. GREAT JOB BOB AND KEEP DOING WHAT YOU DO SO WELL!

----------------------
Earlier 5-star review posted by N0JSN on 2005-01-21

I just have to say, "The best DSP speaker I have heard.I have been beta testing this Beautiful speaker now for one week,and I just have to say I own two of the old clear speech speakers which I thought were good DSP speakers until I got a chance to put this speaker to the test. This speaker has everything the Ham operator needs to enjoy easy listening. The audio is beautiful! no more of that under water sound like you got with the old Clear Speech speaker. What's great about this speaker is, everything is adjustable the Volume control,Tone control,4 levels of DSP settings,a Green to Red Led that tells you if your driving the speaker too hard, On and Off switch, a separate Headphone,and Extension speaker Jacks. I've tried this in the mobile and in the shack on many different radios and it woked fantastic on all of them. And for you guys with the older non DSP noisy rigs, your in for a real treat.My kenwood TS830 sounds beautiful Now! and my old mobile rigs (Kenwood TS50 & Original Icom 706 ) with no DSP, now also sound great, you can also by pass the DSP if you desire, But why would you want to except to show your Ham friends what their missing. You really have to hear and see it to believe it, Bob Heil has truly improved this speaker to the fullest, Your not going to Hear it any better than this guys!
WT7T Rating: 2005-06-04
Excellent Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I bought the Heil Sound Clearspeech to add to my brand new Drake R8B. The R8B didn't eliminate noise as well as my Kenwood TS2000X, so I thought external audio DSP might help. The review in CW June 2005 convinced me to give it a try.

I am completely pleased. I've tried it on CW, SSB and SWL Broadcast, and in every situation it cleans up the signal, removes atmospheric noise, and does just what I wanted.

I have not tried it mobile so I have no idea about what it does for ignition noise. I have not tried it while transmitting, so I haven't had to wrestle with any feedback loops. I just got it for one purpose, improving my listening pleasure with my R8B, and it does that wonderfully.

In addition, I like the clean 5 watts audio output.

Barry
WT7T
KC5LVW Rating: 2005-04-24
Low Banders Get One! Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Well, Bob does it agin, not perfect but what an improvement over our other choices. You MUST use seperate power supplis if you want to use the suggestedf settings because of a feedback loop situation, I opted for a waal-wart and all is well. I wanted help for 80M and 160M especially during summer and THIS UMIT WORKS. Again, not perfect but sure is going to makr the low bands more pleasing this summer compared to the OEM radio folks offerings.
WB4YDL Rating: 2005-04-23
Not a good mobile speaker Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I have to say this is the only product of Bob Heil's that I am disappointed in. I have it mounted on the floorboard of my Dodge Ram and have it connected to my Icom 706 Mk2G. I wanted a speaker with good audio punch as well as definition, and given the size of the speaker, I was expecting more. First, I had to send the speaker in for rewiring, as it did not work right out of the box. After getting it back and troubleshooting my own setup, and resolving a few bugs, I was surprised that the maximum obtainable volume was less than a $13 MFJ passive speaker. The instructions state to turn the volume control on the speaker to maximum, and control the volume from the transceiver - doing so, I could only turn the knob on the '706 to between 9-10 o'clock before overdrive was apparent. This leaves not enough volume for a mobile station where there is higher ambient noise from the road, engine, etc. For the size of the speaker, I was expecting quite a bit of volume. Sitting in a parking lot with engine off, yielded acceptable volume and good audio quality. I had none of the usual mobile gremlins related to alternator noise, etc., but it is advised to utilize the grounding wire included with the speaker. The Tone and DSP controls work as advertised - but, in my case, the Tone had to be backed off quite a bit as the audio sounded 'hot'. In summary, this speaker is better suited for the home (non-mobile) station, it is quite sensitive to being overdriven (with my present setup), and definitely not a good mobile speaker (in both size and audio punch). Sorry Bob, this one's coming out of service.