Speaker plug question

Alan Nusso, N4BV

I just received my 6300. I am using a West Mountain Radio Clr Speech speaker. I am only getting one side of the audio. It has a mono plug. Would the proper thing to do be to put a mono to stereo adapter on the plug? Would this cause any technical problems?

Duane_AC5AA

Yes, the speaker jack requirements list a powered stereo PC speaker.  If you're hearing audio, then the Clear Speech speaker must have an internal amp.  You probably should just use a stereo plug wired for one side only (left or right), but not one that shorts the output together unless someone from Flex says you can safely do that.  Your mono plug is shorting one side to the common (ground?) when you plug it in, so I wouldn't do that!

Steve N4LQ

Alan
The proper thing to do is get a set of stereo speakers. Don't plug a mono plug into a stereo jack. I don't know about Flex but doing that blew out a lot of audio amplifier chips on the Elecraft K3. You can use a stereo adapter but be sure it's not shorting your left and right channels together.

Jim KJ3P

Ditto what these gents have said. And this would be a fine time for Flex to jump in (with access to a schematic) and tell us whether the Left and Right line outputs can be combined to form a mono output (maybe a simple resistor network?).

pa0bie

Connect LEFT and RIGHT audio together with two 10K resistors and You have a stereo to mono adaptor. The active speaker outputs have a output impedance from 10k according to the FLEX 6000 harware manual.

Jan, pa0bie

Jim KJ3P

This is exactly what I wanted to do, but was hoping to get Flex's okee-doakee before trying it. Some circuits with direct-coupled outputs (not capacitor-isolated) might not be happy, I dunno.