Recommended speakers for flex 6400m

Steven Budny

Speakers

Tim N9PUZ

I've been very happy with some ComTek(sp?) powered speakers from DX Engineering.

K5CG

Creative Labs Inspire T10

Harry Dudley

I bought Bose Companion Two Series, work great and are nice size— w speakers

K5CG

I had two sets of these and they were both RF noisy (20m specifically). I thought I had a defective set the first time and tried another. Ended up returning both and tried the Creative Labs and never looked back. That's just been my experience.

Harry Dudley

Danny, interesting, what is meant by RF noisy. I may have it and don’t know it.

K5CG

Spurious emissions. I don't remember now the exact part of the band but there was a signal being emitted by the speakers as soon as power was applied even with the power off as I recall. It's been several years now. I was really disappointed because I liked the form factor too.

Jim KJ7S

Altec Lansing powered speakers work fairly well for me but they may have a little susceptibility to rf however, among the ways I have mitigated it is to run the main speaker input to the flex and if you want to run the Computer off the same speakers then use a separate line to the speakers if possible. Many times it takes some ferrites on power and speaker runs to help the rf issues irregardless of the speakers you choose. I can run legal limit without any major speaker issues.

IK8HCG

I used another technique, without using powered spekears, I simply reversed the inputs, my yaesu sp8 case to the headphone input of 6400 and vice versa for headphones. obviously the commands on Ssdr will be inverted

caravanken

I have a pair of JBL Control 2P.  Very high quality and loaded with professsional audio features. I have never had any RF interference and I feed the audio to the speakers from a Behringer mixer.  That allows me to send computer, Yaesu FT991 2 scanners and of course my Flex 6300 audio.

Neil D Friedman N3DF

For 52 years I have found headphones the way to go. 

VK7WH Winston

The problem with the Bose speakers is the switch mode power supply. Throw it away and power the speakers with any other clean 12V power supply or use your main shack 12 volt supply. Otherwise the Bose speakers are excellent.

GL

Winston Vk7wh

W2ECK

Steven - I am using the Creative Labs 51MF1610AA002 GigaWorks T20 Series II 2.0 Multimedia Speaker System with BasXPort TechnologyCreavtive Labs Gigabit 2 , with my 6600. Amazon for $65 - great sound.

73 Paul
w2eck

K5CG

Not true. Even when running from a clean 12VDC battery, same RFI emissions.

VK7WH Winston

With respect, Danny, my RFI was definitely coming from the switch mode power supplied by Bose and completely disappeared when I replaced it with a clean supply.

Obviously your mileage does vary.

73 Winston

K5CG

No disrespect sustained Winston. But my station is entirely 12VDC powered (except the linear amplifier) so that may have been the case with the pair you have. But that was not my experience. I was surprised , disappointed, and frustrated as well; to find they still emitted RFI even while being powered by pure DC from a battery. As I mentioned earlier, I tried with two different sets from two different vendors. I didn't imagine it.

VK7WH Winston

Very interesting Danny. I also run my entire remote station on solar charged batteries and only use my inverter for the 2K-FA, however the Bose Speakers are at my home where I do all my operating from.

Just out of interest, and as an experiment, I will take the speakers up to the remote site early in the new year and see what happens when they are co-located with the 6700.

73 Winston

K5CG

To be fair to Bose, the RFI is low level and may or may not cause a problem for any particular station depending on distance to antennas. I simply didn't want anything adding to the noise floor.

Val DM1TX

I am also using Bose Companion 2 series. I am very happy with sound quality on CW and SSB.
Warm and clear yet a full sound easy to understand. Found them actually on eBay in mint condition with an unbeatable price. I have tested also some other 2.1 Speakers from Dell and Creative but I have to say Bose Companion beats them all. I have to add to that they are directly connected to my Flex 6500 and they sound better compared to when they are connected to the PC. Not sure what sound chip is in the radio but sound is really amazing. 73 DM1TX Val

Tony Hateley

Me too had mine years great speakers

Mike KB0FX

I recently purchased the Bose Companion 2 Series 3 speakers to use with my 6400M. Bought them at Best Buy. I am very happy with these speakers and not a hint of RF. 

Val DM1TX

Yeap Mike. I said the same. I use them with original supply. Sure I had a ferrite here and there but as I said they are directly plugged into the back of my 6500 and I am really happy with them. 73

W7NGA

I would love to recommend the Bose Companion speakers. They have the perfect form-factor and sound bodacious. However, as noted by K5CG, they induce spurious emissions on several bands. Relatively low-level (mostly) but annoying. My first thought was the power-supply but the same symptoms occurred when powered directly from a 12-volt lab supply. The DSP shielding is simply inadequate. Fine for pure audio applications, but problematic at HF. 

Geoff AB6BT

There's a good chance that the  Bose Companion 2 Series speakers use class D audio amplifiers. If so, no matter whether you use battery power or not they may still be a source of RFI.