I purchased my TS-590S in May of 2011 and after doing the usual
things that have to be done when sliding a new transceiver onto the
operating bench my initial impressions were very positive. I find
the receiver to be very pleasant to listen to with every mode and
the front panel controls are nicely positioned to allow adjusting
functions such as receive bandwidth very easily. Connection to the
computer through a standard USB cable and USB port is an easy
procedure if you follow the directions supplied by Kenwood. Once
that connection is established, the TS-590S will talk with any
program on your computer that allows you to map the audio input and
output to the USB audio input and output ports of the rig. This
allows you to easily configure the usual digital communication
programs used by hams without the need for any hardware between the
rig and your computer. It also allows you to use a few other
interesting programs such as Adobe Audition to make mp3 recordings
or Voice Shaper to play around with some simple voice processing
with your computer. To really unlock the potential of this rig
Kenwood provides a free program called ARCP-590 that provides you
with the ability to control every aspect of the radio with your PC.
One of the capabilities offered by the ARCP-590 software is a
feature that allows you to visually scan up to 2 MHz of the spectrum
to see what kind of activity might be present. I often use this to
scan the 6 meter band to catch band openings. Depending on how wide
you set the scan, you can see beacons as well as CW and SSB
operators who are operating within the scan range. The picture below
shows visual scans of the 40 meter and 6 meter bands on a cold
November night. As you can see, not surprisingly the 40 meter band
was showing heavy activity between 7.100 MHz and 7.300 MHz and while
I was messing around with this page it looks like I missed another 6
meter opening! When you are paying attention, you can see at a
glance from across the room if a band is open or not. It only takes
a few seconds to sweep whatever bandwidth you define in the Visual
Scan interface. To access this feature, simply select "Scan" from
the menu at the top of ARCP-590 and then select "Visual Scan".
One question that surfaces frequently in all the TS-590S forums is
how the receiver performs when it's used for shortwave listening or
even AM broadcast band listening. The short answer is that it works
extremely well! The front panel RX bandwidth control allows you to
easily select the following AM receive bandwidths to deal with
varying receive conditions: 5kc, 6kc, 8kc, and 10kc. Note that
the front panel bandwidth display will show 2500, 3000, 4000, and
5000 as you select various receive bandwidths but the actual
bandwidth is twice what is displayed because in the AM mode the 590
is receiving both sidebands. The fidelity of the receiver makes
listening a pleasure and if you have installed the Kenwood provided
drivers and USB codec you can make direct recordings from the 590S
with audio programs such as Audacity or Adobe Audition. Simply
select the Kenwood USB audio codec that shows up in the recording
list as shown in the picture below and you are good to go for
recording whatever you are listening to.
To get an idea of how the AM mode sounds with
the TS-590S click on the link below to listen to a brief MP3
that I made of an AM broadcast station. The receiver was set for
a bandwidth of 10kc for this recording:
Perhaps the most important feature of the ARCP-590 program is that
by accessing the DSP/Filter menu item this program can be used to
create up to five different User EQ profiles for your transmit and
receive audio. It surprises me that so many TS-590S owners simply
choose one of the six embedded transmit audio profiles within the
rig's user menu. Using several different studio dynamic microphones
that I have lying around I found the embedded profiles to range from
being either very boomy or very harsh with nothing pleasant in the
middle. With my homebrew
electret microphones I found the "HB1" (High Boost 1) and the
"C" (Conventional) profiles provided by Kenwood to be usable, but
they seemed to have either too much emphasis in the high audio
ranges or not enough. I'm no audio expert, but I know what I like
and always aim for natural sounding audio that's clear, clean,
smooth and pleasant for the person on the other end. With that in
mind in the lower half of this page I'll offer a couple of things
that I found while trying to tame my Kenwood TS-590's TX audio.
A Couple of TS-590S Quirks Worth
Mentioning
Quirk Number One: I believe that every piece of equipment on
my bench has a few quirks and the 590S is no exception. The first
quirk I encountered with this rig was a serious misconception among
many hams about its available transmit bandwidth as a result of some
awkward wording in the operating manual. It's amazing how a bit of
clumsy wording can cast a dark shadow on a fine piece of equipment!
The following information in the manual has caused more than a few
prospective buyers to keep walking:
From Page 16 "Menu Setup - DSP Functions and
Defaults"
Potential buyers browsing the downloadable PDF manual from the
Kenwood web site might conclude from the information above that the
maximum transmit bandwidth of this rig is 2700Hz - 300 Hz for an
underwhelming total of 2400 Hz. What isn't clear from glancing at
this chart is that the 300 Hz low cut and 2700 Hz high cut
values are the out-of-the-box default settings! The DSP menu
actually allows you a range from 3000 Hz to 10 Hz for a total of
slightly less than 3000 Hz bandwidth. Unfortunately, the
restricted bandwidth myth is further reinforced by this information
in the Specification area at the back of the manual:
From Page 81 "Transmitter Specification -
Transmit Frequency Response"
A quick glance at this line in the spec sheet has no doubt turned a
few people away from this rig as it implies that there are severely
restricted audio limitations with this transceiver. What is not
clearly stated is that this is the default measured frequency
response with the TX EQ disengaged in the transceiver's user menu.
With the TX EQ function engaged and by utilizing the free ARCP-590
software you are given the EQ software interface shown in the image
below to create up to 5 different TX audio profiles that you can
adjust to your liking between 0 - 3000 cps. Note that although the
EQ provides sliders that extend up to 5100 cps the DSP upper limit
for TX bandwidth is limited to 3000 cps in the firmware. However,
those sliders are functional in any RX Equalizer profiles you
create.
Page 32 of the manual correctly states the information regarding the
transmit bandwidth, and clearly indicates that 300 Hz and 2700 Hz
are simply the default values. Unfortunately, the misconceptions
about the transmit bandwidth capabilities of this rig are out there
and still propagating.
Quirk Number Two: The second quirk baffled me for several
days. I found that the dynamic studio microphones that I own sounded
pretty good with the TS-590S. My Shure SM58, which is a music
industry favorite for vocal use, seemed to be the best of the bunch.
However, it seemed like there was a very heavy low-end emphasis with
all the dynamics and I found that I was using the software EQ to
fight this "boomy" tendency rather than simply to enhance areas of
the voice spectrum I wanted to emphasize for clarity and
articulation. I have always found electret condenser microphones to
be ideal for producing smooth audio that has clarity and presence
with excellent articulation. So, I plugged in one of my ten dollar "station
standard" microphones which I have relied upon with all my
transmitters/transceivers since the late '70's. When I monitored the
transmit audio of my TS-590S while using the electret condenser
microphone it sounded horrible. The audio was grossly distorted and
it seemed like it was being processed by a kazoo. It had all the
characteristics of RF feedback, which was a mystery because I was
transmitting into a dummy load! I dragged out my schematic of
the TS-590S to see what might be causing the issue and immediately
saw some possibilities in the 8 vdc line. Most rigs use a series
resistor, typically 4.7k to 10k in the vcc line, to protect the
voltage source from shorts at the microphone jack. That works fine
when the voltage is used for low current bias purposes with an
electret, but it might be unsuitable if the voltage is utilized to
power devices in a hand mic that has active devices for controlling
the rig. At any rate, the VCC line in the 590S has a series 47 ohm
resistor that runs directly into a diode which is present to provide
reverse current protection. Audio output from the electret condenser
microphone was leaking down the vcc line and modulating the diode,
and possibly the poly-switch the diode is in series with, which
resulted in horrific distortion. The easy solution was to create an
audio de-coupling circuit in the VCC line to keep audio out of the
Kenwood's +8vdc components. The circuit below is what I came up
with, and it has worked perfectly for me and quite a few other
people who encountered the same issue:
If 1/8 watt resistors are used along with a tantalum cap, it's
possible to build the little de-coupling stage right into the
connector of a microphone. I simply build it right at the XLR
connector in the base of the microphones that I use. With the
distortion problem resolved the electret condenser microphones
proved to be good performers with the TS-590S. I finally arrived at
a combination of MIC level and EQ settings that seemed to be clear
and not too hard for the station at the other end to listen to. The
section below is offered as a sample of what the TS-590S sounds like
with one of my homebrew ten dollar microphones plugged into the
front panel microphone jack.
My Humble Audio Processing Efforts with
the TS-590S and a Ten Dollar Audio Chain
To be honest, there are a lot of TS-590S owners out there who have
done much more and they sound much better than what I've come with,
but I'll bet they spent more than 10 bucks on their microphone! The
available TX bandwidth limitations coded into the DSP prevent this
rig from entering the arena of Hi-Fi rigs like the TS-950 or the
Flex 5000. With that in mind, my goal was to achieve audio that
sounded smooth, natural, and clear when received by other stations.
You might have noticed that the TS-590S receiver is capable of
receiving SSB with a bandwidth as wide as 5 kc. You might have also
noticed the TX EQ in the software package has sliders all the way
out to 5.1 kc. Obviously, the folks at Kenwood could set the upper
limit for the TX bandwidth to 5 kc in a future firmware release, or
just as likely, there is probably a combination of key presses at
power up that would unlock this feature. However, until that
happens, the challenge is to find a balance of lows and highs
between 10 cps and 3000 cps that creates a decent reproduction of
your voice. By using the eleven EQ adjustments available between 0
cps - 3000 cps in each user EQ profile, I came up with a few user EQ
profiles that work for me. The first video below will give you an
idea of how the six embedded profiles that Kenwood provides sound.
It starts with the EQ turned OFF and then steps through each of the
six Kenwood profiles available in the TS-590S menu. Note that my
homebrew electret microphones have a reasonably flat response with a
slight amount of presence rise in the upper midrange area. In all of
the videos below, the DSP was set for a TX bandwidth of 10 - 3000
cps and the MIC gain was set to "25" from the TS-590 front panel
control. When I operate with these settings, the ALC normally shows
no response on the meter and will rarely display one or two of the
tiny hash marks on a heavy voice peak. I have found that the less
flickering you see on the ALC meter the better things work out with
the TS-590S.
The pre-configured audio profiles provided by
Kenwood
The HB1 (High Boost 1) profile is usable but it sounded a bit harsh
to my ears. The C (Conventional) profile might also be useful under
some conditions, but it sounded too muddy and lifeless and could be
difficult for other stations to understand. Using the EQ Profile
creator under the DSP/Filter menu in ARCP-590 I made several
profiles that seem to fit my voice along with the electret
microphone I like to use. The video below shows three profiles that
cut the low end region between 0 - 600 cps and lift the presence
rise region between 2400 - 3000 cps. In the video, the three
profiles are compared with the TS-590S with no EQ along with the
High Boost 1 and Conventional profiles provided by Kenwood. These
three profiles are fairly sharp sounding but they cut through noise
quite well. The EQ settings for each of these three profiles are
shown underneath the video.
Three user profiles created with the ARCP-590
software
I found that most stations liked the USER 4
profile but it still seemed a little harsh to my ears so I
created one more profile that provided more balance and seemed
to fit my voice a little better. It's all subjective but I found
that this is the profile that I use for all occasions. The video
below is a sample of what this profile sounds like and the EQ
settings that I used are shown in the screenshot of ARCP-590
audio EQ profile for User 5. Note that this profile has roughly
3 dB less boost in the range between 2400 - 3000 cps. It was
created by setting all the sliders to -6 dB and then adjusting
the range between 0 - 3000 cps for a well balanced voice
response that was clear and natural sounding.
The profile I have ended up using most of
the time
This profile seems compatible with most of the stations I run into
on the bands. There are certainly no reports that the audio sounds
muffled or boomy now that the low end is de-emphasized and the
presence rise area is boosted enough to add clarity. At the same
time, people who know me say that the audio sounds pretty close to
what my voice sounds like in person. I rarely resort to using the
speech processor, but when it's engaged the audio is piercing enough
that it cuts through fine when conditions are marginal.
Transmit audio is a very subjective topic but most people would
agree that it's possible to get reasonable results with the Kenwood
TS-590S. The audio EQ profile tool allows the user to boost any
slider by +6 dB from the 0 dB baseline and cut any slider by -24 dB
for a whopping adjustment range of 30 dB. The biggest limitation
I've found is that the audio begins to exhibit a metallic ringing
quality if you create drastic differences between the audio
frequency ranges available. Boosting the bottom end to a greater
degree than my sample profiles above does result in a fairly true
representation of bass response, but with a 3000 cycle DSP high pass
cut-off it gets to the point where it sounds muddy and boomy very
quickly. With its current DSP transmit filter limitation of 3 kc the
TS-590S won't be a favorite of users who prefer deep and wide
full-bodied audio, but it does a very decent job for those who run
around in the 10 cps to 3000 cps world. Maybe at some point Kenwood
will get the memo that extending the upper range out to 3.8 kc or
even 5.0 kc would open the door for this rig to those who like to
experiment with something more than the current 3 kc bandwidth
offering.
Miscellaneous Service Menu Information
The following downloads are offered as assistance when dealing with
the TS-590S service menu. As a general rule there should never be a
need for you to enter the service menu of your rig expect for the
purpose of making a record of these critical values so that you can
restore them should they ever become corrupt. The first file is an
explanation of how to enter, navigate, and exit the service menu.
The second file is a blank Excel spreadsheet that can be downloaded,
printed, and used to record your rig's unique service menu values.
The third file is simply offered as an item of interest to show the
service menu values of five different TS-590S rigs. The values would
not be optimal for any other rig, but they do illustrate the range
of values that exist between different units. The end user should
never change any of these values without access to the service
manual, appropriate bench equipment, and appropriate knowledge of
what's going on in there!
If you have not yet visited G3NRW - Ian
Wades TS-590S page I would urge you to spend some time there.
Ian has assembled a vast repository of set up tutorials and
operating tips that have helped many TS-590S users to get the most
out of their rig. Take advantage of Ian's hard work!
