Hydrophone Question
 

Hopefully one of you can throw me a bone as I am having difficulties with the hydrophone station and GAIN / HIGH PASS / LOW PASS

I probably understand GAIN in theory, something like the input "volume".
But what about High Pass & Low Pass? What are those for?
I mess around quite a bit with these 2 knobs - somehow searching for a sweet spot - but quite often it goes from near silence to loud overloaded "statics" (for lack of a better term) while not having moved the needle.

Are High & Low Passes related to the type of ship tracked? Low Pass for freighters and such with Low pitch screws and High Pass for warships spinning screws at much higher rev?

Now and then I manage to get brilliantly clear sounds off the station.
Unfortunately 100% unintentional, and always hard to repeat.

Cheers,
Lost

Quote by Baal on the discord channel .
''You only use high/low pass to filter out sound of specific contacts you want to hear
low is best for picking up engine noise, and high is best for hearing screws
it's pretty finicky though, so it takes some fine tuning''
''also, if you have no reason to use high pass, just set it to 0
high pass pretty much just neutralized sound of contacts unless we were close enough to hear screws''

Thx Sober,
Layman's terms, exactly what I needed.

Lost

I don't have the game but from a technical point of view: Low and High pass are filters. Low pass means frequencies up to the dial setting are audible. All above will be diminished stronger the higher they are. Similarly high pass only allows frequencies above the dial setting to be audible. The lower below the setting the less strong they will sound.

I (edit: don't) know why they have 2 different dials for gain and volume. As they both would imply an amplification of sorts. Maybe, if they implemented it, gain is amplification for some kind of detector and the volume dial is amplification for your headphones. But I really should let more knowledgable player answer this.

Gain adjusts the signal going into a piece of gear.
Volume adjusts the signal going out of a piece of gear.

One trick i use for the gain knob when trying to find an accurate direction of a convoy is to adjust the gain knob such that the signal clips (distorts) at the loudest part of the convoy. Generally though, gain can be thought of as a sensitivity knob. You are boosting the signal. Care must be taken not to boost it so much that it clips (unless that is desired.. like distorted guitars).