so ive been on HF for about two years now running an IC-7300 and i keep getting reports that my audio sounds kind of muffled or like im talking through a blanket. i thought the 7300 had decent audio processing built in but something isnt clicking for me. my mic gain is sitting around 50% and the compression is on but not cranked. i did the whole ALC thing and kept it just barely moving which is what i read online. speech processor is on at like 3 or 4 out of 8.

people can copy me fine most of the time but on 40m when theres a pileup or just a little qrm i notice folks seem to struggle more than they should. my signal reports on a meter are fine, like 57 or 59, so its not a power issue. i wonder if its an eq thing? or maybe my mic placement? im using the hm-219 that came with the radio. would a different mic actually make that much of a difference or am i chasing the wrong thing here

the stock mic that ships with most radios is honestly just ok. not terrible but not great either. the bigger thing i'd check first though is your TX bandwidth setting in the menu — on the 7300 there's a TX filter shape option and a lot of people leave it at the default which cuts off a lot of the presence frequencies that make voice sound clear and punchy. try widening it a bit and see what you get. also the speech processor on those radios is pretty sensitive, even at 4 it can start smearing the audio if your mic gain is already a touch high. i'd back the processor off to like 2 and bump mic gain up slightly and see if that cleans things up. the ALC barely moving thing is right but the interaction between processor and gain can get weird.

honestly the best thing you can do is get a friend on a known good setup to give you actual audio reports on different settings, not just signal reports. S9 doesnt tell you anything about how you sound

mic placement makes a huge difference and nobody talks about it. i was getting the same complaints for months and turned out i was just holding the mic too far away and slightly off axis. once i started keeping it like an inch or two away and talking across it instead of directly into it the reports got way better almost immediately. also check if you have any fan noise or shack background noise getting picked up, that can mask your voice more than people realize especially when the band gets noisy and the other station is trying to pull you out of the mud