so ive been on HF for about two years now and i feel like my SSB audio has always been kind of mediocre. people can hear me fine but ive gotten a few comments that im a bit muffled or bassy, and i know from monitoring my own signal that something's off but i cant quite nail down what. running an IC-7300 with the stock mic, which i know isnt exactly a studio condenser but it shouldnt sound terrible either.

ive been reading about things like the mic gain vs compression relationship and i honestly think i had those set wrong for a long time. had the mic gain cranked way up and the compression doing a lot of heavy lifting and apparently thats not great. brought the gain down to where ALC is just barely kissing the top end of the range and turned the compression way down and honestly it does sound cleaner now but still not where i want it.

is there a sort of standard approach people use when dialing in SSB audio or is it really just trial and error with someone on the other end giving you reports. feels like theres a lot of variables and im not sure which ones actually matter most

yeah the mic gain and ALC thing trips up a lot of people. the rule of thumb i always go back to is: set mic gain so the ALC is just starting to move on voice peaks, not sitting pegged during normal speech. if your ALC is working hard all the time you're already compressing the signal before the processor even touches it and it ends up sounding squashed and distorted especially on the high frequencies.

the other thing with the stock SM-30 type mics on Icom rigs — they tend to be voiced pretty warm which is great for some things but on SSB you actually want a bit more presence in the 2-3kHz range because thats where speech intelligibility lives. some guys run a tiny bit of treble boost in the TX equalizer settings, like just 2-3dB around 2.5kHz, and it makes a noticeable difference without sounding harsh. the 7300 has a decent parametric EQ in the menu if you dig around in the set menu under connectors i think. worth playing with.

honestly the best thing you can do is get a friend on a nearby frequency and just key up and have them describe what they hear while you tweak. recordings help too if you can do a near field monitor or just throw a SDR on the signal.

the stock mic on the 7300 is honestly fine for getting on the air but if audio quality matters to you its probably the first thing worth upgrading. i switched to a Heil PR-781 a while back and the difference was pretty immediate, just more clarity in the midrange. though you do have to watch the gain on those dynamic elements, they can overdrive the front end if you're not careful.

one thing nobody mentions enough — where your mic is positioned matters a LOT. talking across the mic instead of directly into it, keeping it maybe 2 inches away, makes a noticeable difference in reducing plosives and that boomy bass buildup from proximity effect. sounds obvious but i used to just shove it right up to my face and wonder why i sounded like i was calling from inside a tin can