so ive been on HF for about two years now and mostly do SSB on 40 and 20m and honestly my audio has always been kind of mediocre. people give me decent reports but occasionally someone will say i sound a bit muffled or that theres some odd processing going on. im running an IC-7300 into a Heil PR-40 which should be a pretty solid combo and i have the mic gain set around 50-55% and the compression on maybe 3-4 on the ALC meter.

i've watched a bunch of youtube videos but honestly a lot of them contradict each other. one guy says run zero compression for best audio fidelity, another guy cranks the speech processor and says that's how you punch through the noise. i really dont know who to believe at this point. also my TX bandwidth is set to the default which i think is FIL2 on the 7300, not sure if that matters.

anyone have a go-to setup for the 7300 specifically or just general SSB audio advice? i feel like im leaving something on the table here.

the bandwidth setting absolutely matters and its probably the first thing id look at. on the 7300 try bumping your TX bandwidth up a bit, the default fil settings can be pretty conservative and cut into your lows and highs more than you might want. a lot of guys settle around 100-2800 or even 100-3000 hz for general ragchewing, gives you a fuller sound without being splatter risk. you can monitor it yourself if you get a friend to give you an honest on-air report while you tweak.

on the compression thing, i side more with keeping it light. maybe 4-5 on the meter peak is fine but the second you start seeing it smashing constantly you're probably hurting intelligibility more than helping. the PR-40 is a dynamic mic and it responds really well to proper mic technique anyway so if you're keeping good consistent distance you may not even need much compression at all. also double check your mic EQ settings in the menu, theres a parametric EQ in the 7300 that most people never touch and it can make a huge difference in shaping your voice to cut through better.

yeah what he said about the EQ is real, i ignored that for way too long on mine. one thing i'd add is just get on websdr or have someone you trust do a real recording of your signal and actually listen back to it. sounds obvious but i didnt do it for like a year and when i finally heard myself i was like oh wow that explains the reports. turned out i had a grounding issue that was adding some low level hum and i never would have caught it just going by ALC and reports alone.