so this has been driving me nuts for about two weeks now. my ic-7300 started acting weird where the receive audio sounds like everything is pitched way down, like tuning into a ssb signal and it sounds like a drunk robot even after i zero beat it. but here's the thing — TX seems totally normal according to my buddies on 40m, they say my audio is fine and im on frequency.

i thought maybe it was the reference oscillator drifting but it does it right from cold start, doesnt really change much with warmup which makes me think thats not it. ive already done a factory reset and it didnt help. scope shows the IF looks okay but im not super experienced reading that stuff so i might be missing something. the radio is about 4 years old and lived through one summer in my non-airconditioned shack which got pretty hot.

anybody seen this before? im wondering if its worth pulling it apart or just sending it to icom. local tech retired last year so im kind of on my own here.

had something similar on a friends 7300 a while back, turned out to be a cold solder joint on the TCXO board. the heat cycles can really do a number on those. if your TX is checking out fine on frequency that actually does point away from the reference osc being way off, but a marginal solder joint could still cause weird receive behavior without wrecking TX enough for people to notice on the air.

before you send it to icom id pull the top cover and just have a look around that area with a loupe, maybe reflow anything that looks dull or cracked. icom's turnaround has been kinda slow lately anyway and it'll cost you minimum $150 just for them to look at it. if you're not comfortable with the iron i get it but honestly the 7300 isnt that scary to work on once you're inside.

check your digital modes settings and the USB audio stuff — i know that sounds dumb but ive seen people accidentally leave the radio in some weird pancked state after using wsjt or something and the receive processing gets all messed up. probably not your issue but worth ruling out in 30 seconds before you go digging into hardware.