so ive been getting reports that my audio sounds kinda hollow or tinny on 40m SSB and i cant really figure out what the deal is. been on HF for about two years now and mostly did digital before switching over to actually talking to people. the radio is an IC-7300 and im running a Heil headset, cant remember which model off the top of my head, one of the boom mics. levels look fine on the ALC, not pinning it or anything.

guy i was talking to last week said it sounded like i was in a barrel which i thought was a weird description but another guy said the same thing this week so im starting to think its not just their receivers. i did mess with the TX equalizer in the 7300 menu at some point trying to brighten things up and honestly i dont remember what i set it to. could that be it? or is there something more fundamental im doing wrong with SSB that i dont know about because i came from FT8 and JS8 basically

any tips appreciated, willing to go deep into the settings if needed

the barrel sound is almost always too much low-mid boost or a resonance thing happening. on the 7300 the TX equalizer defaults are actually pretty decent for most mics but if you went in and started bumping the lower bands around 200-400hz range that'll do exactly what you're describing. i'd honestly just reset the TX equalizer to flat first and see if that changes the reports you get. also check your TX bandwidth setting, if it got narrowed down to like 1.4kHz or something trying to cut noise it'll sound pretty hollow.

the other thing with Heil mics specifically is mic gain — they're pretty hot and people tend to run them too high. the 7300 mic gain for SSB i usually keep around 40-50% and let the compressor do a little work but not a ton. if you're running the mic gain high and the compressor is also cranked that combination can really mess with the audio quality even if the ALC looks okay. ALC not pinning just means you're not overdriving the final, it doesn't tell you much about how the processed audio actually sounds.

yeah what he said about the equalizer, i did the same thing when i first got my 7300 and spent like a week confused why people kept asking me to repeat myself. turned out i had boosted some low frequencies thinking it would make me sound more authoritative or whatever and instead it just made everything muddy. flat or a very gentle presence boost around 2-3kHz is usually the move for voice intelligibility on SSB, you want to cut through not sound like a radio announcer.

also just as a sanity check — are you monitoring yourself through the radio? the 7300 has a monitor function where you can hear your own transmitted audio through the headphones and that'll tell you a lot more than trying to interpret what other ops describe. some of the descriptions you get on-air are not exactly... technically precise lol