so ive been on HF for about two years now mostly doing digital modes but lately ive been trying to get into SSB phone and honestly my audio reports have been pretty bad. people keep telling me i sound muffled or like im talking through a towel. im running an IC-7300 with the stock hand mic that came in the box and im just talking into it like i would a normal phone i guess.

did some reading and it seems like mic gain and the speech processor settings matter a lot more than i thought. i have the compression cranked up pretty high because i figured more is better for getting through pileups but maybe thats the issue? also not sure if i should be running ALC all the way up or leaving some headroom there. my TX EQ is all flat right now because i have no idea what to actually do with it.

any tips appreciated, been kind of embarrassing getting bad audio reports when im trying to work some of the louder DX stations

yeah the compression thing trips up almost everyone at first. on the 7300 specifically you want to keep the speech processor level pretty modest — like maybe 3-4 out of 10 to start. crank it too high and you get exactly what youre describing, that muffled overprocessed sound where your voice just turns into noise. the ALC should be dancing around the middle of the scale during normal speech peaks, not pegged constantly.

mic gain is probably the bigger culprit though. back it off until your ALC is behaving and then tweak from there. also where you hold the mic matters more than people think — you dont want to be eating it but you dont want to be a foot away either, maybe 2-3 inches off to the side of your mouth so you're not blasting plosives straight into it. the TX equalizer on the 7300 i usually boost a little around 2-3k to cut through and roll off some of the lows below like 200hz, voice doesnt carry anything useful down there anyway on SSB and it just muddies things up.

one thing nobody told me when i started on SSB — get someone to give you an actual on-air report while you make adjustments in real time. like have a local buddy on freq and just talk through your settings together. reading numbers off a meter only gets you so far, what matters is how it sounds at the other end. i spent weeks tweaking stuff based on ALC readings alone and it was only when my elmers club buddy told me i was sounding way better that i knew i actually fixed it. the 7300 monitor function helps some but its not the same as hearing yourself through another receiver across a real path.