so ive been on SSB for about two years now mostly on 40m and 20m and i keep getting reports that my audio sounds bassy or muffled, occasionally someone tells me i sound fine but more often than not people are asking me to speak up or say my audio is muddy. my mic is the stock heil that came bundled with nothing special, just plugged straight into the front of the 7300. i run the comp at maybe 4-5 and the rf power around 80-90 watts. i feel like ive read everything about this but nothing really clicks for me.

what i dont get is how some guys sound absolutely crisp and present on the band and others sound like theyre talking into a coffee can. is it mic placement? the EQ settings? i messed with the bass and treble on the radio a bit but i honestly dont know what im doing there. ive heard people talk about cutting the low end below like 300hz but i dont really understand how to do that on the icom. and whats the deal with ALC — mine is always pegged and someone told me thats bad but i dont know why exactly.

anyway if anyone has dialed in their audio on a 7300 or just has general SSB tips id appreciate it, been bugging me for a while

ALC pegging is almost definitely your main problem. when the ALC is constantly maxed out you're basically letting the radio compress everything into distortion — it's not the same as using the built in compressor properly, it's just clipping the modulation. what you want is ALC movement on voice peaks but it shouldnt be slammed all the way up and sitting there. back off the mic gain until it's just kissing the upper range on peaks, then adjust from there.

on the EQ thing, the 7300 has a TX equalizer in the menu somewhere under the audio settings, i forget the exact path but its in there. what worked for me was a slight cut around 200-250hz to get rid of that chest boom, and then a small boost around 2-3khz which is where speech intelligibility lives on SSB. you dont need to boost the highs much because the SSB filter is already rolling off the top anyway depending on your passband settings.

mic placement matters more than people admit too. too close and youre getting proximity effect which is why it sounds bassy. try pulling back a few inches and talking across the mic rather than directly into it if you can. i know that sounds fussy but it actually makes a real difference.

yeah the ALC thing is real, had the same issue on my 7300 when i first got it. also worth checking if you have the TX bandwidth set too wide — i think the default might be something like 2.4khz but some people run it wider thinking more bandwidth = better audio but on a crowded band youre just splashing on people and it doesnt actually sound better to the other station.

one thing i dont see mentioned much is just monitoring yourself on a second receiver if you can swing it. even a cheap SDR dongle lets you hear roughly what you sound like on the air and it was kind of eye opening for me honestly. you think youre sounding great and then you tune yourself in and its like oh no