so ive been running SSB for about two years now mostly on 40 and 20 meters and i keep getting reports that my audio is kind of muddy or boomy, one guy last week said i sounded like i was talking into a coffee can which is not exactly what you want to hear. im running an IC-7300 into a Heil PR-40 which should be a decent combo right, and ive gone through the menu settings probably a dozen times at this point.

current setup is TX bandwidth set to 2800 hz, i have the bass rolloff on the mic EQ cranked down but apparently not enough, and im running the compression at like 4-5 on the ALC. someone in my local club said maybe its a mic gain issue and the ALC is actually too high and thats whats causing the distortion, but honestly i dont fully understand the relationship between mic gain and ALC on this radio. i set the mic gain so the ALC is juuust barely moving and it still sounds off.

anyone else gone through this with the 7300 or really any modern SDR-based transceiver where you have all these DSP options and you somehow make it sound worse than a 40 year old tube rig

yeah the ALC thing trips up a lot of people on the 7300. the mistake most guys make is treating ALC like a VU meter and trying to keep it in a sweet spot, but on that radio you really want the ALC to barely move at all on voice peaks, like just a tiny flicker. if its bouncing around noticeably youre already in compression territory and the DSP starts doing weird stuff to the audio.

what helped me a lot was getting someone to record my audio using a SDR receiver on the other end so i could actually hear what i sounded like, not just take their word for it. turned out my low end was way too hot even with the bass rolled off in the menu because the PR-40 is already a bass-heavy mic to begin with. i ended up cutting around 150-200hz pretty aggressively in the parametric EQ section and suddenly people started saying i sounded much cleaner. also make sure your TX bandwidth isnt set wider than the filter can actually support cleanly, sometimes 2800 is fine but on a crowded band it can pick up more noise floor than you realize.

not to pile on but also check where the mic is physically positioned relative to your mouth. i had a similar thing going on and it turned out i was talking directly into the PR-40 head-on at close range and getting a ton of proximity effect pileup on the low end. moved it off to about a 45 degree angle maybe 4-6 inches away and it got way better without even touching the EQ settings. people dont always mention the physical stuff when they talk about SSB audio but it matters a lot with condenser-style mics