so ive been on SSB for about 8 months now and i keep getting reports that my audio is either too bassy, sounds like im in a tin can, or occasionally clipping really bad on voice peaks. running an IC-7300 into a basic desk mic that came bundled with some other stuff i bought off a local ham. i went through the menu and turned the bass down a bit and that helped somewhat but im still getting mixed reports.

the thing that really gets me is i can hear OTHER stations sounding totally clean and punchy and i dont know what they're doing differently. is it the mic itself, compression settings, the way im talking into it, what? i tried the TX monitor and honestly it doesnt sound that bad to me but then someone on 40m last week told me i was splattering all over the place. i wasnt even driving it that hard i thought.

anyone been through this and figured out what actually made the biggest difference? not looking to go buy an expensive mic right away if the problem is something simple im just overlooking in the setup

yeah the 7300 has a pretty aggressive default TX EQ and a lot of guys dont realize how much that mid-range bump can mess with audio on the receiving end. first thing id do is get someone you trust on a local repeater or a nearby HF freq and have them actually critique it while you tweak in real time, the monitor isnt a great representation of what goes out over the air.

for SSB specifically you generally want to roll off anything below about 300hz pretty hard, cut some of the low mids around 400-500hz, and boost a little presence around 2-3khz. voice intelligibility lives in that upper mid range. the 7300 has a built in speech processor too — if thats cranked up it will absolutely cause splatter if your mic gain is already too hot. id back the proc off or turn it off entirely first and set a clean baseline before adding any of that back in.

also the mic itself matters more than people admit. a cheap dynamic bundled mic is often voiced for close-up broadcasting, not for SSB. doesnt mean you need to spend a lot but something like an SM58 or even a Heil PR-40 if you wanna go down that rabbit hole makes a noticeable difference.

splattering on 40m could also just be the band conditions making it sound worse than it is tbh, multipath and congestion on 40 will do weird things to how your signal gets decoded on the other end. that said if multiple people are saying it probably worth checking your ALC — if the ALC meter is pegging on voice peaks thats your problem right there, you want it barely moving on average speech, just kissing the top on loud syllables at most. lot of guys run the mic gain way too hot thinking louder = better but on SSB it really doesnt work that way