so ive been on HF for about two years now mostly doing SSB on 40 and 20 and i keep getting reports that my audio is either too bassy or sounds like im in a tin can depending on who im talking to. running an IC-7300 into a Heil PR-40 which should honestly be a pretty decent combo but something isnt clicking right.

ive messed with the TX equalizer in the radio a bit, cut some of the low end around 100-200hz and tried boosting a little around 2-3khz where speech intelligibility sits, and that helped somewhat but i still get inconsistent reports. one guy on 40 last week said i sounded great, next contact 20 minutes later different band conditions same settings and the other op said i was muddy. not sure if thats just propagation playing tricks or if theres more i should be doing on my end.

also wondering about mic gain — ive read a bunch of conflicting stuff online about running it lower than you think you need vs peaking the ALC. my ALC is barely moving at my current settings and i read somewhere that a small amount of ALC action is actually fine but then someone else said keep it totally out of it. what are you all actually doing in practice, not the manual answer, the real answer

the ALC thing drives me nuts because everyone has a different opinion. what ive settled on after years of messing with this stuff is that a tiny bit of ALC action — like just kissing the bottom of the range on voice peaks — is fine and probably how the radio is designed to operate. what you dont want is the ALC working hard constantly, thats when you start getting that compressed mushy sound that makes everyone sound like theyre talking through a pillow.

on the equalization side yeah youre on the right track cutting the lows. most microphones and most shacks have way more low end than you need for communications audio. id actually be more aggressive than you have been, some guys cut everything below 300hz pretty hard and it clears things up a lot especially on 40m where the band is already pretty congested and a boomy signal just walks on everyone around it.

the inconsistent reports thing is almost certainly just propagation and the other stations receiver. some guys have terrible speakers or cheap headphones and every signal sounds different to them. if you have a buddy nearby who you can do back to back tests with on a semi-regular basis thats worth way more than random reports from DX contacts who are listening in mediocre conditions anyway.

yeah the PR-40 is kind of a dark mic by nature, its designed more for broadcast and podcasting than radio. i ran one for a while and ended up boosting around 2.5khz pretty significantly in the 7300s parametric EQ and that helped a lot. you might also check where youre positioning it relative to your mouth — those large diaphragm mics are really proximity sensitive and even a few inches makes a huge difference in how much bass buildup you get.

honestly though the most useful thing i ever did was use the monitoring feature on the 7300 to actually listen to myself through headphones while transmitting. its kind of weird to do at first but you hear exactly what youre putting out and it changes how you think about the whole thing. way better than guessing from other peoples reports