so ive been running SSB on 20m mostly, occasionally 40m in the evenings, and ive gotten consistent reports that my audio sounds kind of muffled or like im talking through a pillow. running an IC-7300 into a dipole, nothing exotic. mic is the stock HM-219 hand mic that came with the radio.

ive messed with the TX bandwidth a bit and the treble/bass settings in the menu but honestly i cant tell if im making things better or worse because i cant hear myself on the other end obviously. my buddy across town has the same radio and he gets great audio reports consistently. starting to wonder if its the mic itself or something in how ive got the processing set up. RF power is around 80w, compression is off for now because i read somewhere thats usually better to start without it.

anyone gone through this with the 7300 specifically or just SSB audio in general, im kind of lost on where to start tweaking

the HM-219 is honestly not great out of the box for flattering voice audio, a lot of guys swap it out pretty quick. but before you blame the mic, first thing id check is your TX bandwidth setting in the menus — on the 7300 you can set that under the set menu, SSB TX bandwidth. if yours got bumped down to narrow or something like 1.8khz that would absolutely explain the pillow effect. default should be around 2.4 or 3.0 depending on what mode preset is active.

also check your mic gain, if its cranked up too high youll clip before the compressor even kicks in and that sounds terrible. try talking at a normal conversational distance, maybe 4-6 inches from the mic, mic gain around 50-60% and see what reports you get. the 7300 also has that speech processor built in and even at low settings it can add some presence. once you have the gain set right, a little compression around 3-4 on the meter actually helps intelligibility a lot, the no-compression advice isnt always right depending on your voice.

yeah what he said about the bandwidth setting, that tripped me up too when i first got mine. also one thing nobody ever mentions is where youre positioning the mic relative to your mouth — straight on vs slightly off axis makes a surprising difference on these dynamic mics. talking slightly off to the side of the capsule tends to reduce the boominess and plosives. might sound like audiophile nonsense but it genuinely changes reports im getting. worth trying before buying anything.