so ive been on HF for about two years now and honestly my SSB audio has always kinda bothered me but i kept putting it off. finally had a guy on 20m tell me i sounded like i was in a tin can and that was enough to make me actually look into it.

my setup is an IC-7300 into a stock mic, the one that came in the box. i know i know, but bear with me. i've been reading about compression settings and the speech processor and honestly the manual is not super helpful on the practical side of things. like it tells you what the knobs do but not really what they should be set to for a decent signal on SSB.

i did some recordings using the monitor function and yeah it does sound pretty harsh, especially when i talk louder. is this a mic gain issue, compression issue, or is the stock mic just genuinely not good enough for decent audio? and also — what's the actual deal with upper vs lower sideband, i always just use USB on 20m because thats what everyone else seems to do but im not 100% sure i fully understand why LSB is used on 40 and 80. sorry if thats a dumb question tacked on at the end there

not a dumb question at all on the USB/LSB thing — it's just convention that stuck around from the early days and nobody really changed it. below 10mhz is LSB, above is USB, 10mhz itself kind of gets used both ways depending who you ask. there's no deep technical reason you couldn't use USB on 40m, it would just confuse everyone and nobody would be where you're listening.

on the audio thing, the stock HM-207 that comes with the 7300 is actually not terrible, the problem is usually mic gain set too high and the speech processor cranked up trying to compensate. classic combination that makes people sound harsh. i'd start by pulling the mic gain way back, like seriously lower than you think it should be, then bring the processor (the COMP setting) to maybe 5-8dB and see how the ALC is behaving. you want the ALC meter barely moving, not pegged. if it's slamming the ALC on voice peaks your audio is going to sound exactly like what that guy described.

honestly the monitor function on the 7300 is your best friend here. record yourself, adjust, record again. it takes a while but you'll hear the difference when you get it dialed in.

yeah the stock mic situation is real, i ran with mine for like 6 months before switching to an SM-50 desk mic and the difference was pretty noticeable just from having a better element and not having to hold it right up to my face. but honestly i agree with the other reply that its probably more a settings thing first before you go buy anything.

one thing that helped me was actually getting on a sideband frequency during a quiet moment and asking a friend to give me a real honest report, not just a 59 because thats what everyone says. actual audio quality feedback. websdrs are good for this too if you dont have anyone handy, you can transmit and then listen to yourself on a remote receiver somewhere else which is kind of eye opening