so ive been messing around with my audio chain for a while now trying to get a cleaner signal on 20m SSB and honestly half the advice i read online feels like people just repeating stuff they heard somewhere without actually testing it. wanted to get some real opinions from people who've actually spent time on this.

my current setup is an IC-7300 with the stock mic, i know i know, everyone says get a better mic and i probably will eventually but i want to squeeze what i can out of what i have first. ive been playing with the TX bandwidth settings and the bass/treble in the radio's audio menu and it actually does make a noticeable difference when i monitor on a second receiver. cutting the low end below like 200hz and rolling off above 2800 or so seems to tighten things up a lot, less mud i guess.

the thing im not sure about is the compression settings. the manual says keep the TX power compressor under 10dB of gain reduction to avoid distortion but ive heard guys running way more than that and still sounding decent. is there a point where more compression just makes you louder on peaks without actually helping average power? feels like thats whats happening when i push it too hard, people report the audio gets harsh.

also curious if anyone has actually A/B tested different mic positions, like boom vs desk vs handheld. i feel like proximity matters way more than people admit.

the compression thing you're describing is pretty much exactly right — past a certain point you're not gaining average power you're just clipping transients and making yourself sound like youre transmitting through a tin can. on the 7300 specifically i found anything over about 8dB on the comp meter starts to introduce audible artifacts, and most people on the receiving end describe it as harsh or distorted even if your ALC looks fine.

the mic position thing is real and massively underrated. i spent an embarrassing amount of time tweaking EQ settings when moving the mic about 3 inches further back and slightly off axis cleaned up more sibilance than anything i did in the DSP menu. the SM-50 type cardioids are pretty sensitive to plosives if you're dead on axis at close range. try 15 to 20cm off to the side a bit and see what happens before you buy anything new.

one thing worth doing if you havent already is get someone to record your signal off the air with a SDR and send you the file. your own monitoring chain will lie to you more than you'd think, especially if you're using the built in monitor in the 7300 which has some processing on it that doesnt perfectly represent what's going out.

yeah mic position is huge, agreed. also worth noting that on phone contests i've heard guys with obviously cheap mics running decent audio just because they had the speech processing dialed in sensibly and werent trying to sound like a broadcast station. intelligibility is really what matters for SSB, not hi-fi.

one thing i do that helps in pile ups is run the TX bandwidth a bit narrower than i normally would, like 2.4kHz instead of 2.8, keeps you out of the adjacent slice a little more and the DX station seems to copy you cleaner when there's a lot of QRM around. probably not something you'd do for ragchewing but for actual operating it makes a real difference