so i pulled my 7300 out of the closet after about 8 months of not really using it and the recieve audio just sounds... off. like muddy and kinda distorted at mid to high volume on the speaker, but if i plug headphones in it sounds totally fine. transmit seems okay based on reports im getting on the air, nobody's complained anyway.

my first thought was the internal speaker itself, maybe the cone got warped or something sitting in the garage during summer. temps out there can get pretty bad. but i dont want to just throw a new speaker at it if the problem is somewhere else. could be the audio amp stage i guess? the PA8002 or whatever icom uses in that radio.

has anyone pulled the board on one of these to check caps in the audio section? i have a scope and a decent ESR meter so im not afraid to get in there, just wondering if theres a known weak point before i start poking around blind.

the internal speaker on those is honestly pretty cheap for what the radio costs, and yeah heat will trash the surround on a small driver like that pretty fast. before you even open it up id just unsolder the speaker leads and sub in a known good 8 ohm speaker temporarily, even just clipping one on. if it clears right up you have your answer and youre only out like 6 bucks for a replacement.

if the distortion follows to the external speaker too then yeah you're looking at the amp stage and thats a different conversation. i had a similar thing on an older 746 where one of the filter caps on the audio board had gone high ESR and it made everything sound like someone put a blanket over the speaker. your ESR meter will find it if thats whats going on.

check the speaker first like the other guy said but also -- did you try the NR and APF settings? sometimes those get bumped and make things sound really weird, especially NR set high can cause that kind of mushy distortion artifacting on voice. probably not your issue but worth ruling out before cracking the case open lol