So ive been on HF for about two years now mostly doing digital modes but lately ive been getting into phone operation and honestly my audio reports have been... not great. people keep telling me i sound like im underwater or that theres a lot of bass and its hard to copy me. im running an IC-7300 into a Heil PR-40 which i thought was supposed to be a pretty solid combo, gain on the mic is set around 50% in the menu, compression is off because i read somewhere that beginners shouldnt use it until they understand what its doing.

ive messed with the TX equalizer a little but honestly i have no idea what im doing in there. i tried boosting the mids a bit and someone said i sounded worse so i put it back. my ALC is sitting right at the top of the recommended range, maybe just a tiny bit over sometimes when i talk loud. i think thats probably fine?

anyway if anyone has a baseline starting point for SSB audio on the 7300 specifically id really appreciate it. or just general tips on what to listen for. i monitor myself on a second receiver sometimes and i cant really tell whats wrong but obviously other people can hear something

the ALC thing is almost certainly your problem, or at least a big part of it. if its creeping over the recommended range youre basically letting the radio clip the audio before it even gets modulated properly and it just sounds like mush on the other end. back your mic gain down until the ALC is sitting comfortably in the middle of the zone when youre talking at a normal conversational level, not when youre shouting into it. a lot of people set gain while saying a loud test word and then wonder why it sounds bad in normal conversation.

also the PR-40 is a large diaphragm condenser style dynamic and it picks up a TON of low end if youre close to it, like within 4-5 inches youre going to get serious proximity effect. try pulling back to maybe 6-8 inches and see if the muddy bass goes away on its own before you touch the EQ. the 7300 TX equalizer can clean things up but its easier to start with a decent signal and tweak from there rather than trying to EQ your way out of bad mic technique

yeah what he said about ALC is spot on. i spent like three months wondering why my audio sounded terrible and it was literally just the gain set too high. also one thing i do now is record myself with audacity through the USB audio on the 7300 — you can actually hear what youre transmitting that way without needing a second radio and it was kind of a revelation honestly. sounded way worse than i thought it did in my head lol. once i could actually hear the problem it was a lot easier to fix