so ive been on SSB for maybe 8 months now, mostly 40m and 20m, and i keep getting reports that my audio sounds either too bassy or kind of muffled. sometimes people say its fine but then other times someone will tell me i sound like im talking into a tin can. my mic is a heil pr-40 going into an ic-7300 so its not like im running garbage gear here.

ive messed with the eq settings a bit but honestly the menu on the 7300 is kind of overwhelming and i dont really know where to start. i set the mic gain to around 50% which is what someone on youtube said but idk if thats actually right for this mic. compression is on but again i just left the default settings because touching it made things sound worse last time i tried.

is there like a baseline starting point people use for this radio with an external mic? or general SSB audio tips that arent just 'read the manual' because ive tried that and the manual doesnt really explain what sounds good, just what the knobs do technically

the pr-40 is a pretty hot mic so your mic gain being at 50 might actually be too high depending on how close you're talking. first thing id do is get someone to give you an honest report on a local simplex frequency while you slowly back the gain down. watch the ALC meter — you really dont want that thing pegging. a little movement is fine but if its slamming to the right every time you talk the audio is already getting squashed before the compressor even does anything.

for the 7300 specifically there's a few guys who've posted their eq curves online, Chris from ham radio crash course did a video on it that wasnt terrible. the general idea for voice is to roll off some of the low bass below like 200hz because it just adds mud on SSB, slight boost around 2-3k for presence, and a gentle rolloff above 3k. SSB bandwidth is already limited so you're not trying to make it sound like a studio recording, you're trying to make it readable and not fatiguing to listen to.

also check your TX bandwidth setting in the menu. some people have it set way narrow without realizing it and that kills the audio before anything else matters.

yeah what he said about the ALC is really the main thing. i spent like two months fighting audio issues and it turned out i was running my mic gain way too hot and the ALC was doing all this weird pumping that made me sound distorted. once i backed it off so the ALC was barely moving things got way cleaner even without touching eq at all.

also — and this sounds dumb but — how far from the mic are you? i used to almost eat the thing and it made the low end super boomy. most dynamic mics like the pr-40 have proximity effect so a few inches back can make a big difference