so ive been on HF for about three years now running mostly SSB on 40 and 20 and recently started paying way more attention to how im actually sounding on the other end. had a buddy with a good ear do some honest monitoring for me and honestly it was a little humbling. i was peaking way too hard and apparently sounded kind of muffled, which surprised me because i thought i had the mic gain set conservatively.

started digging into it and went down this whole rabbit hole of ALC behavior, compression, mic placement, the whole thing. ended up realizing that a lot of what i thought i knew was either wrong or only partially right. like i had no idea how much mic distance actually affects the bass buildup — i was probably 3 or 4 inches away and that was making things worse with my particular mic element.

what ive found that actually helps: keeping ALC action minimal during normal speech (like the meter barely twitching, not slamming), backing off the compression more than feels intuitive, and honestly just talking more naturally instead of trying to project into the mic. also switched from the stock mic to a Heil PR-781 and that alone made a noticeable difference but im not sure how much was the mic vs just changing how i positioned things.

curious what others have found — especially around compression settings and whether the built-in speech processors in modern rigs are actually worth using or if you're better off going flat and letting the DSP at the other end do the work. my radio is a 7300 if that matters.

the ALC thing is huge and i feel like nobody talks about it enough. when your ALC is riding hard constantly it's essentially clipping the envelope of your signal in a way that sounds ugly on the other end even if your audio chain is otherwise clean. i tell people to set mic gain so the ALC meter just kisses the threshold on peaks, not sitting there buried in it the whole time you're talking.

on the IC-7300 specifically — the built in speech compressor is actually decent if you keep it low, like 4 or 5 out of 10. above that it starts to sound processed and harsh to most ears. the thing is compression can help you sound louder on the band without actually increasing your rated power which is the legitimate benefit, but people crank it because they think more is more and it ends up working against them.

also worth checking your TX bandwidth settings if you havent already. some guys run it really narrow thinking it helps with splatter but if you go too narrow you lose the midrange presence and end up sounding like youre talking through a soup can. 2.8 or even 3.0 kHz sounds better than 2.4 for voice most of the time unless the band is really congested and you're trying to be a good neighbor.

yeah the mic distance thing got me too when i first started. i was basically eating the mic and wondering why everyone said i sounded boomy. pulled back to about 2 inches and angled it slightly off axis and that helped a ton with the low end buildup. its one of those things you kind of have to experiment with for your specific mic and voice.

not sure i agree about the built in processing being useless though — i run the IC-7610 and honestly the TX monitor function was the single most useful thing i found for dialing in audio. being able to actually hear what youre putting out (with a slight delay, takes some getting used to) changed how i adjusted everything. if your rig has that feature and you havent used it, worth trying. way better than relying on second hand reports.