so ive been on 40m SSB pretty regularly for the past few months and got some signal reports back that werent exactly flattering. one guy told me i sounded like i was talking through a tin can and another said my audio was thin and hard to copy in QRM. which is frustrating because on my end i think i sound fine but obviously thats not the thing that matters

im running an IC-7300 which i know has a decent built in mic but i wonder if im just not using it right. i have the compression on, maybe too much? and i honestly dont fully understand where the sweet spot is supposed to be for the ALC on SSB. the manual kind of glosses over it. also i sit maybe like 8 inches from the mic which might be the problem right there

anyone have tips for getting cleaner sounding SSB audio, like actual practical stuff not just "read the manual" because i have and it didnt help that much. whats your mic technique, where do you set your TX bandwidth, that kind of thing

ALC is probably your main culprit honestly. a lot of people crank the mic gain until the ALC is pegged and think thats good because the meter is moving but what youre actually doing is letting the radio clip the audio before it even gets processed right. on the 7300 i keep the mic gain low enough that ALC is just barely kissing on peaks, like occasionally flickering not sitting there constantly. sounds counterintuitive but your audio comes out way cleaner that way

compression is a whole other thing. the built in DIGI-SEL or whatever icom calls it, i never run it past maybe 3-4. anything more and yeah you get that nasty processed sound that makes you hard to read in a pileup because everything just smears together. close mic technique helps too, closer is usually better for SSB as long as youre not breathing directly into the capsule. like 3-4 inches off to the side a bit. reduces the room noise getting picked up and gives you more presence without boosting gain

also check your TX bandwidth setting. 7300 lets you narrow or widen the passband and if youre set wide for some reason you can sound thin depending on your voice. i run mine around 100hz to 2800hz which cuts some of the low end mud but keeps voice intelligibility solid

yeah the 8 inches away thing is definitely not helping. i had the same issue when i started out, kept thinking more distance = more natural sounding but SSB isnt really built for that. you kind of need to treat it more like a broadcast mic setup where you work close and let the radio do less heavy lifting on the gain side. took me way too long to figure that out