so ive been on HF for about two years now and my SSB audio has always been kind of mediocre. people can hear me fine but ive gotten a few comments about it sounding boxy or thin, one guy said i sounded like i was in a tin can which was not exactly what i wanted to hear mid-QSO

im running an IC-7300 with the stock mic and i know thats probably part of the problem but before i go buying an SM-30 or whatever i want to make sure im not just missing something obvious in my setup. i have the TX bandwidth set to the default i think, never really messed with the audio equalization in the menus

also when should you actually be riding the RF power vs just leaving it maxed out? i tend to just run full power because i figure why not but maybe thats hurting me somehow. anyway curious what setups people are using and if theres anything dumb im doing that i should stop doing

the IC-7300 menus are actually pretty deep for audio shaping and most people never touch them. go into the set menu and look at the TX tone settings, you can boost the mid presence a bit and roll off some of the low end which cleans up that boxy sound a lot. also check your mic gain - if its too high youll get compression artifacts and that tin can thing you're describing could be clipping. the ALC meter should barely be moving on voice peaks, not slamming

stock mic is fine honestly, i know people will tell you to upgrade and yeah a good desk mic helps but the HM-151 or whatever ships with the 7300 isnt terrible once you dial in the settings. where the mic is positioned relative to your mouth matters too, a lot of guys hold it too close and then wonder why they sound terrible

on the power question - running full power all the time isnt hurting your audio quality directly but if your final is working that hard constantly and getting warm it can drift a little. more importantly on a crowded band, running 100w when 50 would complete the contact just means you're splattering on adjacent freqs more than you need to. not a huge deal but worth thinking about

yeah i had the same issue when i started on SSB and turns out half my problem was where the mic was. i was basically eating it and the low frequency plosives were just wrecking everything. moved it off to the side about 45 degrees and suddenly people started saying i sounded way better, didnt change a single setting

also the bandwidth thing is real, narrow tx filter sounds cleaner on the other end even if it feels like youre cutting something off. try bumping down to like 2.4 or 2.8 khz tx bandwidth and see if people notice a difference. thats what i run now