so ive been on SSB for about 8 months now, mostly 40m and 20m, and i keep getting reports that my audio sounds kind of hollow or thin. one guy last week said it sounded like i was in a barrel which isnt exactly encouraging. im running an IC-7300 into a Heil PR-40 which i thought was supposed to be a pretty well regarded mic combo, so im not sure what the issue is.

i did mess around with the TX equalizer a little in the menu but honestly theres so many settings i kind of gave up after a while. i have the compression on maybe 40-50% because i heard that helps with readability on DX contacts but maybe thats the problem? also not sure if my mic gain is set right, i just kind of set it to where the ALC was barely moving and called it good. maybe that was wrong.

anyone dealt with this and figured out a good starting point for the 7300 specifically? i feel like im overthinking it but i also dont want to sound like garbage every time i key up

the ALC thing is probably your issue right there, or at least part of it. a lot of guys make the mistake of setting mic gain so the ALC is barely moving and think thats safe, but what that usually means is youre underdriving the mic preamp and the radio is having to work harder to get the signal up, which can thin things out. on the 7300 i run my mic gain up until the ALC starts to just tickle the bottom of its range on normal speech peaks, like youre aiming for it to occasionally tap the lower portion but not peg hard.

also 40-50% compression on the 7300's built in compressor is probably too much for most situations. i run mine around 20-25% for ragchewing and maybe bump it for a pileup. too much compression absolutely kills the natural dynamics of your voice and thats what gives you that tin can quality people describe. try backing off the compression first before you touch anything else, get a signal report, and go from there. the PR-40 is a good mic it shouldnt be the problem.

yeah what he said about compression, plus one thing i noticed on my 7300 is the bass rolloff in the TX equalizer was set weird from factory or something, i honestly dont remember if i changed it. i ended up boosting a little around 200-300hz and cutting a bit at the high end and people said it made a noticeable difference. theres a guy on youtube, cant remember his name, who does a whole walkthrough of the 7300 audio settings and its actually pretty useful if you can find it. just search IC-7300 TX audio setup or something like that.

also make sure youre not too close to the mic, PR-40 has proximity effect and if youre right up on it the bass can get kind of muddy which paradoxically makes it sound thin after processing. try talking across the top of it rather than straight into it.