so ive been on HF for about 4 years now mostly doing SSB on 20 and 40 and ive noticed theres this huge gap between what actually matters for good audio and what guys spend all their time tweaking. thought id throw this out there and see what other people think because i genuinely cant tell sometimes if im missing something or if half the stuff people do is placebo.

the biggest thing i noticed is mic gain. like everyone talks about compression ratios and EQ curves and whatever but if your mic gain is way too hot youre just splattering all over the place and no amount of downstream processing fixes that. i spent like 6 months with my gain too high because i was told to drive it hard for more talk power and honestly it was making me sound like garbage. turned it down until the ALC was barely moving on peaks and suddenly people started commenting my audio was way cleaner.

the other thing is the mic itself and positioning. ive tried the stock mic that came with my radio, a heil PR-781, and just a random dynamic i had laying around from a PA system. the heil is nice but honestly the positioning matters more than which mic it is. too close and you get all this bass buildup and plosives, too far and you lose presence and start cranking the gain to compensate which brings us back to the first problem.

anyway curious what other people have found actually moves the needle vs stuff thats kind of theoretical. im specifically wondering about audio bandwith settings on the transmit side — my radio lets me adjust the TX filter and i have no idea what setting is actually optimal or if its even audible on the receiving end.

you're pretty much right about the ALC thing, that trips up a lot of people. the way i explain it to guys at our club is that the ALC is a limiter of last resort, not a tool for setting your level. if its riding hard constantly the radio is just clipping and distorting trying to keep up with your voice peaks. set the gain so normal speech barely touches it and shout peaks maybe hit the first couple bars, thats about it.

on the TX filter question — yeah it does make a difference, more than people think actually. most of the older rigs default to something pretty wide, like 2.8kHz or even 3kHz passband which sounds great on the air but you're eating more spectrum than you need and in a crowded band that matters. i usually run mine around 2.4kHz for general rag chewing, tighter like 1.8 or 2.0 if the band is really packed. honestly the difference in audio quality is minimal to the other station but you stop stomping on the guy 3kHz up from you which everyone appreciates.

the mic thing is a whole rabbit hole. heils are popular for a reason but ive heard guys sound phenomenal on cheap dynamics and terrible on expensive condenser mics. a condenser in an untreated shack picks up every fan noise and keyboard click and the room itself which can make you sound like youre operating from inside a tin can.

yeah the ALC thing is exactly what got me when i first got my IC-7300. manual kind of implies you want to see some ALC action but didnt really clarify how much is too much. took me way too long to figure out i was overdriving it.

one thing i'll add that nobody ever mentions — just monitor yourself. plug headphones into the monitor jack if your rig has one, or even better find somebody local willing to give you honest feedback while you key up. reading S-meters and ALC meters is useful but actually hearing yourself through someone elses ears is a completely different thing. i thought i sounded fine for over a year and then a buddy recorded me off his receiver and played it back and i was horrified lol. all that low end mud that i couldnt hear on my own end was super obvious from the other side.