Sideband audio has been a thing of controversy as long as I've had a phone 
license which happened in November 1966.  Now, every rig comes with 
bandwidth adjustments, ALC setting capability, and audio compression.  When 
I was a novice is April of 1966, I heard we had 150,000 American hams.  I 
forget the last count I heard but it was hundreds of thousands more than 
that now.  Yet, I am convinced sideband audio is worse today than with the 
old rigs of years ago.  Now, guys have hundreds of dollars invested in high 
dollar microphones and equalizers, not to mention their audio bandwidth 
settings, compressions, gain and ALC settings and we still can't get it 
right.  I am amazed at the number of daily signals I run across that are 
nothing short of trash radio and when the CQ WW sideband contest comes up at 
the end of this month, you can't help but hear what I am talking about.  I 
started out with a Viking Ranger 1 and 65 watts of A M but my borrowed 
microphone was wired wrong, so I never made an A M contact with that ranger 
because my mom bought me a Drake TR4 for Christmas and I was able to get it 
on the air for the Christmas holidays during those two weeks, or three, out 
of school.  By far, the majority of sideband signals have good audio but I 
am amazed, as already stated, how horribly screwed up guys can get their 
audio to sounds with expensive transceivers.  I was tuning 20 phone a few 
days ago and ran across a W5, about S9, with clean audio.  I stopped to 
listen.  He turned it over to a friend he apparently has known for some 
time.  I could not, even after 5 minutes of tuning up and down and across 
his signal, fine tune his audio to where I could actually understand his 
words.  His signal must have been tuned to the most narrow setting of 
bandwidth, and his compressor was so tight, I simply could only get about 1 
out of every five words.  He sounded like he was talking into a empty beer 
can.  I could tell his W5 friend was understanding him better than I was but 
not much better.  When I was tuning the 75 meter band one morning at age 15, 
I had been up almost all night hamming.  It was nearing sunrise when I tuned 
across a very strong S9 signal who was 15 KHz either side of zero beat.  I 
was taught that gentleman hams told others if their audio was bad and offer 
to help them make changes to get it sounding better if they asked.  I don't 
do that any more because of how guys fly off the handle when you tell them 
they need to work on their audio.  If it is a friend, I will, but otherwise, 
I leave people alone now.  As I was saying, this guy was 30 KHz wide 
overall.  I broke in and told him of my findings.  Oh, by the way, the flat 
plate, called the skirt, behind the Drake TR4 VFO knob I had marked with 
half strips, in width, of dymo tape.  Every 5 KHz, I had those pieces of 
plastic tape sticking up a quarter of an inch above the edge of the skirt. 
Those strips of tape that were flat against the skirt were 1 KHz.  I had a 
friend with a Collins KWM2 challenge me by naming frequencies on 15 meters 
one day, he lived a mile from my house, to see how close I got to his reed 
out.  We went to 3 frequencies and each time he said, according to his dial, 
I was 200 Hz off.  Of course, this was during analogue days and long before 
digital read outs.  Collins had great analogue dials back then.  I think a 
blind guy told me he did the same type of taping on the skirt behind the VFO 
knob on his Drake Twins, too.  Anyhow, I got off the track.  The guy that 
was so wide on 75 meters was very friendly and said he appreciated me taking 
time to give him that report about his audio.  I found out he was running 
the HT37 and since we ran one of those on sideband at the school for the 
blind in Nebraska, I knew exactly how easy it was to widen out your signal 
with one of those rigs.  This guy had no ALC to help control over driving 
his rig so he was as wide as a barn door without realizing it.  Now, if I am 
5 KHz away from a 20 over S9 signal with my Icom 7000, I cannot hear any 
splatter, even if they were running 3 KHz of band width for modulation.  I 
can hear some splatter if he is 5 KHz away and 30 over S9 but rarely can 
anyone reach 30 over on my meter.  A 10 over S9 signal is a loud signal for 
me on my radio now.  Anyhow, my point is that with all the software driven 
radios today, and all the compressors, and band width control, and high 
dollar microphones, and equalizers, I can't figure out why guys can't get 
their sideband signal to sound clean.  The real test is during Sweep States 
phone.  Man, if you live here and point a beam west, you are going to hear 
signals that sound like a mobile sitting in your front yard.

Phil.
K0NX