I'm pretty new to HF, but I'm sure that every seasoned ham has encountered these guys. Don't be this guy.
http://www.donkeith.com/n4kc/article.php?p=16
I talks about adjusting your audio for maximizing "talk" power, which involves making yourself clear, not loud.
This happens on the ham bands, too. In an effort to be loud and communicate, you actually sound abysmally grungy and muddy, and the DX station, for some reason, can’t make out your call sign, no matter how clever your phonetics. Plus your nice compressor circuit is sucking up every other background sound it can, just doing its job, making every noise close to the same level as your voice. You’ve heard stations with the background noise of the amplifier fan boosted until it was almost as loud as what the op was preaching. Either that or he really was operating from a bi-plane crop duster. He drops his pen, it reverberates like a tree falling. Or you can hear the TV from the other side of the house well enough to tell who just got voted off the island.
http://www.donkeith.com/n4kc/article.php?p=16
I talks about adjusting your audio for maximizing "talk" power, which involves making yourself clear, not loud.