Is there a way to make the reception sound cleaner?

If your CB has been 'peak and tuned' it is possible the receiver was was not tuned properly. Another possibly is you have a defective speaker.

 

extension speakers usually are better quality
but nothing will clear up an accent

 

What kind of radio do you have and what if any work has been done to it and did it ever sound good to you or has it been like this since the day you got it.

 

Ask the guy on the other end to shut off his echo box...

 

Your brain is too slow, you need it peaked and tuned.

 

schottkey receive mod. take your radio to a reputable CB shop, not a truck stop wonder tech and have the schottkey mod done. huge difference. basically, it replaces the crap parts in the radio with better quality parts on the receive end and it greatly reduces ambient line noise. i had it done to my radio a while back and it dropped my daytime noise by 2 db.

 

Ditto. An echo board can make you hard to understand (if not adjusted right....which 99% of all truckers with the echo on have it incorrectly adjusted) and also it will make you sound like you have a southern drawl.

 

Probably because it would eat up bandwidth that the FCC won't allocate. Sadly CB radio hasn't evolved much since 1958. Heck these days they make radios with detachable faces that allow you to mount the radio face on the dash and the body under the seat for smaller cars w/o much room.....but not CB....