[HN Gopher] Mute Your Microphone While Typing with Hushboard
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Mute Your Microphone While Typing with Hushboard
Author : emptybits
Score : 149 points
Date : 2021-01-08 16:20 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (popey.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (popey.com)
| Ninjinka wrote:
| I use Nvidia Broadcast (formerly RTX Voice) for this. Only
| available for recent GPUs though.
| pitterpatter wrote:
| It actually works on non-RTX cards too btw if you install the
| standalone RTX Voice app.
| MaxikCZ wrote:
| I didnt even know they re-released it under new name.
|
| I have rtx voice running all the time (starts totaly silently
| with pc) and totaly forget its there. As I have headphones
| without mic my mic is positioned right between bottom rim of
| monitor and keyboard (mechanical) and this piece of magic
| filters keyboard sounds off like its not even there and
| leaves voice intact.
|
| Absolutely adore that.
|
| Somehow I fear that nvidia broadcast will ruin it. It is
| already getting bloater (hooks camera, background filters)
| and I fear it would ask for updates here and then. The
| quality I love about RTX Voice is that I dont notice it at
| all, apart from its tray icon.
| asdff wrote:
| I don't know what's worse, having to mute people who aren't
| paying attention in the meeting and click clacking on their other
| work, or seeing those low mounted webcams that give you front row
| seats to fingers typing on the keyboard, or a nice angle on your
| coworkers unkempt neck hair.
| tester756 wrote:
| <rant>
|
| Maybe if those "modern" video-conference apps had one, decades
| old option that was (and still is) avaliable in
|
| almost all gaming-oriented voice software (ventrilo, mumble,
| teamspeak, discord) called
|
| PUSH 2 TALK
|
| then this problem would be solved, same with the problem of
| kids/other people in the background (especially this)
|
| but yea, we need AI/Blockchain based solutions that require
| thousands of hours of engineering effort that probably will be
| provided by some Startup and cost 15$.
|
| It's insane how enterprise software is behind gaming in that
| particular matter, do those people even use their software?
|
| </rant>
|
| edit.
|
| What's PUSH 2 TALK?
|
| PUSH 2 TALK is not TURN ON / TURN OFF switch where you actually
| mute yourself. It's that you talk while having some button being
| pushed down e.g MOUSE SCROLL (MOUSE3) (for me it's probably one
| of the most practical choices)
|
| so in this case you're always muted unless you want to talk
|
| Why it's so great? because you can e.g play game, write code, do
| stuff on your PC and when you want to mute yourself, then you
| don't have to try to find some shortcuts or even worse - put
| video-co app on focus and click mute button, but instead you just
| stop pressing your PUSH2TALK hotkey! :P
| asutekku wrote:
| And it's super inconvenient. I prefer to not press my keyboard
| every single time i need to speak, because otherwise i would be
| pressing my keyboard all the time.
|
| Edit: everyone suggesting me to use my mouse: i use a laptop
| without a mouse and sit on my sofa while in meetings. I prefer
| to unmute myself while there's a discussion where I'm part of
| and mute myself when I'm not talking anymore. Push to talk
| every 10 seconds for 10 minutes is much more inconvenient than
| just having the mic on all the time.
|
| Note that I do not work as a programmer.
| tester756 wrote:
| >I prefer to not press my keyboard
|
| Use your mouse then - e.g scroll button (on push, on scroll,
| whatever you want) or side buttons on modern / gaming mouses
| vehementi wrote:
| What's even more inconvenient is you broadcasting all your
| background noise to everyone on the call, or worse, echoing
| the call itself due to not using a headset
| dunefox wrote:
| Or, you know, one can increase the voice activation level
| so that that's not the case?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Or end up in a situation where your voice is heard choppy
| on the other end, as voice activation triggers too late.
| Often also missing short replies. Push To Talk is more
| reliable.
| vehementi wrote:
| Ah the "unicorn voice activation level" argument :D I've
| never seen anyone get that working perfectly in my
| decades of using VOIP for gaming and work.
| kahrl wrote:
| Right. So what are you doing on a computer if not pressing
| keys on a keyboard all the time?
| spinningarrow wrote:
| I actually use many meetings to get a break from the
| keyboard, so I understand where parent is coming from.
| vehementi wrote:
| Bind it to a mouse button...
| kahrl wrote:
| That's totally fair. Both tools should be available.
|
| The new tech shouldn't be written off as a waste of
| money. The old school push-to-talk shouldn't be written
| off as archaic.
| asutekku wrote:
| Google meet afaik does support space as push-to-talk so
| it does give the option to the people. Having the mic to
| pick up only speak would be even better.
| bulletsvshumans wrote:
| I set up a footpad for push-to-talk while gaming. Surprised
| more people don't do it, especially in a high performance
| context.
| bullen wrote:
| How do you set it up though, on the OS or in each app and
| with what software?
| bulletsvshumans wrote:
| There's probably a better way, but I bought a pedal that
| was for transcriptionists, which came with software that
| allowed you to bind it to a keypress. Then I made sure
| that key was mapped to push-to-talk on a per app basis.
| ganafagol wrote:
| Super convenient to map it to esc. As a vim user.
|
| Meeting while using vim? Need a second pedal!
| banana_giraffe wrote:
| Zoom at least has such a feature, I use it all the time.
|
| There's some strange psychological thing getting some people to
| mute their side. I guess it's because some people are used to a
| ton of noise around them they assume others are ok with it too,
| but I'm probably reading way too much into things.
| lwhsiao wrote:
| Note that Zoom only has this for Windows. It doesn't for
| their Linux client, which is unfortunate.
| banana_giraffe wrote:
| The Mac client has it.
|
| I did find out the hard way that the combination of Mac's
| VNC server and my client on Windows send a stream of press-
| and-release messages when I press and hold the space bar on
| the remote side.
|
| It took me a surprisingly long time to figure out what
| people where describing when I tried to speak.
| jeffbee wrote:
| It does have this feature on the mac.
| tester756 wrote:
| >There's some strange psychological thing getting some people
| to mute their side.
|
| I'm not sure whether we're at the same page here
|
| PUSH 2 TALK is not TURN ON / TURN OFF switch where you
| actually mute yourself, it is that you talk while having some
| button being pushed down e.g MOUSE SCROLL (MOUSE3) (for me
| it's probably one of the most practical choices)
|
| so in this case you're always muted unless you want to talk
| goldbeck wrote:
| Spacebar does that on Zoom :)
|
| Mute yourself and then hit spacebar. You'll be unmuted
| until you release
|
| Not sure if this is on by default, by the option for this
| behavior is in Preferences > Audio > Press and hold 'Space
| Key' to temporarily unmute
|
| Though tbf, Zoom has to be in focus in order for that to
| work
| OkGoDoIt wrote:
| If you're on windows you can use AutoHotKey to map a key
| or key combination of your choice to route to the
| spacebar in zoom, regardless of focus. I've done
| something similar for media control for apps that don't
| have global hotkeys.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > Though tbf, Zoom has to be in focus in order for that
| to work.
|
| Is it possible this is an OS limitation? It wouldn't
| surprise me if macOS, for instance, had privacy
| restrictions on apps capturing the keyboard when they're
| out of focus. No idea if that's the case, just wondering.
| dhbanes wrote:
| Works on Mac. I use it all the time.
| ezekg wrote:
| Their version of push-to-talk is useless since, like you
| mentioned, you have to keep Zoom in focus. I don't know
| about you, but I never had Zoom in focus when I used it.
| I was always multi-tasking.
| tester756 wrote:
| But you have to have zoom "on focus"?
|
| e.g can you write code in your fancy IDE and hit space to
| unmute temporarily yourself?
|
| edit:
|
| Ok, I now see
|
| >Though tbf, Zoom has to be in focus in order for that to
| work
| nxpnsv wrote:
| I guess you use tabs :)
| gingerlime wrote:
| I have a yeti nano, which has a physical mute button.
| It's super useful. I only wish it could:
|
| automatically switch the mute indicator on zoom, so
| others can see I'm on mute
|
| push to talk mode would be neat instead of click to
| unmute and another to mute again
|
| anybody knows if the button is hackable in some way?
| (osx)
| banana_giraffe wrote:
| Yep, that's exactly what I do in Zoom.
|
| It's the space bar, and not global (of course), but I stay
| muted 100% of the time, and press and hold the space bar
| while I'm talking, then let got when I'm done.
| vehementi wrote:
| > not global (of course)
|
| That's not an "of course" thing (of course). All of the
| above mentioned apps (Discord etc.) support the PTT
| hotkeys being global. Windows and OSX support global
| hotkeys in apps.
| banana_giraffe wrote:
| I was just saying it didn't take over the spacebar
| globally.
|
| The zoom app has lots of room for better features, for
| sure.
| maxerickson wrote:
| My (businessish) headset has a hardware mute button.
|
| Given that a lot of business voice chat is essentially phone
| calls (rather than group meetings), it makes some sense that
| toggle predominates UI designs.
| Aussie747400 wrote:
| Jokes on you, I don't have a microphone nor webcam.
| machello13 wrote:
| At least it's more clearly stated than the one a couple days ago
| that said it "muted your keyboard"!
| 51Cards wrote:
| Cool idea for those who don't talk and type at the same time in a
| meeting. Would be an issue for me unforunately but boy I hope
| some of the people I have meetings with employ something similar.
| (fortunately my keyboard is quite quiet)
| oaguy1 wrote:
| This is a really cool, small utility!
|
| TBH, I have been wondering if there is a "wishlist" of small
| utilities/apps people would want to see on the Linux desktop. I
| have been looking for project inspiration and would love to do
| something that actually gets used.
| awillen wrote:
| Former PM at a videoconferencing company here - this is a great
| great great idea. You should consider integrating with Blue Jeans
| (guess where I was a PM at), Zoom, etc. If it works well and you
| can get in touch with some folks at the company, you could
| probably get some promotion in their app directories.
| mindfulplay wrote:
| Isn't the better idea to simply remove the keyboard noise? I
| think a few services do this already...
| Jolter wrote:
| That sounds infinitely more complex and cpu intensive than
| simply muting the mic on key events.
| tarr11 wrote:
| What happens if I'm talking while I'm typing?
| deegles wrote:
| Yo__ a__io _ou_d b_ st__t_ry.
| popey wrote:
| We tried various settings for the timeout from 150ms (too
| short) to 2s (too long) and settled on 250ms. Suggestions
| welcome on improving it! :D
| spicybright wrote:
| Wasn't this posted 2 days ago?
| popey wrote:
| Unclack was probably posted a couple of days ago. It was the
| inspiration for Hushboard.
| ilovefood wrote:
| That's a great utility and also very nice they implemented it so
| fast! Code looks clean and concise. I'm using Nvidia Broadcast
| mainly for this reason so that I can stream to my two subscribers
| without my mechanical keyboard ruining the experience :)
| cj wrote:
| Unclack (linked in the article) did a Show HN a few days ago.
| Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25644828
| Aussie747400 wrote:
| Thanks for the link.
| [deleted]
| dbrower wrote:
| Cool!
|
| Windows please.
|
| Someone. Anyone.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| No. Get a decent OS.
| nucleardog wrote:
| There are a few options that let you use RNNoise. (I posted
| another comment a bit further up on how to pipe your audio
| through OBS to implement this. There are undoubtedly simpler
| options.)
|
| In my experience, it does a great job cancelling out keyboard
| clicks and clacks. Even if I sit here and slam on my spacebar
| harder than I'd ever hit it even writing an angry email, it's
| cancelling it all. And I've never had an issue with it _not_
| picking up my voice.
|
| If you're just looking for _a_ solution to the problem, I'd
| give something with RNNoise a try.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| If you have an RTX card, get nVidia Broadcast.
|
| If you have a non-RTX card (like a GTX 1070), get RTX voice.
| Despite the name, it does not require an RTX card.
|
| Seriously, nVidia's noise removal is absolute magic, as far as
| I'm concerned. https://youtu.be/uWUHkCgslNE
| alkonaut wrote:
| I actually tried writing a version of this for windows just an
| hour before this was written. Usually when I do this I find
| there is one already just as I finish it, but if not then I'll
| put it on GitHub within a week. Will post another msg here if I
| do.
| Ninjinka wrote:
| Nvidia Broadcast if you have a recent GPU
| gorgoiler wrote:
| This (ahem) sounds fantastic.
|
| I'm currently doing VC off an iPad while sat in front of my Linux
| workstation.
|
| The workstation has no microphone. What kind of mic could I get
| for it, to migrate all my VC to the workstation?
| jeffbee wrote:
| USB microphones (that integrate the mic preamp and the A/D
| converter into one unit) are now very common. You just plug
| them in. In my experience they take zero effort to use with
| ubuntu or chromeos.
| Cu3PO42 wrote:
| Many audio interfaces also work just fine with Linux OOTB
| despite there being no official support.
|
| While for microphones (and other audio equipment) there's
| almost no limit to how expensive you can go, any halfway
| decent USB microphone should probably be good enough that
| you're bottlenecked by the application's codec/bitrate.
|
| If you were willing to splurge a bit, you might look at the
| likes of the Blue Yeti, Rode NT-USB, AKG Lyra, Audio Technica
| AT2020 USB, or even Shure MV7 which range between $150 and
| $300.
| Zelphyr wrote:
| I'd like to see something like this built into the Operating
| Systems. Maybe it's just me (misophonia) but having someone
| typing while a conversation is happening is so distracting as to
| make it next to impossible to follow the conversation. The same
| applies to people who use wired Apple earbuds when the mic rubs
| against their clothing.
| singlow wrote:
| Or people who leave their slack notifications audible while
| they are on video calls. The whole team is on the call and
| someone posts to the channel and you hear 10 slack
| notifications.
| tnorthcutt wrote:
| At least semi relevant is Shush, a mac app that makes toggling
| OS-wide mute easy, along with push-to-talk (or the inverse, push
| to mute). I've been a happy user for years.
|
| I only wish the menu bar icon were more prominent somehow, or had
| the option to overlay a floating semi-transparent window that
| displayed mute status. I'm always paranoid about whether I'm
| actually muted and wish I could make it glaringly obvious to
| myself.
| Hamuko wrote:
| I think this is now the third one of these I've seen on HN in the
| past week or so.
| colmvp wrote:
| It's a really cool idea. I also see a potential benefit to
| preventing acoustic keyboard eavesdropping. I've seen some newish
| streamers not show their screen when doing something sensitive
| like logging in somewhere, but you can still hear their keyboard.
|
| On a slightly related note, I quite like listening to mechanical
| keyboard sounds when my favorite programmers are doing a stream.
| I ended up buying one for myself because I just had to hear the
| sound up close. Mmm...
| richrichardsson wrote:
| In case buying a new keyboard is a step too far, there is
| bucklespring available for Linux that emulates the sound of an
| IBM Model M keyboard.
|
| Demo here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7dKyGoqn9w
| rzzzt wrote:
| You only have to worry about the keyboard muting software, as
| it has to capture key press events.
| kevincox wrote:
| It isn't quite the same, but RNNoise is a neural-network based
| noise reduction aimed at dampening anything that isn't human
| voice. It works fantastic to me and almost always completely
| mutes my keyboard. (Sometimes it comes though a bit if I am
| talking at the same time.)
|
| This is easy integrated into Pulseaudio using PulseEffects
| (https://github.com/wwmm/pulseeffects).
|
| (The PulseEffects support is new, I used to use NoiseTorch
| (https://github.com/lawl/NoiseTorch) which is more dedicated but
| has a weird UI and some other downsides)
| Nuzzerino wrote:
| Seems like this would be great for multiplayer gaming. Anyone
| know how well PulseAudio works on windows these days?
| syntaxing wrote:
| Any recommendation for mac?
| therealx wrote:
| Here:
|
| https://stackoverflow.com/a/59808919/1660678
|
| Then you still get a FAILED: meson-install Permission denied:
| '/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/LV2' error, so change
| INSTALL_DIR_MAC in install.sh to~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/LV2
| and install via the github page
| jfk13 wrote:
| Try Unclack? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25644828
| hmottestad wrote:
| I presume he/she meant - Is there a way to get RNNoise
| working on Mac?
| [deleted]
| a9d34571 wrote:
| | sed 's/he\/she/they/'
|
| I presume they meant: "Is there a way to get RNNoise
| working on Mac?"
| telesilla wrote:
| krisp.ai is good but $3 a month
| nucleardog wrote:
| For what it's worth, I tried it and it was... not great?
|
| Versus piping my audio through OBS as a way of using
| RNNoise and doing noise gating, OBS retains the original
| audio quality quite well and does a really good job of
| removing clicks/clacks/etc.
|
| Krisp made my voice sound like I was talking through two
| tin cans and a string, and, at least in my environment, did
| not do a very good job of actually removing any of the
| background sounds.
|
| I've also tried it in Discord (as it's integrated directly
| into Discord) and kept running into a problem of it
| deciding my own voice was noise and just cutting me out mid
| word.
|
| They have a free tier (gives you 120min/week of noise
| cancelling), so anyone looking to try it definitely worth
| using that first. I'd suggest turning on audio monitoring
| in some headphones and listening to yourself a bit though
| and deciding if the quality is acceptable to you.
| telesilla wrote:
| I've only had excellent experience with Krisp, but I have
| a semi-pro USB mic I use so perhaps it makes all the
| difference. Sounds great also with a macbook built-in
| mic.
|
| That said, I'm interested to see open source alternatives
| as I'm interested to see how they work.
| pitterpatter wrote:
| I've just used a little script that sets up
| https://github.com/werman/noise-suppression-for-voice and it's
| worked wonderfully, but PulseEffects and NoiseTorch seem cool!
| lawl wrote:
| > and some other downsides
|
| Can you elaborate? (maintainer here, always interested in
| feedback)
| CraftThatBlock wrote:
| For me, I think having an option to start when I login would
| be great (similar to NVIDIA Broadcast on Windows).
|
| This would solve my biggest issue that when turning on and
| switching my input to it, other programs sometimes need to be
| restarted to pick up the microphone change.
|
| Otherwise, keep up the great work!
| bentcorner wrote:
| I've used this in Windows and it works pretty good. The filter
| isn't quite as good as RTXVoice and the installation can be...
| tricky[1], but it's less fiddly once you get it working.
|
| [1] https://medium.com/@bssankaran/free-and-open-source-
| software...
| rcthompson wrote:
| I can testify that these RNNoise-based methods work quite well
| at removing background noise, including keyboard clacking, even
| while talking and typing at the same time.
| minimaxir wrote:
| RNNoise is also available as a native voice filter in OBS and
| it works very well there.
| nucleardog wrote:
| For anyone going down this path, it's relatively easy to
| kinda use OBS as your audio pipeline for other programs.
| (Easy in the "for people on HN" sense, not easy in the "my
| mom would do this" sense.) Only caveat is that you need to
| leave OBS running in the background doing its thing whenever
| you need your microphone.
|
| (Instructions for Windows. The OBS stuff would be the same,
| you'll just need to figure out your own solution for virtual
| audio devices.)
|
| 1. You'll need a virtual audio device. So grab Virtual Audio
| Cable[1] or VB-Audio Cable[2]. Both have a free version that
| let you set up a single device.
|
| 2. In OBS, add your microphone as an "Audio Input Capture".
| Right click on it, select Filters, and add a "Noise
| Suppression". (For future playing, you may want to come back
| here and add a "Noise Gate" as well. Basically "if the audio
| is too quiet, mute the input completely.)
|
| 3. Now go to File -> Settings, Audio, and under "Advanced"
| select the virtual audio cable as your monitoring device. Hit
| OK.
|
| 4. In the Audio Mixer panel at the bottom middle of your
| window, select any of the gear icons and hit "Advanced Audio
| Properties". In the row for your microphone input, change
| "Audio Monitoring" to "Monitor and Output".
|
| 5. You should now be getting your de-noised/gated/etc
| microphone coming in to the virtual audio device. Now in your
| voice chat program, just change the microphone input to the
| virtual audio device.
|
| I've got a relatively quiet workspace, but I still live with
| three people and two dogs so the ambient noise is there. This
| cuts most of my dog's sounds (even if she's playing and
| creating a ruckus), ambient noise from people upstairs, my
| keyboard, etc. I'm stuck in meetings a good chunk of my day
| so I try to avoid having to wear headphones (just gets
| tiresome), and the noise gating and some strategic microphone
| positioning works perfect for keeping the meeting audio from
| my speakers from feeding back in. (Along with having all the
| meeting audio running through a very aggressive compressor to
| normalize everyone's volume into a very tight range.)
|
| OBS also includes a virtual camera option, so I use that to
| crop out a tighter shot from my fairly wide angle camera so
| people can't see as much of the mess around the room and do
| some colour adjustment because it's a cheap camera and looks
| kinda garbage otherwise.
|
| [1] https://vac.muzychenko.net/en/ [2] https://vb-
| audio.com/Cable/
| minimaxir wrote:
| Doing that on a Mac is...more complicated. There's only one
| company (Rogue Amoeba) that does virtual audio devices
| (https://rogueamoeba.com/loopback/) and it's $100.
|
| Incidentally I purchased an Elgato Wave:3 Mic
| (https://www.elgato.com/en/wave-3) because it includes a
| free virtual audio device for Mac, which piqued my
| curiosity. It turns out that Rogue Ameoba provides the
| extension for virtual audio devices, so it's a good value!
|
| Another option for both Win/Mac is the Blue Yeti X
| (https://www.bluemic.com/en-us/products/yeti-x/), which has
| Blue Voice to denoise/noise gate/equalize audio without
| additional drivers aside from the base software (I use a
| headset which supports Blue Voice and it's ok, but def not
| as good as RNNVoice)
| robotsquidward wrote:
| Love it! I'm glad that you could bring mic-muting to the wider
| world outside the macOS Big Sur bubble. Appreciate the shoutout
| for Unclack!
| stuartlangridge wrote:
| Thank you! That's very gracious of you to say so, and Unclack
| is cool :-)
| spullara wrote:
| Just use NVIDIA Broadcast. Filters out everything but talking.
| smnscu wrote:
| Yeah, Nvidia Broadcast (formerly RTX Voice) or Krisp. As
| someone in 3 to 8hrs of video calls every day (interviewer), I
| wish more people would use solutions like that.
| CraftThatBlock wrote:
| NVIDIA Broadcast is only available on Windows (but free and
| works very well if you have a RTX card). Use it if available!
|
| If using Discord, Krisp is built-in. On Windows/Mac, you can
| also install Krisp standalone.
|
| On Linux, I would recommend NoiseTorch or other similar
| software.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > and works very well if you have a RTX card
|
| If you have a non-RTX nVidia GPU, you can use RTX Voice,
| which is the same functionality as the nVidia Broadcast noise
| removal, and doesn't require an RTX card despite the name.
|
| I was using RTX Voice on my GTX 1070 just fine.
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(page generated 2021-01-08 23:02 UTC)