[HN Gopher] Higher quality audio makes people sound smarter
___________________________________________________________________
Higher quality audio makes people sound smarter
Author : tdmckinlay
Score : 731 points
Date : 2021-04-15 10:49 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (tips.ariyh.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (tips.ariyh.com)
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| My problem with the data and how it's given is that it's quite
| useless and the result, while not the null hypothesis, is the
| expected result.
|
| Namely, it can be expected that no man would find a speaker
| dumber with superior audio, so let us assume that only 1% of the
| sample found the speaker more intelligent with superior audio,
| and for 99% it makes no difference, then the "average result" is
| still that "people" as a collective average find a speaker with
| better audio more intelligent, even though 99% of people don't.
|
| This is my problem with such research. -- I am far more
| interested in the percentage of "people" onto whom this has an
| effect or how large the effect is in distribution. It goes
| without saying that this effect exists with some "people", but I
| would like to know what percentage.
|
| It's entirely possible that the effect only exists with 20% of
| "people" and 80% are not biased, but the research is incapable of
| showing this.
|
| Such research, which does not, and cannot due to it's methodology
| make any claim as to the percentage of "people" it applies is
| often taken to apply to all "people".
| fooblat wrote:
| It is amazing to me that we still have such a distance between
| people on this.
|
| Some people have basically created a tv studio at home with a
| nice set, good lighting, nice background, quality camera, and
| mic. Having a video call with these people is a nice and smooth.
|
| And somehow we still have people that think sitting in a noisy,
| messy room with the sun at their back and using their laptop's
| built-in mic/speakers is fine. Calls with these people are
| torture!
| MattGaiser wrote:
| It will encourage you to send things though Slack.
| hosteur wrote:
| Yeah it is almost as if people have different priorities and
| resources.
| ghaff wrote:
| On the one hand, I'm sympathetic that not everyone has a place
| to create a TV studio at home. On the other hand, there are
| easy ways to block out the light from a backlighting window and
| to add a key light.
| bytematic wrote:
| You don't need space, you can get cheap stands to put a
| keylight and mic above your monitor attached to a desk, wall,
| or with a stand. A simple hd logitech webcam can be attached
| to nearly any monitor.
| ghaff wrote:
| You do generally need space to get your background in order
| though. And if you're working from a kitchen table you may
| not have a permanent setup.
|
| I agree with the basic point that there is low-hanging
| fruit that many people can address for not much time and
| money.
| Aerroon wrote:
| Perhaps those people don't want to use a camera in the first
| place? It seems like camera usage isn't always optional. It
| wouldn't make sense for a person like that to put in effort
| to make it look nicer.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > On the other hand, there are easy ways to block out the
| light from a backlighting window and to add a key light.
|
| It's a case of empathy. Do you have enough empathy to check
| how your video looks and do simple changes?
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| And there are people who just don't give a hoot how they look
| in a video chat.
| strunz wrote:
| Why should that be any different than how you look in person?
| DC1350 wrote:
| People won't complain in person if they're looking at me
| from a bad angle or I'm standing near a window
| nickjj wrote:
| If anyone is looking it improve the quality of their audio for
| home recordings I put up a 10,000 word blog post + 90 minute
| video (no ads) on this topic recently at:
| https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/how-to-record-great-sounding-...
|
| It covers everything from general tips to room layouts to
| hardware / software suggestions.
|
| It really doesn't take a lot to get pretty decent sounding audio.
| At minimum a $50-70 USB dynamic mic and following the tips will
| work well enough as a baseline, along with picking up a decent
| pair of headphones to make sure you can hear yourself properly.
|
| This is based on having recorded over 400+ screencast videos and
| 75+ group podcast episodes over the years.
| zeptonaut22 wrote:
| While condenser microphones with a boom arm are nice for a home
| office, they're not portable enough for a setup that will work
| after returning to a hybrid office/WFH life.
|
| Ideally, that portable setup would have no boom arm, no pop
| screen, no huge microphone.
|
| The best candidate I've found so far is the Audio Technica ATH-G1
| Gaming headset (reviewed by the excellent Podcastage here:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMgyh7Ne5ng).
|
| In my opinion, the sound quality isn't quite comparable to high
| quality condenser microphones like the Blue Yeti
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2BNAF3u5lc) or dynamic
| microphones like the Samson Q2U
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjCJbhjFYiA&t=6s), but it's 90%
| of the way there and significantly more portable.
| tauntz wrote:
| I can recommend the Samson Go Mic if you want something
| portable but decent audio quality
| (http://www.samsontech.com/samson/products/microphones/usb-
| mi...)
| randomopining wrote:
| Nice thanks. Howdoes it compare to Blue Yeti etc?
| freedomben wrote:
| Any advice for someone who wants to learn to use audacity or
| similar to improve the audio of a recording after it's recorded?
| I use the Levelator with wine but I'd love to learn how to do
| some of that stuff myself.
| vonwoodson wrote:
| _file sizes intensify_
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| Somebody tell this to "smart" TV makers.
| stephvd wrote:
| What are some decently good mics that don't break the bank but do
| the work?
| gkbrk wrote:
| Heard good things about the Behringer C-1U.
| pachydermballet wrote:
| My daughter uses one for recording songs; very clear, and was
| (IME) slightly simpler to set up under Linux than Windows as
| the latter took some fiddling to sort out low gain on that
| platform.
| m12k wrote:
| Snowball or Yeti consistently get good reviews.
| imeron wrote:
| Yeti picks up too much background noise.
| ahelwer wrote:
| I have a Samson Q2U and have had a few people tell me I sound
| like a podcaster.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| I, too, have the Q2U.
|
| The great thing about the setup, aside from the microphone
| being solid, is that it gives you an upgrade path but works
| right out of the box fully (mic, stand, pop-filter, USB or
| XLR).
|
| Phase 1: Plug it in via USB, use the included stand. GO!
|
| Phase 2: Upgrade the stand to a desk-isolating one (e.g.
| arm/freestanding, etc).
|
| Phase 3: Upgrade to XLR instead of USB (e.g. buy an audio
| interface/mixer).
|
| Phase 4: Upgrade the microphone at some point.
|
| You can literally buy it and stop at Phase 1 forever, but if
| you wish you can use it as a jumping off point to a higher
| end setup and won't have to buy it all at once (easily $300
| or more total, for arm/audio interface/pro grade microphone).
| tnzm wrote:
| Note that studio mics recommended in this thread, like the SM57
| or the C1, need to be plugged with an XLR cable into an audio
| interface. Focusrite, for one, makes good USB audio interfaces
| - but it's still an extra device to buy and then keep on your
| desk/carry around (and, optionally, to understand).
|
| For conferencing, it's much more convenient to just use a USB
| mic. I can recommend the RODE NT-USB for this purpose - all it
| needs is an available USB-A port.
| bserge wrote:
| The SM58 is still great for a dynamic mic (condensers are good
| but often pick up _too much_ ). Will need a good preamp,
| though.
| jmkr wrote:
| Here's a 20$ clone with a switch. Switch is definitely worth
| it.
|
| Despite it not being a Shure itself, it seems like the clones
| are fine up to high frequency singing.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/GLS-Audio-Vocal-Microphone-
| ES-58-S/dp...
| bserge wrote:
| I don't know about the clones tbh. I compared a genuine
| SM58 to a clone once and it had a lower noise floor, as
| well as better quality in the low range than the clone.
| jmkr wrote:
| Yeah and a sm58 isn't that expensive, I just bought a mic
| to have one. When I start recording out an amp I'll
| probably get a 57.
| bredren wrote:
| This has important implications for TTS.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| _check out what interests the HN crowd_
|
| placed first: "$X makes you sound smarter"
|
| _closes tab_
| asimpletune wrote:
| I'm just going to add that people should check out apogee if they
| want best of the best for mics and the like (converters, preamps,
| etc...)
| gwbas1c wrote:
| One thing I notice is that when I'm hearing "bad" audio, like
| lower-quality cell phones, is that I have to think a lot more to
| understand it.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| It would be interesting to hear how bad the audio actually was...
| tdmckinlay wrote:
| Here's how they describe it in the paper:
|
| First experiment (science conference talks from YouTube): "We
| selected two conference talks (in physics and engineering) from
| YouTube and altered their acoustic features using iMovie
| software. The good audio quality version of each talk was
| created with an audio filter called "small room," which reduces
| the echo and increases the clarity of the speaker; the poor
| audio quality version was created with an audio filter called
| "Large Room," which does the opposite, increasing the echo and
| decreasing the clarity of the speaker."
|
| The second experiment (NPR interviews) was again using iMovie
| and they describe it like this: "The good audio quality version
| of each talk was created with no audio filters so that
| participants heard the interview as it was originally recorded.
| The poor audio quality version was created with audio filters
| that made it sound as if the researcher had called in on a bad
| phone line."
| tgv wrote:
| I must say I'm not convinced that those approaches are valid.
| "Large Room" introduces a lot of reverb and that can make
| people stop listening, instead of changing their perception
| of the speaker.
|
| Of course that still means bad audio may influence the effect
| of your presentation, but not in the way suggested in the
| linked article.
| andrewzah wrote:
| "and that can make people stop listening"
|
| That's what bad audio does. Echo is one part of that, but
| audio that cuts out or has crackles has a similar effect.
|
| I disagree that the approaches are invalid. Bad audio is
| bad audio, and it shows that people's perceptions do change
| when audio is good and clear.
| jarenmf wrote:
| I'm struggling with audio quality over zoom on Linux. Anyone
| could recommend a good microphone that sounds reasonably fine.
| Preferable something below 100$.
| ruph123 wrote:
| I bought the fifine condenser microphone and it is really nice.
| I use it on Linux and it only costs about 30 bucks, depending
| on which version. I got the slightly more expensive version for
| 40 dollars which has a detachable cable and a backchannel for
| headphones (so you hear directly what comes from the mic). The
| benefit: Linux uses the mic as a audio interface and also gives
| you sound through the port of the mic:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Microphone-FIFINE-Computers-Podcastin...
| adrianolek wrote:
| I'm really happy with Fifine K678. Plus it has a headphones
| ouput & a mute button.
|
| https://fifinemicrophone.com/collections/microphones/product...
| ruph123 wrote:
| A cheap and usable condenser mic costs 30 bucks (e.g. Fifine), a
| lavalier mic costs between 2 bucks on aliexpress and 50 for e.g.
| from Rode. (I found that the ultra cheap aliexpress are the exact
| same like the no-brand 10 bucks on amazon, like so many things)
|
| I got both but mostly use the condenser mic and it is an absolute
| game changer. If you want to explain something it is so
| noticeable in the eyes of your conference participants how good
| they can hear you. And it makes a huge difference if you finally
| feel like what you are saying is not painful for others to
| endure.
|
| Check out this very lovely video series on how to pimp up your
| conferencing setup. Especially this episode about mics:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKOx4hZKmOs
|
| Edit: And this is the mic I can recommend using on Linux:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Microphone-FIFINE-Computers-Podcastin...
| arbitrage wrote:
| Pimps aren't admirable people.
| ruph123 wrote:
| I am not a native english speaker, to me "pimp up" means to
| "upgrade" something. Sorry if that came off wrong.
| acqq wrote:
| I even know where your environment got that belief. Blame
| MTV, since 2004:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pimp_My_Ride
|
| A lot of non-natives then miss that the meaning of the word
| is not about an "upgrade" but about:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procuring_(prostitution)
|
| which was on MTV glorified as the part of the "Afro-
| American" "pop culture" which is also... not a really
| nicest approach. But... it was supposed to be a "fashion."
| And relativised as "the thing of certain culture."
| Postmodernism and all that. And therefore....
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_gustibus_non_est_disputand
| u...
|
| ...and "acceptable" for MTV.
|
| Edit: also, 2008:
|
| https://www.huffpost.com/entry/msnbc-reporter-
| begrudging_n_8...
| ruph123 wrote:
| I both know what a pimp is and that that show probably
| made the expression famous. (In Germany there was even
| "Pimp my Fahrrad") However, I was not aware that this is
| not generally used in day-to-day language by native
| speakers.
| acqq wrote:
| > In Germany there was even "Pimp my Fahrrad"
|
| It exactly confirms how that expression became popular
| there. A direct false association with "improving" "the
| look of the vehicles." (das Fahrrad == a bicycle)
|
| Well...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVCh6Xp_VD8
|
| Also, very funny, from the Wikipedia page of the show:
|
| "Viacom, the owner of the Pimp My Ride franchise, has
| made legal threats against a number of small business
| owners over the use of the words Pimp My... in business
| names. Businesses using the names Pimp My Pet and Pimp My
| Snack have been threatened with legal action for an
| alleged breach of a trademark owned by Viacom. The
| website Pimp My Snack is now known as Pimp That Snack."
|
| And more from the "pimp-gate": https://abcnews.go.com/Pol
| itics/Vote2008/story?id=4274500&pa...
| andrewzah wrote:
| It is dismissive to say that natives "miss the meaning".
| They do not. Pimp has multiple usages, as do a lot of
| words. It is very easy in English to create new
| nouns/verbs or new usages of existing ones and happens
| all the time.
|
| As usual, the context is crucial for figuring out which
| usage it is.
| acqq wrote:
| > Pimp has multiple usages
|
| ...checking the American dictionary (descriptive, not
| prescriptive):
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pimp
|
| noun: "a criminal who is associated with, usually exerts
| control over, and lives off the earnings of one or more
| prostitutes"
|
| "transitive verb: to make use of often dishonorably for
| one's own gain or benefit"
|
| "intransitive verb: to work as a pimp"
|
| And yes, I know that there's also MTV. And a "pimp-gate"
| related to Clinton's daughter and a journalist, as per my
| other comment here.
| andrewzah wrote:
| Dictionaries are not end all authoritative sources. They
| often do not keep up with slang. As a native English
| speaker I can say that "pimp" has both that usage and the
| usage coined from "pimp my ride". I don't have hard
| numbers on that usage of pimp, but I believe that it's
| entered the public lexicon at least for my generation. I
| don't think anyone my age would be confused by that
| usage.
|
| You are technically correct, and also wrong at the same
| time by insisting that the way people actually use words
| in real life is "wrong" because the dictionary says so.
| If people use "pimp" in that manner, then it is correct.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| And execute means killing the helpless. Does that mean
| those who execute plans are either cold blooded killers
| or it is a slanderous comparison of them to such?
|
| Trying to be offended by taking the worst possible
| meaning as presumed most relevant is unproductive at best
| even when both parties are trying to polish the same
| communications. More likely counterproductive to the goal
| of seeming better.
| kube-system wrote:
| From the same source:
|
| > We get a lot of hate mail from people who think slang
| doesn't belong in the dictionary. Comments on our
| definition for OMG include "I am a high school English
| teacher and heard that this was added to the dictionary
| and hoped that I heard incorrectly." and "The human race
| is heading somewhere very sad." These people are barking
| up the wrong tree: We follow language and delight in
| tracking its changes.
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/slang-and-
| the-...
|
| and
|
| > Some "new" words are already in the dictionary. New
| words like hashtag and selfie get a lot of attention, but
| many of the new words we add are new meanings of words
| that are already staples in our language: think of the
| recent meanings of mouse and cookie that have nothing to
| do with rodents or baked goods.
|
| >What about words that don't make it into the dictionary?
| They're still real words!
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/how-does-a-
| wor...
| kube-system wrote:
| It's slang. English dictionaries are descriptive, not
| prescriptive. It is valid and common for English words to
| take on multiple meanings regardless of their origin, and
| for slang to be recognized use. Given that everyone here
| understands what was being said, I find it hard to say
| the usage was improper English.
|
| Informal, yes. Unprofessional, yes. Offensive,
| potentially. Incorrect English, no.
| acqq wrote:
| > I find it hard to say the usage was improper English.
|
| And who here said it "was _improper_ English "
| specifically, in these words?
| spicybright wrote:
| I don't even know what your point is here.
| pickledcods wrote:
| Please stop!
| snakeboy wrote:
| Those who add irrelevant comments trying to shame people for
| using popular, harmless slang aren't admirable people either.
|
| (Neither are the schmucks like me who are baited into
| responding, but whatever)
| manojlds wrote:
| The video, ironically, has such low volume.
|
| Good content though, subscribed!
| stunt wrote:
| That's more about podcasting setup though. Conferencing setup
| is different because you also have to listen to others.
| ruph123 wrote:
| I think it is fair to assume that most people have some type
| of headphones at home or are capable of buying some.
|
| Also you don't have to put the mic so close to your face that
| it is visible in your video feed. It still has a much better
| quality and less noise than many other solutions like
| bluetooth headsets I tested before.
| hdtrey5 wrote:
| The manufacturer provides free shipping for those looking to
| avoid Amazon:
| https://fifinemicrophone.com/collections/microphones/product...
| ThomPete wrote:
| not just that it makes video look clearer.
| analog31 wrote:
| An often overlooked issue is background noise. As a musician, I'm
| familiar with microphones, recording, etc.
|
| I always give people the following advice: If you can hear it,
| the microphone can hear it. This includes HVAC noise that is
| ridiculously hard to get rid of in most office and home
| locations.
|
| If at home, you can always temporarily turn off the HVAC while
| you record yourself. In fact, I've recorded at a commercial
| studio where, after getting everything set up and checked out,
| the final step is they turn off the HVAC.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| "If you can hear it, the microphone can hear it."
|
| As an aside, I can't tell you how many times I've played in
| venues with mics scattered around and the sound guy will leave
| them on between sets.
|
| Every...single...thing you say if you wander around the stage
| (or slightly off-) will get booted out to the audience.
| Hilarity ensues.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| "If you can hear it, the microphone can hear it."
|
| Not great advice if there is a chance they _want_ you to hear
| it.
| analog31 wrote:
| What I mean is if you can hear background noise in your room,
| it will be audible in your recording.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| Why you don't like the sound of your own voice
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYtOc4Bdmog
| benkuhn wrote:
| It's also really easy to have high quality audio! The author
| recommends a "podcasting" microphone, but a $35 standalone
| headset mic[1] is almost as good and much easier to use. If you
| want to hear a comparison, I got kind of obsessed with this
| problem at one point and took some comparison recordings here[2].
|
| (You need a standalone mic since most headsets, even really nice
| ones, have really bad mics because most headset buyers don't care
| about or even know how good their mic sounds. The one I linked is
| wired because wireless is evil[3] and in particular, Bluetooth
| will silently degrade your audio quality. If you want a pair of
| wired headphones, I like these[4] which are "open back" and
| therefore sound more natural + cool your ears better, although
| the open back also means they "leak" sound and are only suitable
| for working without people next to you. But you shouldn't be
| having calls with people next to you anyway!)
|
| [1]: https://www.amazon.com/V-MODA-BoomPro-Microphone-Gaming-
| Comm...
|
| [2]: https://www.benkuhn.net/vc/#get-a-better-microphone
|
| [3]: https://www.benkuhn.net/wireless/
|
| [4]: https://www.amazon.com/Philips-SHP9500S-Precision-Over-
| ear-H...
| izacus wrote:
| The V-MODA BoomPro finally made microphone useful in
| combination with my 1000XM3s. Cheap and easy upgrade there.
| belter wrote:
| The recommendation above: V-MODA-BoomPro and Philips-SPH9500S
| is pure gold and will save you hundreds of hours of research.
| After trying more than 20 to 25 different products and
| solutions I arrived to the same conclusion. I work on Linux but
| sometimes need to use Windows. I work regularly delivering
| sessions, workshops etc... Very high quality sound is critical
| for me.
|
| I have multiple professional level microphones SM57,
| Neumann(s), BlueYeti and also tried some of the cheaper USB
| mics. I spent well over 60 to 80 hours doing research on how to
| get good audio quality online and would like to offer the
| following recommendations:
|
| DO NOT rely at all on YouTube recommendations from specialized
| channels, even the ones with high reputation. They have a
| business running, and a bad review for a product will make sure
| they will not get another "sample" from the same vendor. I had
| instances where I ordered professional level headphones in the
| 300 to 400 US dollars price range, reviewed by several of the
| high reputation channels as the best out there. Within minutes
| of receiving the product would realize how uncomfortable they
| feel, or how bad sound they offer. When I would return to re-
| watch some of these YouTube "reviews" I would quickly realize
| the reviewer had skillfully omitted to mention any of these
| failures within the product. If there is an issue, these
| reviews just "omit" any comments around problematic areas of a
| product. On a second though ... Maybe there is a business
| opportunity here.
|
| Recommendation: Choose a reliable online vendor that can offer
| returns on the product. Be ready to order several products and
| do your research.
|
| You also have to take into account a couple of things:
|
| - What OS are you using ? If you are using a USB mic some
| vendors have great mics but terrible drivers ( ex BlueYeti
| Windows drivers ) and they do not seem willing to put the
| effort in. Windows is particularly terrible out of the box,
| with energy-saving OS plans that pause USB ports
| configurations. It took me hours to get Windows 10 to sound
| good and reliably for online meetings. This is a good starting
| point: https://support.focusrite.com/hc/en-
| gb/articles/207355205-Op...
|
| - Do you want to sound good while doing Podcasts, creating
| YouTube videos OR during via WebMeeting platforms like Webex,
| GotoMeeting, Zoom, Jitsi? From my experience, due to internal
| audio processing done by many of the online conference
| platforms you are going to need different solutions for each
| use case. Some of the Studio level Condenser mics used for
| podcasts do not sound very good during online conferences. Its
| also the case they are too sensitive and your conference
| participants can hear you with great audio quality but they
| will also hear you neighbor dog barking.
|
| Warning: I am not associated with any of these companies in any
| way but I would suggest the following:
|
| - Do you want to sound good for Web Meetings ? Get two V-MODA-
| BoomPro and Philips-SPH9500S . One set to use and one as
| backup. It will be relatively cheap compared to other solutions
| and the price/quality ratio of this recommendation is
| exceptional. The mic has good quality and the headphones are
| high quality. You won't feel them if you use these for 8 hours.
| You can spend more if you are willing to put the research
| effort. Just do not settle for any first choice.
|
| OR
|
| - Do you want to sound good while creating YouTube Videos ?
| Always get a Pop Filter and a Mic Stand with isolation from
| vibrations. Get a BlueYeti ( but use the XLR port not USB ).
| The BlueYeti USB drivers on Windows will randomly cause
| distortion and I given up on the Company putting the effort to
| fix the issues.
|
| You can also
|
| Get an SM57. Sounds great for voice and its not by accident
| it's the official mic of the US President.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shure_SM57
|
| Be careful where your order, the SM57 and the SM58 are some of
| the most frequently counterfeited mics by Chinese or Taiwanese
| vendors. Then get one of the Focusrite Scarlett interfaces and
| you will be sorted.
|
| If you don't use Mac or Linux but Windows be ready to spend
| some effort troubleshooting driver issues. This solution will
| not be cheap but still manageable and save you hours. You
| welcome !
|
| [Edit] Spelling
| technofiend wrote:
| The booming, echoy audio you get in most zoom calls from people
| sitting 4 feet from their microphone is a little aggravating.
| If you'd like to help your colleagues hear you better and want
| something subtler than a large microphone on a big boom arm
| then go for a lavalier microphone. See
| https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/ME4--sennheiser-me-4...
| for one example, but even a $10 microphone from Microcenter,
| Amazon or Ali{baba,express} will do. What do you don't want is
| a microphone hanging off earphone adapters because you end up
| having to eat those to be heard. A lav mic in Zoom with both
| auto level adjustment and background noise suppression enabled
| gives a pretty pleasant experience.
|
| If you don't have a dedicated microphone port then you may have
| to purchase an adapter because some input ports are wired tip
| ring ring sleeve (TRRS) and a microphone will just be tip ring
| sleeve (TRS).
| ravenstine wrote:
| I had this exact problem with a client I was working with a
| couple years ago. For meetings, they would all gather in one
| cramped room with nothing on the walls and plop a conference
| mic in the middle, and the audio was so bad that most of the
| time they were incomprehensible to me. I even told them this,
| but I pretty much got ignored. Glad I stopped working with
| them.
|
| It amazes me how, even now with so many people working
| remote, how few of us take audio without even a modicum of
| seriousness.
| obsequiosity wrote:
| What would you recommend for someone who specifically would
| want a large mic on an arm? Would that pick up keyboard
| noise?
| Heliosmaster wrote:
| This is the reason why i got some Wired Bose Soundsport, and I
| had to get the lime green ones because they don't make it
| anymore. No wireless for me.
| baxuz wrote:
| Not really easy to be honest. Depending on the day, I am
| getting horrible static in my desktop microphone(s). This might
| be caused by no grounding in the outlet.
|
| I'm living in a really old house with no ground for most rooms
| (yes, I know), with only a bootleg ground to prevent _really_
| bad noise and occasional static zaps. Though I've read of many
| people having the same issues with properly grounded machines
| (as far as it goes for domestic use. I'm not talking about
| studio-grade grounding).
|
| My Macbook, on the other hand, doesn't have any static, even
| though its charger doesn't even have a ground pin, nor does my
| Steelseries Arctis 1 wireless (which uses a non-bluetooth
| dongle. Might be because it's wireless, or just because it's an
| external device.
|
| In any case, I don't feel comfortable shelling out upwards of
| 400$ for an audio setup.
| XorNot wrote:
| This shouldn't be a problem from what I understand: "real"
| ground is just tied off to a rod buried in your backyard, but
| it's _also_ bonded to neutral at the switchboard anyway.
| elisaado wrote:
| Yes, but with a certain resistance meaning there will
| always be a voltage difference between neutral and ground.
| ferongr wrote:
| >but it's also bonded to neutral at the switchboard anyway
|
| Depends on the country. Over here protective earth is
| entirely separate from neutral, and there's a separate
| earth stake for each consumer. This is the TT system.
| elisaado wrote:
| I don't recommend the following but in our old house I used
| to tie my outlet ground (that was free floating) to the
| radiator which was grounded. It worked until my mother
| reported the shower water was feeling "very harsh".
| Cerium wrote:
| Sounds like the radiator was not actually grounded and the
| device plugged in had a ground fault.
| baxuz wrote:
| Yeah, I could theoretically tie my outlet ground to the gas
| pipe. Doesn't sound like a good idea.
| doubleunplussed wrote:
| If the radiator was actually grounded, why would there be
| any effect on the water?
| nicbou wrote:
| This was an excellent writeup. There's only one thing I would
| add: put the camera closer to where people's faces are. It
| feels like you're looking directly at them, and it makes a big
| difference. I made a habit of looking directly into the camera
| now.
| tux1968 wrote:
| There are devices you can buy for a few hundred that place
| the image of the person you're talking to directly in front
| of the camera. That way you can look at who you're talking to
| while also looking directly into the camera.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nCYWhYagqk
|
| There are also a lot of homebrew DIY versions of the same
| device:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AecAXinars
| vlmutolo wrote:
| Or, even better, position the camera far away and zoom in if
| the camera has an optical zoom. This gets rid of a ton of
| distortion in your face.
| FirstLvR wrote:
| the camera thing is really an issue in my company, we mostly
| work on software development so we share our screen
| constantly in our meetings... no one cares on turning on the
| camera and this has become regular behavior
|
| the problem is that you dont know if the other people are
| actually paying attention and human interactions need that
| feedback
| riskable wrote:
| Honestly though, seeing people's faces/active backgrounds
| is _super_ distracting. If I 'm actually paying attention
| on a call I'm usually looking down off to the side of the
| screen so I can focus.
|
| I recently setup a camera pointing down at my
| keyboard/mouse instead of my face for demonstrating a
| keyboard that I built (analog hall effect--from scratch!)
| and I think that's good enough to let people know, "I'm
| here" without being super distracting (assuming I turn off
| the LEDs and the gigantic LED matrix display haha).
| hammock wrote:
| Then they see you writing emails instead of listening?
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| > The author recommends a "podcasting" microphone, but a $35
| standalone headset mic[1] is almost as good and much easier to
| use.
|
| so if it's almost as good how smart does each one make you
| sound?
| xiii1408 wrote:
| I think one of the things people often overlook is the distance
| between the mic and your mouth. The closer the mic is to the
| source, the higher the signal-to-noise ratio will be, so the
| less echo and background noise you'll get. Many smartphone mics
| will sound very impressive if you hold them around 6-12 inches
| from your mouth. But you don't really want to do this with your
| hand, so it's important to get a mic with a nice stand or a
| form factor that allows you to comfortably place it where
| you'll get good audio.
|
| Another thing people forget about is the noise canceling and
| other filters that are applied to your audio by default. If
| you're in a reasonably quiet place, it's probably reasonable to
| put "noise canceling" in Zoom on low. This will make your audio
| less garbled. If you have a really solid audio setup with
| headphones, you should try turning on "use original sound,"
| which can make your audio really nice (unfortunately not
| available in Linux).
|
| I highly recommend Fifine's mics. They have a USB condenser mic
| with a boom arm for $60 (~$35 for just the mic) [1], and a
| lavalier (lapel) mic for $20 [2]. The audio quality is really
| quite impressive.
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/FIFINE-Microphone-Adjustable-
| Instrume...
|
| [2] https://www.amazon.com/Lavalier-Microphone-Cardioid-
| Condense...
| OGWhales wrote:
| Oh hey, I use that mic from your first link. Works quite well
| for the price. For anyone wondering, I do have V-MODA
| headphone, so I knew it would fit but it does fit in a couple
| other headphones as well.. it just won't fit in everything, so
| be aware of that.
| unexpected wrote:
| question - do you use this on video zoom calls? I can see the
| benefits on a non-video zoom call. But having a microphone on
| your face during a video zoom meeting makes me feel like a
| radio DJ trying to have a call.
| benkuhn wrote:
| Yeah, in particular you need headphones whose 3.5mm cable is
| detachable. Thanks for flagging, I should have included a
| warning!
|
| For other headphones you can use the various flavors of
| Antlion ModMic, but it's more expensive and less convenient
| because you have two cables.
| MisterPea wrote:
| Fantastic article, brb going to spend way too much on gadgets
| now
| nvarsj wrote:
| The ModMic is also excellent, and you can attach it to existing
| headphones [1]. I use this at home with my prized Sennheisers.
|
| It baffles me that some people don't seem to care about their
| audio quality on calls. The most obnoxious are those who use
| speakers and you get echo on all your talking, and despite
| telling them, they still never bother to get a decent mic.
|
| Another common offender are the Bose QC35s: they have a
| terrible mic - I wish people would stop using them.
|
| All the Apple things have great mics. I always keep an old pair
| of 3.5mm earpods in my bag as a good, portable laptop mic.
|
| [1]: https://www.amazon.co.uk/ModMic-GDL-1420-UNI-Mute-
| Switch/dp/...
| yoz-y wrote:
| The most difficult part is testing how you actually sound for
| other people. The software can do whatever to the signal
| coming out of your machine.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > It baffles me that some people don't seem to care about
| their audio quality on calls.
|
| 1. It is a bunch of extra work and expense for something I
| probably do not really want to be on. Easy audio
| communication is bound to induce more audio communication.
|
| 2. I have to maintain a bunch of infrastructure for it,
| manage configuration, and deal with all the wires. It is far
| from a free and easy improvement.
|
| 3. I rarely speak in meetings anyway.
| Drew_ wrote:
| There are very good USB mics like the Blue Yeti for
| example. Plug and play with just one cable. You don't have
| to have a studio recording setup to get your voice to come
| through nicely.
| eropple wrote:
| The Blue Yeti is an okay mic, but is a little pricey for
| what you get and also buys you into some other stuff you
| may not want to spend the money on, like a bit of a
| heavier-weight arm, etc. to be close to one's mouth. It's
| also a little sensitive for spoken word and while it can
| sound great in a treated room it's not great for
| conferences or untrained users due to its habit of
| picking up a lot of ambient noise through untrained
| positioning or habits (drumming on a desk, that sort of
| thing).
|
| Most folks I know recommend the Samson Q2U or the Audio
| Technica ATR2100 instead as easy mics to deal with for
| untrained users; shameless plug, but I wrote an article
| for Mux about this not long ago which explains in some
| depth why one mic may be preferable to another for
| untrained users: https://mux.com/blog/zoom-like-you-mean-
| it-1/
| walshemj wrote:
| And come appraisal time you get marked down, your peers
| will have possibly negative opinion of you.
| [deleted]
| corysama wrote:
| > Easy audio communication is bound to induce more audio
| communication.
|
| Alternatively: if you you are going to be hassled with an
| online meeting, get it over with quickly and with the least
| stress. It is very slow and stressful to fumble around with
| "Can you repeat that?" or worse, people not mentioning that
| they didn't actually understanding you and then dragging
| out the meeting with their misunderstanding.
|
| "If you have to eat a shit sandwich, take big bites."
| stcredzero wrote:
| _It baffles me that some people don 't seem to care about
| their audio quality on calls._
|
| Here's the thing about perception: A lot of it happens
| without your conscious knowledge.
|
| One of the things about using Audacity as one's cheap studio
| software, is that you have to adjust for recording latency
| for multitrack. It's really easy to see how a part of
| perception is unconscious with the delay.
|
| Almost no one is going to notice 5ms or below. At 20ms, many
| musicians are going to have this definite sense that
| something is off, but they can still hang. In between, it's a
| spectrum.
|
| In order to introspect enough to notice things that are below
| conscious perception, some people require some training. This
| is also why audio snake oil works.
|
| I use the wireless ModMic myself.
| muro wrote:
| 10ms is 3m, thus e.g. in an orchestra, 20ms latency is
| normal.
| stcredzero wrote:
| Yup. 30 feet or 10 meters is about the limit for
| comfortable improvisation. Really large orchestras can
| require musicians to compensate. I had to do this once
| when my school's band joined up with a National Guard
| band to form a huge orchestra for an 1812 Overture. (With
| actual cannon!)
| thescriptkiddie wrote:
| Has the modmic gotten better? I've had one for years and it
| has always sounded like garbage.
| nvarsj wrote:
| It depends a lot on your sound card I guess. Pro streamers
| use them on twitch as portable options (like Seagull) and
| they sound great to me.
|
| The only real downside to it is the cable is sort of flimsy
| and the 3.5mm termination is not great quality. That's how
| my last ModMic perished, although it lasted a few years.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| It also depends on positioning and configuration; having
| it directly in front of your mouth and/or having the gain
| too high are common problems I've run into.
|
| As an aside, it's been interesting as someone who knows
| things about audio to realize how much I've unconsciously
| internalized that most people apparently don't know. Like
| more gain != more better or what a plosive is.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| There are a bunch of different versions with different
| capsules. For example, the Modmic Uni doesn't sound very
| good, but since it's unidirectional (it's a 6mm cardioid
| electret I think) it is rather more resistant to ambient
| noise. The Omni has your usual run-of-the-mill 6mm capsule,
| these are all very similar in terms of sound and noise
| performance. The Uni is kinda good enough for pure
| communication, but you'd really wouldn't want to use it for
| content production.
|
| Also, being electret capsules directly wired up to your
| soundcard, the soundcard has quite an influence on the
| quality of the audio (mostly in terms of noise and hiss).
| Meanwhile the digital versions don't suffer from bad
| microphone inputs.
| Notorious_BLT wrote:
| I got their wireless one recently and everyone I regularly
| use it to talk to immediately noticed the quality and
| commented on it. Can't speak to the wired ones.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| I have found that many of the people who didn't shower in hot
| weather are the same people who don't care about their audio
| quality; I think it requires a certain amount of empathy for
| other people to realize how jarring and annoying bad audio is
| for the listener.
|
| It's also similar to the anti-mask problem, frankly. Even if
| you don't care, you should realize that others do and not
| abuse them for your own convenience.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| You are wondering why people who prioritize something else
| "don't care about audio quality"? Remember open offices? The
| likely culprit for them going with noise canceling
| headphones? Yeah they still have their old gear and are
| accustomed to it and the form factor.
|
| Philosophically it is also why would you go with something
| big and cumbersome for a feature you seldom use? You don't
| carry a glass bed scanner in your laptop bag - you take a
| photo if you really need to get a digital copy of a printing.
| Plus not all are equally enthused or know how to filter
| through the crap without a large /in person show room/ that
| would be either filthy or a pain in the ass to disinfect
| before a pandemic.
|
| Not helping matters are audiophiles being infamously placebo
| connoisseurs and walking proof that it is easier to fool
| someone than convince them they were fooled. That market is
| flooded with bullshit and specious claims so the default
| assumption for people claiming you need new more expensive
| audio equipment has been "ignore them, they are gullible
| idiots who think you need gold cables for digital connections
| to reduce low level noise for digital signals".
| blablabla123 wrote:
| > You are wondering why people who prioritize something
| else "don't care about audio quality"? Remember open
| offices? The likely culprit for them going with noise
| canceling headphones?
|
| Exactly that. I've been working for 5 years in more or less
| noisy open offices. Some of them so noisy that there were
| regular arguments between the self-proclaimed quiet ones
| and the noisy phone callers. I followed this with
| amusement.
|
| So yes, it is quite an exaggeration to now ask for Hifi
| audio quality during meetings. Apart from that, I think a
| little noise makes the lockdown in the home office a bit
| less boring, the majority of people worked on-site before
| the pandemic.
| oauea wrote:
| I absolutely love my Bose QC35s. With the modmic that I
| attached to them. When using the mic built into the Bose
| QC35s it switches to mono audio, and the mic itself is indeed
| also terrible. Very unfortunate.
| dreinhardt wrote:
| Which mod mic do you use? The QC35s have the extra small
| plug so I thought most mod mics would not fit.
| oauea wrote:
| The modmic has their own little sticker that is stuck to
| the outside of the mic. That's what the modmic attaches
| to. If you have the wireless one, that's that. If you
| have the wired one, the 3.5mm jack goes into your PC, not
| into the QC35s. So it doesn't matter what kind of plug
| the QC35s have.
|
| I actually have both a wired (very old, wire kind of
| broken because I treated it poorly) and a wireless
| modmic, and both work fine with my QC35s.
| owenversteeg wrote:
| In my experience AirPods have excellent mics for what they
| are. They're definitely a million times better than the built
| in mic on the various (high-end) phones and laptops I've used
| in recent years. I wonder how they compare to a standalone
| mic or a decent headset mic (or that ModMic you mentioned.)
| spockz wrote:
| It baffles me as well. Especially because I _do_ get feedback
| like wow your voice "carries", or it is clear, or that it is
| "calm". The best comment I received was that it sounded like
| I was there in the room and that it captured my voice well.
| Related to the OP my voice also has been called convincing.
|
| This is with a beyer dynamic microphone extension for a
| studio headphone. And I have the gain fixed.
|
| Everyone else in our comp keys team sessions has keyboard
| sound, plops, distortions. But in general it pretty well
| understandable at the cost of having to spent effort to
| understand. So maybe software is doing a hell of a job here.
| Cd00d wrote:
| > It baffles me that some people don't seem to care about
| their audio quality on calls. The most obnoxious are those
| who use speakers and you get echo on all your talking, and
| despite telling them, they still never bother to get a decent
| mic.
|
| I see comments along these lines here all the time, and I
| don't get it. I'm on zoom a majority of my day, and have
| maybe two colleagues that don't just use the laptop
| mic/speakers and have a headset. I almost never have trouble
| hearing or understanding or listening to background garbage.
| In fact, those with headsets will sometimes be _worse_
| because they 're making a lot of mouth sounds close to the
| mic.
|
| Maybe it's just that Zoom is good at this? TBH, when we used
| to use Webex on dedicated phones I felt like I couldn't ever
| hear or understand anything. Maybe that's where this
| microphone feedback comes from?
| brundolf wrote:
| If they're using external speakers, the only reason you're
| not hearing echo is because it's being software-cancelled.
| Different systems are better or worse at this software-
| cancelling; phones are good, Apple computers are good,
| otherwise YMMV.
| KeepFlying wrote:
| I assume it also depends on if they are using the laptop
| speakers or some standalone ones. I'm guessing the
| cancelation tech is tuned for the onboard speakers
| brundolf wrote:
| Yeah that would make sense
| ghaff wrote:
| Interesting. I normally use the external speakers on my
| iMac. I have verified with a number of different people
| that they're not getting echo.
|
| Yet one sees other people utterly convinced that using
| external speakers is bad, bad, bad.
|
| That may explain it.
| heyparkerj wrote:
| The most common problem I see is not echo, but software
| audio ducking that happens as a result of using onboard
| speakers and mic.
|
| Some people have a hard time realizing that they're
| interrupting someone else because that other person's
| audio is getting ducked while the laptop prioritizes mic
| input over speaker output - with the intent to reduce
| echo.
| Cd00d wrote:
| What does the term "duck" mean in this context? I'm not
| sure what you mean.
| tfigueroa wrote:
| "Ducking" refers to lowering volume so that other audio
| can play on top of it. When an announcer speaks over a
| song in the radio, or when Siri lowers your music so she
| can talk over it - that kind of thing.
| eertami wrote:
| Try talking while they are also talking. You'll see the
| problem.
|
| It's easy to have conversations with friends on discord
| where 3-4 people are talking at once all with headphones.
| However this has never worked on a zoom or hangout with
| less techy family members or work colleagues using ext.
| speakers.
| ghaff wrote:
| That may be part of it. On calls that I'm on people
| generally don't talk over each other.
| nvarsj wrote:
| It's probably just related to crappy laptop hardware.
| Macbook speakers/mics are great and I never hear any
| feedback from them. When it happens, and you can hear your
| voice echoing on everything you say, it gets quite
| annoying.
| soylentcola wrote:
| After having used both Webex and Zoom extensively for the
| past year, it seems that Zoom had much more aggressive echo
| cancellation up until recently. It feels like Webex has
| tweaked theirs recently so it's not quite as bad for those
| people who insist on just talking at their laptops with no
| external mic or headphones. Still, any of them with laptop
| speakers/mic sound worse than any _other_ of them with a
| halfway passable headset.
|
| I'd say if you're dealing with difficult people who really
| don't want to do more than point at an icon on a screen and
| go, the most bang for the (effort) buck is to ask if they
| have a set of headphones. Most people still have some
| earbuds around from when their phones still had headphone
| jacks. Just getting rid of the speakers makes a huge
| difference when folks refuse to mute while not speaking.
|
| I was lucky enough to have an old Shure vocal mic and a
| cheapo XLR-USB interface sitting in a box of electronic
| stuff, so I typically put on my headphones and speak into
| the mic (on a desk stand). For camera...I tried the phone
| thing and while it does look a lot nicer, the phone gets
| warm and has to run for an hour or two at a time.
| Eventually just got a Logitech C920 once they dropped back
| to non-scalper prices.
|
| A couple of clamp lights with parchment paper clipped over
| the end made more of a difference than buying a mirrorless
| camera would've (and they were way cheaper). My DSLR
| doesn't (and wasn't meant to) run for hours as a video cam
| so I didn't bother with that.
|
| Also, using OBS and its virtual camera plugin means I can
| tweak and color correct the cam feed without having to dig
| into the OS webcam configuration. Plus, real chromakey
| beats crappy Zoom/Webex background removal when I do just
| want to goof around with cool backgrounds and overlays.
| blablabla123 wrote:
| > In fact, those with headsets will sometimes be worse
| because they're making a lot of mouth sounds close to the
| mic.
|
| Yes this also freaks me out. Also when people use headsets
| in a room with lots of background noise, it sounds as if
| they use an open mic.
|
| I'm also quite convinced that the Mac with just the
| internal mic/speaker is quite good for most cases. But I
| definitely want to look further into the issue. Also I
| certainly don't want to use a dedicated external mic, that
| seems total overkill to me.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I care, but not enough to ask people to QA my setup.
|
| I don't know of a way to check how I sound without
| bothering anyone.
| justincormack wrote:
| Using the Zoom "record in the cloud" feature should
| roughly correspond to how people hear you BUT it does not
| let you know if eg your setup echoes someone else's
| voice. Bother someone, find a friend, ask your manager,
| geek out about audio, something.
| oauea wrote:
| Just listen to your own audio? In windows there is a
| checkbox for this, and most call apps have a settings
| page where you can listen to your own mic.
| xiii1408 wrote:
| Not really. Zoom applies lots of noise canceling and
| other filters, so your raw audio doesn't correspond to
| what you actually sound like to other people (unless you
| use "original audio").
| soylentcola wrote:
| I mostly use Zoom and Webex, but both have an option
| (usually accessed via a little arrow next to the mute
| button) to open settings. Both give you the option to
| choose which mic/speakers you want to use and both allow
| you to do a test record for a few seconds and then have
| it played back to you.
|
| I know in Webex you get this option before you are
| connected to the actual meeting, but Zoom may have it
| somewhere else I haven't bothered to look for. I make a
| habit of testing my mic every time I connect to a
| meeting, just in case I mucked something up or there's
| some other issue I wouldn't have known about. It's a
| minute of checking to save several minutes of
| embarrassment and delay later on.
| JJMcJ wrote:
| > don't care
|
| Until you spend 1/2 hour talking to a certain family
| member, the one who calls from Burger King and sits right
| next to the soft drink machine so you can hear the ice
| being dispensed, you haven't fully lived.
| TacoToni wrote:
| I use that v moda mic with sennhesier hd598 open back. Had to
| mod them to connect them, but they've worked quite well for
| many years now. I might need to get a new mic because the
| volume control is starting to cut in and out if I move it too
| much. Great recommendation through!
| psanford wrote:
| I use the Philips-SHP9500S headphones. I found they were very
| uncomfortable with the ear pads they came with. I replaced the
| ear pads with some thinker ones (Shure HPAEC940) and it really
| helped a lot.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| I think I may have to send this link to our thursday night GM
| :-) his cheap headset mic keeps popping and has terrible
| quality.
|
| I use a chaepo Plantronics PS40 for work but for my steaming I
| use a Focusrite claret and a separate cheap dynamic mic (plus
| an exciter).
|
| I do need to upgrade that mic to a sm58b or a AT 3035.
|
| I have thought about buying a focusrite scarlet and use a
| separate dynamic mic for work as well.
| scrozart wrote:
| I have a similar setup, but use a Sennheiser e935. Sounds
| incredible. After 25 years in both live audio and recording,
| I would highly recommend it over the Beta 58. I might even
| use the e835 before the beta; certainly before the standard
| 58.
|
| Also, regarding the AT3035, I've recently purchased an AT2020
| on a park since the price was insane (like $90 US), and it
| sounds great! I used it on a remote recording session as the
| second mic on a guitar can and it was the perfect complement
| to the other mic (sm57).
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| Ty for that.
|
| I just used some 15 year old entry level Shure's I had from
| 15 years ago - massive self noise.
|
| I think I was tending to the 30 as its a slightly hotter
| mic
| david38 wrote:
| I'm using the ATR2100x-USB. It's great. I can use it with
| USB for zoom meetings or XLR for recording. My RE320 sounds
| better, but in a listening test with friends, not by much.
| Other factors come into play.
| hellohiyesokay wrote:
| >AT 3035
|
| In my previous life I was a recording engineer, and this
| microphone was what I used in just about every session. It is
| one of the most versatile and best bang-for-the-buck
| condensers on the market, and has been for a lot of years.
| Very highly recommend to anyone wanting a microphone that can
| do just about anything.
| canadianfella wrote:
| GM?
| formerly_proven wrote:
| > his cheap headset mic keeps popping and has terrible
| quality.
|
| That might have nothing to do with the microphone. For a
| headset mic it is important that it's placed completely
| outside the airstream of mouth and nose, otherwise all mics
| will sound atrocious and full of wind and popping noises.
| Look at how headset mics are rigged by pros on talent,
| they're quite a bit back from the mouth.
| fullstop wrote:
| I have one of these and have been very impressed with the
| output.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QVNXBDL
|
| It was ~$50.
| jmenter wrote:
| Great article!
| pablodavila wrote:
| Related to your open back headphones comment: I hate using
| closed back/ noise canceling headphones while talking in calls.
| Fortunately, I don't have anyone around me so I don't need them
| but I can't imagine having to use them and listening to my own
| voice through my skull.
|
| I'm currently using the HD58X but I might look into getting the
| SHPs as a "beater" pair with the VModa mic.
| bad_username wrote:
| Sony noise canceling headphones deliberately start passing
| some ambient sound through (including your own voice) when
| you are in a call of any kind.
| fractalb wrote:
| It couldn't have come at a better time for me. I have just
| started looking for a better mic to sound better to my
| colleagues. Thanks for the wonderful write-ups and suggestions
| oehpr wrote:
| As a comment. I got the v-moda. I like it a lot. It sounds
| great. BUT it's a very omnidirectional mic, it picks up
| everything going on in the room in clear detail.
|
| If your environment is noisy, you would likely be better off
| getting a shotgun or cardioid style microphone with some
| directionality to it.
| belter wrote:
| I use a home studio so its easier. If you participate in
| conferences from an open floor office I would agree.
|
| Also important and already mentioned in the original post.
| Avoid any Bluetooth based mics or headphones. Avoid Wifi
| connections and go for cable based connections.
| tootie wrote:
| You can also try the best kept secret in radio:
| https://youtu.be/gPbQYmkyqaE
| gjm11 wrote:
| The video is excellent and I would encourage anyone reading
| this to watch it, but for the benefit of those who don't like
| clickbait the answer is: surround yourself with a quilt,
| jacket, pillow fort, or similar, because although it looks
| ridiculous it gets rid of background noise and muffles
| reflected sound.
|
| (I haven't "saved you a click" because you should watch the
| video anyway. It's not just about how to get better sound
| when recording or broadcasting. About ten minutes.)
| spudlyo wrote:
| This is my problem. In order to get a decent sound in my
| untreated office (reverberant bare walls, hardwood floor,
| etc) I need to have my dynamic mic with a low gain setting
| and I have to be right up on it, which makes me look like I'm
| on Joe Rogan's podcast or something. For Zoom I'd prefer if
| you couldn't see the mic.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| A lavalier hidden in your collar (or tie knot, if you're
| that kind of guy) might work for you. Because they're
| surrounded by clothes and your body it's less susceptible
| to room noise.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D85HmR825wM
| ballenf wrote:
| Physical mute button with red LED mute status is a killer
| feature.
|
| Got a wired Plantronics headset with USB-C that I'm happy with.
| Not sure if the above products have this feature, but I
| recommend checking for it.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| The best system for me is the one on the Sennheisser Game One
| I have and probably many others.
|
| There is a microswitch in the mic boom, so that it is
| disconnected when you lift it away. I mean, you can't get
| more simple: when it is in front of your mouth, it is on,
| when it isn't, it is off. No need for a LED. Also, the
| headset is passive, with a good old jack connector, I
| consider it a plus.
| gkop wrote:
| My Sennheiser PC37X (their conservative/stealth-looking
| gaming headset) has the lift-to-mute. I was excited about
| this feature but struggled to remember to unmute myself and
| gave up using it. I would like an LED indicator somewhere.
| r1ch wrote:
| Physical mute switches can be worse for other listeners as it
| creates an audible pop every time you mute and unmute on a
| 3.5mm connection. Digital (USB) mute switches are better.
| spockz wrote:
| Why is this? It certainly doesn't need to be so I suppose?
| jononor wrote:
| Analog microphone audio is one wire (and ground) having
| the AC signal of the audio, superimposed on a DC signal
| powering microphone capsula. The simplest way of making a
| killswitch is to either 1) short the signal to ground or
| 2) cut the signal between mic capsula and the soundcard
| input. Done with just a switch, both of these will impact
| the AC component as well as the DC component, and the DC
| offset change that causes the pop.
|
| And yes, there are many ways to avoid this problem. I
| think adding a resistor and capacitor to form a high-pass
| filter for the shorting option would work fine. If there
| is already a PCB for the switch, adding these two
| components would cost practically nothing.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| The "pop-less" microphone switch is generally a series
| R-C pair, where the R is, say, 1 MOhm, and the C a few
| uF. The switch shorts the R out; the R charges the
| capacitor to the bias level when unmuted, and so shorting
| the R produces very little pop. The capacitor then shorts
| the AC audio component.
|
| XLR switches are easier, just short hot and cold, done.
| Works with all microphones and doesn't produce a pop,
| because XLR uses phantom power instead of T-power.
| macintux wrote:
| > Physical mute button with red LED mute status is a killer
| feature.
|
| I had a headset with that feature, and sure enough, it failed
| me on a sales call. I groaned at something our salesperson
| said, and despite the button having been pressed and the
| light being on, everyone heard me.
| vlmutolo wrote:
| I'm sure this will get lost because I caught this thread late,
| but there's one more thing you can do with a "real" DSLR-type
| camera for better image quality: zoom in.
|
| Ideally, the camera is as far from you as possible, and zoomed
| in on your face. "Zooming in" is really just increasing the
| focal length, and zooming out is decreasing the focal length,
| producing an effect best known as "fish eye".
|
| This is one of the first things people will tell you about
| photographing a human being for a portrait (which is
| essentially the same problem as a video conference). Get rid of
| distortion on the face. Use a focal length of at least 50mm
| (zoomed all the way in on the lenses mentioned in your
| article). Otherwise, the nose gets blown up and everyone looks
| worse.
| bscphil wrote:
| Yep, this is correct. Others in the thread have recommended
| getting the camera as close as possible to compensate for the
| wide angle lenses of webcams, but this is suboptimal. It
| creates the unmistakable visual impression of being right in
| someone's personal space while you talk to them. You can
| create the same effect where someone is easy to see just by
| using a camera with a narrower field of view and a longer
| focal length, without the distorting effect caused by being
| too close.
| pa9am wrote:
| The most important thing is to have the microphone close to
| your mouth. There is nothing more annoying than listening to
| echo-y voice.
|
| The mic even have to be that expensive. I use a cheap dynamic
| mic from ebay with a windscreen and a mic arm and it sounds
| fine.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| > I use a cheap dynamic mic from ebay with a windscreen and a
| mic arm and it sounds fine.
|
| How do you know what it sounds like?
|
| How do you know how good you sound to other people compared
| to if you were speaking through a good condenser mic?
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Make your own zoom call and record it...
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Open voice recorder, record, say things, listen.
|
| Plus multiple services now offer test calls/contacts where
| you can open a voice call, say things, and then listen back
| to how the other side hears it.
| pc86 wrote:
| Great article! Is there any inherent audio quality difference
| between USB and XLR in your experience?
| allknowabout wrote:
| Probably less static, lower noise floor, more tonal and full
| sound. I've used both and I obviously prefer XLR but it
| probably doesn't make any difference for casual use.
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| You're always gonna connect XLR over USB anyway, so not
| really. It's just that XLR gives you a lot more flexibility
| to change microphones, use your interface to control gain or
| add padding, or if you're a musician record instruments. But
| a USB AT2020 or similar is gonna be excellent for calls no
| matter what.
| andrewzah wrote:
| This is not true. USB microphones do not have as high
| quality as XLR microphones connected to a usb interface. In
| general, USB mics have a lower signal to noise ratio (SNR)
| and a higher noise floor.
|
| Does this matter for gaming or calls? Not really, as it
| will definitely sound better than crappy laptop or
| headphone mics. But there is a marked difference. The
| AT2020 usb mic doesn't even go up to 20khz. Not to mention
| the A-D conversion from a dedicated unit and the mic preamp
| are going to be better than the onboard electronics of a
| usb mic.
| walshemj wrote:
| Err no an xlr mic into a sound card is going to be
| better.
| airstrike wrote:
| Thank you. Do you also happen to have recommendations for those
| of us happy to spend a little more on a "podcasting" or any
| similar higher quality microphone?
| 13415 wrote:
| This depends a lot on your budget, voice and whether your
| room is treated or not. My room is not treated. I use a Rode
| M3 condenser mic just outside the camera range for Zoom
| calls, it's fine but sensitive to outside noise. A mic with
| hypercardoid pattern or a lavalier would probably be better
| for that purpose. In any case, the audio quality is very
| good. For recording audiobooks, I use a dynamic Rode
| Procaster.[1] It's outstanding and was the right choice for
| my voice. It has very good background noise rejection. I'd
| recommend it.
|
| Generally speaking, there are many good condenser microphones
| but I'd recommend a dynamic microphone if you can get close
| to the mic, your room is not treated, or there is outside
| noise.
|
| [1] I'm in no way affiliated with Rode, just happened to like
| their mics. There are many other good choices in the same
| price ranges.
| gibspaulding wrote:
| Wow, I actually did a bunch of research on upgrading from my
| current "gaming" headset a while ago and those are the exact
| items I landed on. Maybe it's time to finally pull the trigger.
| JJMcJ wrote:
| I got a decent headset w/mic, use it for Zoom, use it for cell
| phone as well when I am at home. Great improvement in what I
| hear, and what others hear as well.
|
| On Zoom I look a little goofy with the phones on but better
| that than missing what people say and getting echoes.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| For those who are not looking to spend a fortune, a simple
| Apple earpod (wired) is still better than most headsets out
| there. And it costs 20 bucks. I think my yeti actually sounds
| worse at it cost 3 times as much.
| __alexs wrote:
| Curse anyone that uses an inline microphone on some earbuds.
| They sound awful and people frequently bump against them
| causing even more terrible experience for the listener.
| anamexis wrote:
| Earbud microphones rubbing against clothing is like nails
| on a chalkboard for me.
| senux wrote:
| I agree, but between that and most of my co-workers
| currently using their laptops built-in mics, I'd rather
| deal with the noise from the earbuds.
| arkh wrote:
| The worse is laptop mic + speakers. If you noticed the
| people speaking to you stop mid-sentence, it's because
| hearing themselves with some timelag tends to make them
| stop speaking.
|
| Thanks to some people, everyone can experience speech
| jamming for free!
| https://arxiv.org/vc/arxiv/papers/1202/1202.6106v1.pdf
| albemuth wrote:
| You just have to do the TikTok hold
| katbyte wrote:
| Also as someone at a company almost exclusively MacBooks,
| I've never noticed and issue with sound or video quality
| packetlost wrote:
| The scuffing sounds coming from my coworkers (wired) earpod
| mic as they rub it against their clothes says otherwise. I'll
| take my Blue Yeti over airpods any day.
| stefandesu wrote:
| Totally agree. I've been using my old Apple EarPods and I'm
| always told that I sound great.
| jscholes wrote:
| > For those who are not looking to spend a fortune, a simple
| Apple earpod (wired) is still better than most headsets out
| there.
|
| I don't disagree, but the results are widely variable with
| different TRRS I/O across different soundcards. E.g. on a
| MacBook, the EarPods probably sound great, with a good level
| of gain and plenty of headroom. On a Lenovo Thinkpad, they
| sound hissy and terrible because you have to turn the gain
| all the way up.
|
| > I think my yeti actually sounds worse at it cost 3 times as
| much.
|
| Something is probably wrong if this is the case. Which is
| understandable; a USB microphone that's not attached to your
| person requires some positioning and mic technique that you
| don't have to think about with the inline mic on the EarPods.
| nishparadox wrote:
| I recently bought a new dynamic mic. And it has absolutely
| changed the way I do WFH. No more crappy noises. No more
| background sounds. In fact, I believe that having a good
| microphone is a good initiative to seriously start a better
| workflow for WFH.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| It doesn't surprise me the least. The media industry is extremely
| careful about that. And when sometimes, successful
| streamers/youtubers/... talk about their setup, it is clear that
| audio is given a lot of attention.
|
| But I'm sure the simplest thing you can do before getting better
| equipment, soundproofing, acoustics and hiring a sound engineer
| is simply to get louder. Just up the volume, and if you are
| feeling fancy, use a compressor. It is well known that louder
| sounds higher quality, and for ABX tests, great care is taken so
| that the levels are equal since the bias appears even when the
| difference is minor. Extreme compression is also the secret
| behind the booming voice of radio presenter, and that effect also
| started what is known as the loudness war.
| auiya wrote:
| Sure nice gear helps immensely, but also remember to high-pass
| filter your vocals, and test for harsh frequencies using
| subtractive EQ. A slight dip in the 300-600Hz range helps
| eliminate hollow, boxy sounds, and a top end shelf will help
| consonants sound more clear. Some people will also low-pass
| filter the extreme top ends, but it's not always needed. Using a
| good compressor in your vocal chain will help immensely also to
| keep spikes and transients more level and not hurt your
| audience's ears.
| AdamCraven wrote:
| If you're on Mac a fairly cheap way (around $300/PS250) to get a
| great sounding voice is to buy an ok microphone and Logic Pro.
| This will sound better than buying a microphone of the same
| price.
|
| In Logic add an equaliser to counteract microphone and room
| deficiencies. Then finish off with a compressor to add extra
| "warmth"
|
| Once done, output logic audio to a virtual sound card (eg sound
| flower) and use that as an input for your audio conferencing.
|
| Great audio, for not too much money.
| elwell wrote:
| Interesting idea, would it noticeably eat into my CPU? (e.g.,
| cause the fan to crank up) (MBP 16" 2020)
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| I think most of that is overkill (and not cheap) and most
| people would benefit just from a cheap USB dynamic or condenser
| mic direct.
|
| Logic Pro is overkill.
|
| Apple already offers a live virtual instrument and audio
| processing rig called Main Stage.
|
| It's $40 rather than $300.
|
| https://www.apple.com/ca/mainstage/
|
| But I think even that is overkill for your average office
| worker.
|
| Microphones are already tuned, so you're getting expert input
| to the sound at that end already. That alone would be in
| another league to a laptop in a noisy room.
| happyhardcore wrote:
| Reaper [1] is a good alternative to Logic that's platform
| agnostic (Windows / Mac / Linux) and is cheaper at 60 USD (plus
| the software doesn't enforce any restrictions at the end of the
| free trial, but you should still buy the thing if you can
| afford it!)
|
| [1] http://reaper.fm/
| viraptor wrote:
| Or https://ardour.org/ for free - but that's trading money
| for sanity of the UX.
| pta2002 wrote:
| For that you can probably just use Garage Band, which is
| effectively just Logic with less features, and free.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| I have been playing around with this using Ableton live -
| windows really needs a native way of doing this like sound
| flower.
|
| I experimented using a second sound card and routing the out of
| my main to that - but I had ground loops.
|
| I wanted this for TTRPG streaming so I could treat my voice to
| fit with the character better.
| tnzm wrote:
| >windows really needs a native way of doing this like sound
| flower.
|
| https://vb-audio.com/Cable/ might interest you.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| I know I have tried that just so poorly documented I gave
| up lifes to short.
| tnzm wrote:
| It literally shows up as an audio device in Windows sound
| settings, and "just works" - what prompted you to reach
| for documentation?
|
| Unless you tried one of their more advanced offerings,
| like Voicemeeter - which also looks pretty intuitive
| judging from the screenshots. (Never tried it, on Linux I
| get this capability via JACK.)
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| Wasn't so easy to configure live / my focusrite to do
| that when I tried.
| tnzm wrote:
| That's neither "fairly cheap", nor is going to sound better
| than buying a microphone at the same price and using free EQ
| and compressor plugins, nor is adding extra "warmth" the main
| benefit from using a compressor. (A compressor can help with
| making the the quiet and the loud parts more equal in volume,
| at the cost of amplifying background noise.)
| montroser wrote:
| This is fascinating! Makes me wonder about whether machine
| learning audio filters like Krisp[1] could actually take high
| quality audio and enhance it further to make you sound _even
| smarter_? Like as if you had the infamous NPR mic setup...
|
| This phenomenon does kind of seem obvious in retrospect. I was at
| a Socialhour[2] event recently where they had a few presentations
| happening simultaneously and you could bounce between them, or
| just move from table to table in a newnetworking lounge -- and
| thinking back, the presenters with the biggest audiences did
| sound like they had superior audio.
|
| [1]: https://krisp.ai
|
| [2]: https://socialhour.com
| eliseumds wrote:
| I use Krisp on a daily basis from Brazil (a very noise country,
| terrible build quality) and it works incredibly well, better
| than most hardware-based solutions I've tried.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| I literally searched NPR on this page and came across your
| comment.
|
| I have had a sneaking suspicion I cannot shake since once about
| 5 years ago I was listening to an interview with a pop musician
| on my local NPR affiliate that I may have been wrongly biasing
| my sense that their guests were smarter as compared to talk
| show guests on more right leaning radio stations on the AM
| dial. Not even as a matter of their political beliefs; just
| when it's subject matter experts or non-political celebrities.
| They always sound more intellectually deep or thoughtful on NPR
| than on those AM stations. Wonder if it's this effect...
| squarefoot wrote:
| Recording gear is not the most important part: a decent mike
| paired with a good and properly set up preamp/compressor will do.
| What is extremely important is the ambient noise and reflections
| that will be picked up by the microphone in a far from ideal
| environment. In other words, be prepared to spend more in sound
| proofing than in recording gear.
| chromaton wrote:
| I realized after many Zoom calls that a good presentation in both
| audio AND video are very important.
|
| My choice for audio is a Shure headworn XLR dynamic microphone.
| These are the type used by professional singers, public speakers,
| etc. Being headworn means that you don't have to worry about
| talking directly into the mic; you can move around a bit.
|
| This type of mic also has great noise rejection. We use it for
| livestreaming from our workshop which is VERY noisy, with
| compressors, waterjet cutters, and other loud machines running.
| Voice audio is quite clear despite all this.
|
| To complement this, I got a Shure XLR to USB adapter. It turns
| out that the DAC in my Thinkpad is TERRIBLE, so upgrading to a
| USB adapter was a no brainer.
|
| For video, I got an Osbot Tiny, which was great for a while, but
| seems to be broken now.
| sofal wrote:
| I'm curious about how portable your setup is. Currently at home
| I have a giant dynamic mic (EV RE20) on a boom arm, but that's
| not going to be something I can use at the actual office when I
| hop into a little enclosed pod for a Zoom meeting or something.
| Does your setup work for that kind of thing?
| chromaton wrote:
| It's not too bad. I'd get a small case for the stuff if I
| wanted to move it around regularly. It's a little pricy and
| might be delicate, so I leave it at my desk. Watch today's
| livestream to hear it in action:
| https://www.facebook.com/events/303545994740352
|
| In my bag, I keep a USB lavalier mic, which is smaller, but
| not quite as good quality.
| emilburzo wrote:
| What do you use for headphones? (I'm assuming the Shure is just
| a microphone)
| chromaton wrote:
| The USB adapter has a headphone jack so I plug my Samsung
| headphones into that.
| nicholasjon wrote:
| The gem of this article is: "Messages that are difficult to
| process are less compelling."
|
| The best thing we can do when communicating is make it easy -- in
| both message and medium (with apologies to McLuhan) -- for the
| folks we want to consume it to consume it.
| pbreit wrote:
| How about speaking faster (or slower)?
| chrshawkes wrote:
| I use a 1200.00 mic setup for my recordings for
| https://www.codehawke.com/
|
| I can't tell that much of a difference between it and a blue
| yeti. The yeti, is definitely cheaper.
| spdustin wrote:
| The Audio-Technica ATR-2100x-USB [0] is probably the best budget
| mic I've ever used. Podcasting, Zoom calls, voiceover work...this
| mic'll surpass your expectations. It's got a great response,
| great off-axis rejection, and built-in monitoring from an on-mic
| 1/8" headphone jack. This model has USB-C and mini-XLR outputs,
| too. For $99, it cannot be beat.
|
| [0]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07ZPBFVKK (not an affiliate link,
| either. I just love this mic)
| aendruk wrote:
| If I'm set on wireless is there a better option than low quality
| Bluetooth? Something proprietary with a dongle?
| paulpauper wrote:
| why are so many people so cost conscious about mics and other
| consumer goods but have no hesitation about putting tons of money
| in the stock market , which sometimes drops 30% or more, costing
| hundreds of thousands of dollars or more of losses.
| Psychologically, it seems people are much more unnerved about
| overpaying $100 on a mic or laptop, versus potentially much
| larger losses on investments such as stocks or real estate.
| ghaff wrote:
| Well, it's consumption vs. investment.
|
| With investments, people do get unnerved when there are big
| drops, but you (should) diversify, accept that you win some and
| lose some, but hopefully come out with decent gains over the
| long term. If you have a heart attack every time the market
| drops a few percent you're going to make yourself crazy.
|
| That said, I think everyone pinches pennies on some things and
| thinks nothing of spending money on other things in ways that
| often aren't rational.
| toyg wrote:
| The stock market is just a big unknown for a lot of people, and
| anyway it's something you evaluate on a long-term basis.
|
| I'm more baffled by my/our inability to correctly assess our
| bad habits. A $100 item costs the same as, say, two $50 dinners
| - and unlike those, the item will stay with me for months or
| years. Still, I'd find it pretty easy to pay for two dinners in
| a week, but I'd agonize on pulling the trigger for a single
| purchase of goods.
| viraptor wrote:
| That seems like a weird generalisation since there's many more
| people buying laptops than stock and there's only a few
| specific groups that overlap. Do you have some real data here,
| or just subjective feeling?
| wombatmobile wrote:
| Good question, although the stock market is something else
| again.
|
| Possibly your question/comment would resonate more with people
| if you compared the spend on a microphone with the spend on a
| suit, or a pair of shoes. It's easy to see the value of quality
| there, for appearance, comfort and health.
|
| In the case of a microphone, the purpose is to communicate your
| thoughts, and to make a good impression, so the investment
| keeps working and giving you a return on investment for longer
| than the first few moments. And a good mic will last longer
| than an article of clothing.
|
| A good mic is a great investment.
| loa_in_ wrote:
| That's because we're still animals, not some abstract
| economical agents.
| BostonEnginerd wrote:
| Long term the market has always come back up. A laptop only
| depreciates.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| I really doubt there are more individual investors in the stock
| market than there are individuals buying webcams and
| microphones, but even assuming this is true
|
| > which sometimes drops 30% or more, costing hundreds of
| thousands of dollars or more of losses.
|
| 1) This is entirely ignoring the fact that the stock market
| goes up more often than it goes down. Similarly, tech almost
| only decreases in value. A $100 webcam might be a nice upgrade,
| but it will never transform into a $200 webcam.
|
| 2) A dip in stock price isn't the same as actually losing
| money. If you're gambling your money on meme stocks, sure,
| unsafe bets exist. But otherwise, a 30% dip one day is
| meaningless without context. The S&P500 dipped 30% over the
| last week of March 2020. If you put in money in February 2020,
| watched it crash, held through to today, you would still be up
| 25% from your initial investment.
| lmilcin wrote:
| I think there is a bunch of factors which are used as a proxy for
| whether a person is or isn't "professional". And being
| "professional" is itself a proxy for whether somebody is smart
| and possibly trustworthy.
|
| In lack of better information (and even in presence of) our minds
| use a lot of shortcuts (biases) to guess some important
| information that you can't get directly. Almost all people will
| instinctively think about well groomed, well clothed people as
| more professional and trustworthy.
|
| I think the same goes for how we present on a remote call and so
| I invested a little bit into making my audio/video setup and a
| more professionally looking office/background. Pretty sure it
| will pay for itself over time.
| Strilanc wrote:
| I looked at the paper's abstract [1], and this is a conclusion
| made from just two talks/interviews by the authors of the study?
| Should probably replicate it before telling millions of people to
| buy hundreds of dollars of audio equipment...
|
| I wasn't able to find an open access copy of the study, though I
| suppose there's always sci-hub.
|
| 1: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1075547018759345
| ZoomZoomZoom wrote:
| As usual, a lot of people here discuss and suggest some
| microphone models to improve their sound quality, but I think
| this is not the biggest factor. Specific models are mostly
| irrelevant as long as the recording conditions and personal
| preferences are not known.
|
| Some people just hate keeping the mic just in front of their
| faces, but it's often the only reasonable way to achieve
| tolerable signal-to-noise ratio (in noisy or/and reverberant
| environments).
|
| You need to decide where are you going to use the mic, how are
| you going to place yourself and the mic in the room, how free in
| your movements do you need to be while recording, and then choose
| the _type_ of the mic accordingly. After that, the budget is
| often the deciding factor so you can seriously narrow down the
| options.
|
| Anyway, I also highly advice using separate vocal/podcasting
| microphone (the kind you buy at music stores) and the headphones
| of you choice over headsets or, god forbid, internal laptop mics.
|
| Don't know how many times you can link you own article, but it's
| relevant to the topic and I think it covers most of the
| information one needs to understand the basic processes and
| techniques:
|
| https://indiscipline.github.io/post/voice-sound-reference/
| u678u wrote:
| Count me in as someone that wanted not to use headset but
| couldn't face talking into a mic. I looked at shotgun mics but
| it got too expensive quickly and seemed a risk as it wasn't
| common. Anyone tried?
| ZoomZoomZoom wrote:
| You probably don't want a shotgun mic, as a regular condenser
| set at a distance of 30-70cm will work just fine in most
| situations. When talking about condenser microphones for
| voice recording most people think about large-diaphragm
| condenser type, but actually it's absolutely possible to get
| great results with a small-diaphragm condenser with a tighter
| polar pattern ("pencil").
|
| You can always play with the angles to get the mic closer to
| you. Usually, it means miking from slightly below and
| shooting from a higher point.
|
| It all depends on your particular situation so if you have
| further questions contact me or drop by #mixing:matrix.org
| rectang wrote:
| And then there's always some jackass on the call who refuses to
| use headphones, causing an echo due to the feedback loop
| between their speakers and their microphone, which makes
| _everybody else_ sound terrible.
| tokamak-teapot wrote:
| Lots of us at work don't wear headphones on calls. I used to
| think this might be a problem and occasionally asked how the
| sound is from my end. The response has always been that it's
| great. Others sound great too. No echo.
|
| We have a mix of the enterprise type Dell laptops and
| MacBooks. Both seem fine. Software is usually Teams.
| rectang wrote:
| As discussed elsethread, asking how _you_ sound as you
| switch between headphones and speakers _doesn 't tell you
| anything_. People who don't wear headphones make _others_
| sound bad (when the echo cancellation software fails).
|
| I experience this problem all the time: Zoom, Whereby,
| Google Meet, Slack etc. If people are disciplined about
| muting their mic when they aren't speaking, that helps. But
| as soon as you have one participant listening in without
| headphones and an unmuted mic, if the echo cancellation
| doesn't work then whoever else is speaking will sound bad.
| tokamak-teapot wrote:
| I'm just saying that I'm in meetings probably 4-5 hours a
| day with usually between 3 and 15 people and the
| proportion of people wearing headphones is probably 20%.
| We don't seem to have echo issues, though with previous
| conferencing software this was sometimes an issue. I used
| to use headphones but they don't seem necessary any more.
| Maybe Teams is just good at this?
| ghaff wrote:
| Things have almost certainly improved at least on some
| platforms. I do wear wireless headphones (but use a wired
| mic) for critical recording situations. But, yeah, tons
| of the people I have on my often hours of calls a day are
| not wearing headphones/earbuds and I just don't hear the
| problems that the "never use speakers" folks raise.
|
| And I've never used Teams. Combination of Bluejeans,
| Google Meet, and Zoom mostly.
|
| If I were this rogue speaker person ruining things for
| everyone else wearing headsets, I'd maybe accept that I
| was a general problem. But that's just not what I see.
| ghaff wrote:
| It really depends on the setup. I've tested by asking people
| with both computer speakers and wearing headphones and been
| told they didn't hear any difference.
| rectang wrote:
| It doesn't affect your own voice! So asking, "do I sound
| different now" doesn't tell you anything!
|
| Refusing to wear headphones only spoils it for _everybody
| else_.
| ghaff wrote:
| I am saying that I have tried this out by calling people
| and trying different things and they have told me that
| they can't tell the difference. This has included
| professional audio technicians recording a Zoom
| interview.
|
| I don't know why this sometimes seems to be a big deal
| and sometimes isn't, but that does seem to be the case.
| rectang wrote:
| Whenever you have a speaker and a microphone in the same
| room, there is always bleed from the speaker into the
| microphone. However, when those speakers are tiny little
| things pointed directly into your ear canals, the amount
| of bleed that makes it into the microphone is so small as
| to be completely negligible.
|
| For regular in-room speakers, the amount of bleed depends
| on the relative placement of the speaker and microphone,
| the directionality of both, the volume of sound from the
| speaker and the sensitivity of the microphone. For most
| people on videoconferencing calls, the amount of bleed is
| going to be quite substantial.
|
| The reason it's sometimes a big deal and sometimes not is
| because of echo cancellation software. But echo
| cancellation is a hard problem when you don't know the
| precise physical characteristics of the setup: the
| relative placement of the speakers and mic, the frequency
| response curves, and the amount of round trip latency.
| You have to attempt to detect what you _think_ is an echo
| rather than a direct sound source, and then try to cancel
| it. That often fails.
|
| But because it sometimes works, people who hate
| headphones take that as license to never wear headphones.
| And since it doesn't affect _them_ , they often don't
| realize how much they are wrecking the experience for
| everyone else.
| bscphil wrote:
| > The reason it's sometimes a big deal and sometimes not
| is because of echo cancellation software. But echo
| cancellation is a hard problem when you don't know the
| precise physical characteristics of the setup
|
| Sort of. Software can approximate good echo cancellation
| for most _conversations_ just by bringing down the mic
| volume when someone else is talking. Most meetings aren
| 't supposed to have people talking over each other the
| whole time. Add to that the fact that most laptops have
| decent echo cancellation now and you can frequently get
| away with it.
|
| It's still something of a tragedy of the commons scenario
| though. If one person is creating an echo, then the
| speakers on the speaker's computer will play that echo
| while they are talking, which will get fed back it to the
| microphone, creating still more echo. That's when you
| really start to get major problems, but it's avoidable if
| _no more than one_ person is using speakers.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| > _For regular in-room speakers, the amount of bleed
| depends on the relative placement of the speaker and
| microphone, the directionality of both, the volume of
| sound from the speaker and the sensitivity of the
| microphone._
|
| And on how much reverberation there is in the room. If
| there's a tile floor, a brick wall, and no furniture with
| upholstery, sound is going to find some path from the
| speakers to the microphone no matter the placement and
| directionality.
|
| If you have carpet or a rug, maybe a couch or bed, etc.,
| then some of the sound will get absorbed before it can
| get from speakers to microphone.
| geoduck14 wrote:
| You are my kind of nerd
| kevincox wrote:
| There are a couple main issues that people will have that
| demand different levels of solution:
|
| - Multiple-speakers (like a call): The key here is to wear
| headphones. Otherwise you are subject to whatever noise-
| cancellation the platform offers, and any noise that other
| participants make will destroy your audio quality temporarily
| as it plays though your speaker and into your mic.
|
| - Background noise or echo: In this case you want a directional
| mic. You want something that gets close to your face and cuts
| out the each or background noise.
|
| If you don't have any of these problems (For example you are
| giving monologues in a quiet non-echoey room) than any decent
| mic will do the job. Many higher-end laptops even have
| sufficient mics on them (for example Macs will pick up
| everything in your house, but they will pick it up at fairly
| good quality)
| gxqoz wrote:
| I attended a conference last August where almost all audio was
| terrible fidelity. It made the conference like 3x worse than
| usual.
|
| I think one of the main issues here is it's hard for people to
| realize what they sound like on the other end. I've been playing
| a lot of online trivia tournaments in the past year. During these
| tournaments, people read questions aloud. It's really important
| to be able to hear all words clearly. It's astounding how many
| people think that they're coming through clearly when using a
| microphone built into the laptop--even after repeated messaging
| before the tournament that this audio quality sucks.
| messo wrote:
| Anyone here that have experience with the Sennheiser PC 5
| heaphones with a mic? Would appreciate your comments!
| vikiomega9 wrote:
| Is there a name for this effect? It sounds similar to what women
| experience when they don't wear makeup for example (makes them
| come across as less competent).
| teekert wrote:
| I would add that an up-nose-webcam and showing-more-neck-than-
| you-have-in-reality also don't help. Still waiting for someone to
| prove that as nicely as this as well ;)
| cblconfederate wrote:
| If you have a vocal fry or another annoying voice, the clarity is
| to your detriment, i 'll turn you off immediately!
| ravenstine wrote:
| Shameless plug; I recently wrote a blog post about suggestions on
| improving your audio for remote teamwork:
|
| https://dockyard.com/blog/2021/02/08/improve-your-audio-to-b...
|
| Although I do suggest the Shure MV7 mic, which I use, there are
| example of really cheap ways to immediately improve how you sound
| over conference calls.
|
| Another tip I talk about us using RNNoise, which does an
| excellent job at cutting out background noise while preserving
| your voice. It's built in to OBS if you ever want to try it.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| My partner thought I was being a bit excessive when I bought a
| high-quality external webcam last year when she was applying for
| work, but I'm pretty sure it helped her during job interviews. Or
| maybe it would be better to say prevented her laptop's webcam+mic
| from getting in the way of presenting herself.
| ghaff wrote:
| I was fortunate that, at the beginning of the pandemic when
| such things were essentially unavailable, to have a high-end
| external Logitech webcam. I had bought it a few years earlier
| for a project that ended up not panning out.
|
| I subsequently set up my DSLR as a webcam but, while it worked,
| it's more trouble than it's worth for most purposes. (I do use
| it for video sometimes but the webcam is just more foolproof
| for day-to-day conferencing use.)
| splintercell wrote:
| Which can did you buy?
| ghaff wrote:
| Not the OP but I have an older model of the Logitech 920 and
| it works well for me. (I don't use its microphone though; I
| have a desktop one for that.)
| vanderZwan wrote:
| I would also have gone for one of the Logitech C920
| variations, like the other commenter, but at the time those
| were sold out due to the pandemic (also mirroring their
| remark of being lucky to already own one). So I ended up
| getting a Logitech Streamcam - which as far as I can tell
| just adds a hundred dollars to the price because it has a
| nicer looking design and can handle 60fps.
|
| ... now that I'm typing it out I guess she might have meant
| that deciding to go for a more expensive camera was
| unnecessary.
| dvnguyen wrote:
| Folks using usb mics: how do you solve the keyboard noise
| problem? I use a mechanical keyboard and it's super noisy.
| tyingq wrote:
| Some virtual camera software comes with audio noise reduction.
| I use SplitCam on Windows. It doesn't eliminate keyboard noise
| entirely, but it does help. And it has the advantage of working
| on Teams, Zoom, etc, so that I have one place to set it.
| ZoomZoomZoom wrote:
| First of all, there's nothing special about USB mics in terms
| of picking up ambient noise. Two main types of mics are dynamic
| and condensers, and there are models with USB-connectivity of
| both those types.
|
| Secondly, hearing typing when someone types is ok, so please
| don't treat it as a problem in itself. Obnoxious noise level
| _is_ a problem, which can be solved by increasing SNR: bringing
| the mic closer to the sound source, swapping a mic for another
| transducer type or another polar pattern, putting some kind of
| dampening on the line of sight between the mic and the noise
| source.
|
| I've written a guide for voice recording which covers most of
| the basics. Hope you'll find it helpful:
| https://indiscipline.github.io/post/voice-sound-reference/
| andrewzah wrote:
| As others have mentioned, keeping the mic closer to you and
| turning down the gain helps.
|
| You can also run the mic through a signal chain and use a noise
| gate. So audio only gets sent when it reaches a certain
| threshold. On linux you can do this with pulseeffects if you're
| using pulseaudio.
|
| The other hack is just mute yourself. I use a shortcut to do
| that when I'm typing and not actually talking.
| chromaton wrote:
| Headworn dynamic mic.
| gxqoz wrote:
| I have enough space on my desk to be able to fit a second
| wireless keyboard when I need to type and talk at the same time
| during meetings. This keyboard is much quieter than my
| mechanical keyboard.
|
| One thing I need to get around to doing is to configure
| somewhat to let me mute with a keyboard shortcut when
| Zoom/Teams/etc. is not the active window. Why there isn't a
| built-in universal shortcut is very confusing to me.
| ghaff wrote:
| I type on a different computer. I use a desktop system for
| video conferencing (which has a mechanical keyboard) and do any
| typing, e.g. for note taking, on a separate laptop.
| sebdufbeau wrote:
| A software solution like Krisp is an easy solution that goes a
| very long way.
| pa9am wrote:
| Get the mic close to your mouth and turn down the gain. This
| will also increase the quality
| delgaudm wrote:
| If its a cardioid pattern mic (it probably is), they are less
| sensitive from the back -- so if you can have the back of the
| mic point at the keyboard, that would help.
|
| If you don't mind that I self post to a youtube video, but this
| segment shows how the pattern and placement of the mic can
| reduce pc fan and keyboard noise.
|
| https://youtu.be/7WyNIQlOFIA?t=858
| azinman2 wrote:
| While the results seem believable, what was the sample size? The
| p values? None of this is cited either on the blog or the paper
| abstract, and I don't have an account to be able to pull up the
| actual paper.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I just use a pair of Bose QuietComfort III headphones.
|
| The audio from the built-in mic is very good. Zero background
| noise.
|
| I suspect a really good condenser mic, with a filter, would be
| better, but these headphones work great.
|
| I have noticed that people that use earbuds (in particular, Apple
| AirPods Pro), seem to also supply a lot of background noise. That
| does not happen with my headset.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| With bluetooth headsets you have several issues:
|
| - aggressive noise reduction can add unpleasant distortion
|
| - depending what you use them with, you get a low bitrate bi-
| directional codec that does not sound great.
|
| - any bluetooth interference leads to dropped frames and choppy
| sound.
|
| - There's a bit of extra latency. I've had issues with
| bluetooth sound visibly getting out of sync with video I was
| watching. I expect this could also happen for the microphone.
|
| The worst is people who are not aware they sound bad that ought
| to know better. I've had more than a few calls with people who
| basically talk a lot on audio/video calls professionally (e.g.
| recruiters, sales people, etc.) with apparently really shitty
| headsets. A lot of those people were using some bluetooth
| headset that combined with a lousy network (or saturated upload
| in the case of DSL), makes for a really lousy sound quality.
| Talking extra loud does not really help.
|
| I just picked up a pair of Shure Aonic 50 headphones. I asked a
| few people in calls if it was an improvement over my built in
| imacs microphone. Answer: nope. It wasn't horrible but not
| exactly an upgrade. I also was not enjoying the low bit rate
| with the bi-directional codec that makes people sound like they
| are on a bad phone line. So, I switched to using the headphones
| for output only. The imac microphone is fine. I just need to
| make sure to be near it when talking.
|
| If I bought these for calls I'd be annoyed of course. But I
| bought them for their sound quality and ability to filter out
| my obnoxious neighbor. Neighbor cancelling headphones are great
| for my stress levels.
| gxqoz wrote:
| I really feel that Zoom and other audio conferencing software
| should give you a "you sound bad" message every once in a
| while. You otherwise have no feedback about this unless
| someone tells you.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I appreciate the feedback.
|
| So far, it hasn't been an issue, but I don't do podcasts; just
| the occasional class. Most of the folks that I know, who do
| podcasts, use wired mics with filters.
| cbreuel wrote:
| If you're using them with Bluetooth, you're not only sounding
| worse than you could but also the audio that you get is much
| worse, because Bluetooth audio in bidirectional more is very
| low quality. I also use a QC3, but I bought a good desk USB mic
| and use the headphones just for output. I can hear people much
| better and vice-versa, and I'm even less tired throughout the
| day.
| mciancia wrote:
| Tbh it's kind of strange that it's 2021 and we still can't
| have good quality bidirectional audio over bluetooth.
|
| WHY?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Mostly because of the need to keep BT a low-energy medium.
|
| Bluetooth was designed for embedded devices that need to
| conserve power.
|
| That said, I know that there's active work going on, to
| improve this exact thing.
|
| Might be a while before we see video over BT, though.
| hiq wrote:
| > Might be a while before we see video over BT, though.
|
| In which case would that be useful?
|
| There seems to be a range of broadcasting features, but
| if I'm not mistaken they mostly use WiFi.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| The nice thing about BT (in particular, BTLE), is the
| "light-touch" pairing. A lot simpler than most WiFi
| connections.
|
| Apple has a system that basically combines all of the
| available connection options, so it can _appear_ as if BT
| is being used, but it's really WiFi. Not sure if this
| type of "zero config" stuff is available in non-
| proprietary form, though.
| chenxiaolong wrote:
| For those who have a Valve Index (and have it plugged into a work
| computer...), the mic is surprisingly excellent on it. I set it
| upside-down on my desk and it picks up my voice just fine.
| Roritharr wrote:
| I've recently bought a Samson Meteor. Is it considered HQ
| already?
| AhtiK wrote:
| Yes, if you don't type frantically at the same time on your
| mechanical keyboard and keep it at the right distance by
| stacking ~20 cm worth of books :)
|
| In all seriousness I had it, the sound is good but had the
| physical usability issues. Had two, the USB port seemed to die
| after ~1-2 years of active use but that's the lifespan of these
| devices anyway.
| Aissen wrote:
| I wish we could be freed from the horrendous bluetooth HSP audio
| designed during the last millenium. The A2DP codec wars and lack
| of bi-directionnal implementations in the wild do not make me
| optimistic.
| Hitton wrote:
| The paper doesn't say that higher audio makes people sound
| smarter. It basically says that it high fidelity audio makes
| smart people sound smarter than they do with low fidelity audio.
| It's quite possible that it just allows people digest content
| better or perceive more subtle nuances and that high fidelity
| audio would make dumb people sound dumber than low fidelity
| audio.
| [deleted]
| pbw wrote:
| One thing I find really awkward with podcasts is if the guest has
| better audio quality than the host. It skews my mental model of
| who is "calling in" and it makes the host feel much less
| authoritative.
| xiii1408 wrote:
| I was lucky enough to realize, a month into the pandemic, that I
| would be having all meetings on Zoom for at least 3-4 months. I
| did three things, which seemed a little excessive at the time,
| but turned out to be great investments, since I've been working
| for home for over a year since then.
|
| 1) I bought a reasonably nice Logitech C920 Webcam. At the time,
| it was a $100 on AliExpress, which seemed like a crazy markup
| over the MSRP of $70. This turned out to be a great investment,
| given how much higher the prices went. Most people will probably
| still be working from home for at least 3-5 months, and you can
| buy one now for $70!
|
| 2) I bought a cheap USB condenser mic with a boom arm. This was a
| $70 package deal, and from a cheap Chinese brand Fifine, but the
| audio quality is truly amazing, and having the mic close to your
| mouth makes a huge difference. Probably my best investment.
| Seriously. Go buy a podcast mic and a boom arm. Now. If you want
| something more portable, the same company also makes very decent
| lavalier mics (lapel mics) for ~$20. Those are more
| omnidirectional, so they pick up more background noise than
| condenser mics, but they are imminently more portable.
|
| 3) I wired my bedroom with Ethernet. This was a bit of a hassle,
| since I had to run the cable down the side of the house and then
| underneath, and it also required crimping my own cables. However,
| it was totally worth it, since I knew connection issues were
| _never_ my problem. I don 't understand how other people suffer
| through constant drops over WiFi. I guess they're just accustomed
| to dealing with it, and don't think of switching to Ethernet as
| an option.
| qwertox wrote:
| In the Linux Unplugged podcast (Episode 401 "Own Your Mailbox")
| they said that PipeWire now allows you to use your smartphone as
| a Bluetooth microphone (A2DP, first 30 seconds of the episode).
|
| https://linuxunplugged.com/401
|
| https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/releases/...
| ("Make it possible to use an A2DP source as an input device. You
| can then use your phone as an A2DP microphone, for example.")
| scaladev wrote:
| This thing has been working fine for many years
|
| https://wolicheng.com/womic/wo_mic_linux.html
|
| although it is proprietary.
| diarrhea wrote:
| People vastly undervalue good audio quality. It also often makes
| the difference (given equal visuals) between _great amateur_ and
| _pro_ in e.g. the YouTube scene.
|
| I didn't have data to back this up before, but I bought a good
| microphone specifically for this purpose. People will simply like
| the audio, and by extension what I am saying and also me as a
| person, better.
|
| Meanwhile, my ears will continue to bleed from the awful audio
| people broadcast into this world. I wonder, most people must
| notice how terrible everyone in e.g. video conferences sounds;
| why don't they make the connection that _they themselves_ have it
| in their hand to improve the situation? Maybe it 's like wearing
| masks.
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| Agreed. My experience from watching some...challenging films in
| small film festivals is that bad picture can be tolerated,
| while bad audio will utterly ruin a film.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Just about every resource (books, websites, videos...) for
| indie film makers makes a point of stressing the absolute
| importance of good audio, but it's still often ignored.
|
| As you say, people will forgive bad image quality before they
| will forgive bad audio.
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| For me it's because we aren't allowed to have nice audio. I've
| been working from my music desk all pandemic, with several
| microphones, preamps, sound insulation panels, boom stands and
| pop filters, and I can't use any of them with my work computer.
| I've bought and returned several interfaces and can't get
| Windows to connect to any of them. I have Airpods Pro as well
| and Microsoft Teams won't allow me to join meetings with them
| connected. I finally found one interface that works with
| Windows and Teams permits me to join with, and when I speak
| Teams detects it and pops up a "your microphone doesn't work
| with Teams" error. So laptop mic is what I'm stuck with.
| delecti wrote:
| Is it possible there are corporate policies affecting
| accessory compatibility? I've never had an issue with
| literally any audio device I've tried to use Teams with, and
| I've tried a decent variety.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Maybe some corpo bullshit fiddling with drivers?
|
| One of the bottom-of-the-barrel-but-actually-still-ok
| interfaces might be worth a try. E.g. the Behringer UMC22 has
| a PCM2906 clone in it, which doesn't even have any drivers,
| it's just straight USB audio class, supported right out of
| the box in Windows.
| ghaff wrote:
| I think a lot of people get wrapped around the axle of having
| the "right" $500 microphone whereas there are a ton of decent
| USB mics under $100 that will make a big difference.
|
| Also consider a good external webcam and doing _something_
| about lighting if you can. I realize that not everyone has a
| great physical environment to work with. But I 'm struck by how
| many people who seemingly haven't made any real effort after a
| year+.
| hctaw wrote:
| > I think a lot of people get wrapped around the axle of
| having the "right" $500 microphone whereas there are a ton of
| decent USB mics under $100
|
| There are diminishing returns for sure. But something worth
| considering is anything priced over $200 is likely closer to
| "pro" than "sumer' and is priced accordingly. You don't need
| an SM7 if you're not making money with it... and it's priced
| for those folks.
|
| It's actually remarkable how much better all-in-one USB mics
| have gotten in the last 5-ish years since everyone began
| streaming - a Blue Yeti has an integrated ADC/preamp, its own
| stand, and comes with a cable. A SM58 ($100) will require an
| XLR cable ($10-15), audio interface ($50-100), and mic stand
| ($10-20) to have the same experience. Granted, that 58 will
| outlive _you_ and you can mic anything with it anywhere, the
| cable will probably last a long time and can be repaired by
| hand, and the cheapest USB audio interfaces have lower noise
| and better preamps than any USB mic. So you get what you pay
| for.
| slantyyz wrote:
| I have a Shure MV7 USB/XLR microphone, and while pricey, I
| like it a lot, as it's very easy to tune how you sound
| using the ShurePlus Motiv software.
|
| It also has a headphone jack that you can use for
| monitoring.
|
| Unfortunately the USB connection on the microphone is
| micro-usb, which is pretty sad for a microphone that was
| released in 2020. It also doesn't come with a stand.
| kps wrote:
| > You don't need an SM7 if you're not making money with
| it...
|
| Or maybe not at all. Someone actually measured one against
| an SM57: http://www.3daudioinc.com/3db/showthread.php?17046
| -SM57-vs-S...
| hctaw wrote:
| The results are not horribly surprising, the SM7B has the
| same capsule as the Beta 57 which is awfully similar to
| the 57/58.But notice there's a 10-15dB boost below 80Hz
| on the SM7. They also didn't analyze the off axis
| response or proximity effect - the vents on the enclosure
| impact both drastically.
|
| Don't look at a frequency response chart like that for
| insight. Anyone who has recorded a bass cab or kick drum
| with an SM7B would look at you sideways if you tried to
| use a 58 as a replacement unless you were really in a
| pinch.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Arguably SM7Bs are prominently placed in videos / video
| podcasts because "pros use SM7Bs" and therefore displaying
| that you are using SM7Bs for all speakers shows what a pro
| you are. Not because a 50 year old dynamic mic design is
| actually _The Literal Best Thing Ever For Human Voices_.
| ghaff wrote:
| I usually use a Blue Snowball although I also have
| Behringer XLR mics that plug into my mixer for specific
| purposes (mostly recording podcasts whether remote or in-
| person).
| hctaw wrote:
| I know they've made great strides but "Behringer" is a
| bigger indicator of quality than XLR or USB in that
| sentence. Blue at least has been making good mics for
| their entire existence (I use a Snowball too, it's great
| for my day to day calls). They've managed to stay pretty
| good since the Logitech acquisition, and prices have come
| down with scale.
| ghaff wrote:
| I don't know. I don't exactly have a "radio voice" and my
| Behringer mics seem to work fine--together with a mixer
| that is way higher-end than the mics in general. Again,
| for most people, there's a huge leap from built into
| laptop to just about anything else.
| shoto_io wrote:
| I have noticed with colleagues the insane improvements in
| video and audio after their amazon shopping sprees.
|
| At the same I haven't updated my camera because I don't have
| a nice room to work from and I feel a bit ashamed to show my
| tiny box with a high resolution... sounds weird, I know, but
| that's how I feel
| aikinai wrote:
| Use a longer lens and you won't have to show any of your
| tiny box! I hooked up my mirrorless camera behind/on top of
| my monitor and have a 35mm (APS-C so 50mm equivalent) which
| is perfect to just frame my head and show basically nothing
| behind me.
|
| I don't know why webcams are always so insanely wide; we
| don't need to see your whole room with your head only
| taking up 5% of the frame. Just like audio, I wish everyone
| else would use this camera setup so I can see everyone
| clearly.
| ghaff wrote:
| As I said in another comment, I do have my DSLR setup.
| But for most purposes, I use my external webcam because
| it's just easier. I do zoom it in a bit (and agree with
| your general comment on field of view) but for routine
| video calls I also don't want to be tightly framed as I'm
| probably moving around a bit.
| asimpletune wrote:
| "Why so wide"
|
| Maybe because the laptop case can only be so thick, which
| would limit focal length?
|
| I guess that could be improved by reducing sensor size
| but then it may affect performance in realistic lighting
| conditions.
| josephg wrote:
| Do you have any recommendations for cameras? I've been
| using a macbook camera all year because all the cheapo
| logitech webcams on the market are clunky and look _awful_.
|
| What do you recommend?
| jon-wood wrote:
| Not the GP, but I've been using a Razor Kiyo because it
| was about the only good quality camera available for a
| reasonable price back at the start of last year. The
| microphone on it is predictably terrible, but video
| quality is fantastic, and it has a ring of LEDs around
| which are suprisingly effective at dealing with the usual
| unhealthy glow given by sitting in front of a monitor.
| ghaff wrote:
| Probably one of the higher end Logitechs. I have a 920
| and would probably buy a Brio today if I needed one. As
| others have said, you can use digital cameras, phones,
| etc. But, while I do sometimes use my DSLR when I'm
| recording video, it's so much easier just to use a
| regular webcam even if the quality and isolation from the
| background isn't _quite_ as good.
| monkey_monkey wrote:
| If you have an iPhone, you could use that in conjunction
| with something like Reincubate's Camo. There was an
| interesting discussion about it on HN recently [1]
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25869460
| slantyyz wrote:
| I'm using my retired Samsung A5 Android phone's rear
| facing camera connected via USB to my PC using DroidCam
| (costs a few bucks). DroidCam also does wifi, but I find
| USB to be better.
|
| The quality is pretty good from the A5, but if I need
| even better, I use my current phone's rear camera
| outputting to HDMI to an El Gato CamLink using Filmic
| (which outputs clean HDMI on Android or IOS, but isn't
| cheap as DroidCam). Filmic is definitely a step up from
| DroidCam, but fussier in terms of getting set up.
| justincormack wrote:
| I tried using Filmic with iphone and hdmi capture but the
| latency was terrible. Is it ok with Android?
| slantyyz wrote:
| It's been a while since I used it, but IIRC, it seemed OK
| to me when I tested it, but you can always try lowering
| the resolution to reduce the latency.
| bonoboTP wrote:
| Use background replacement. Most videoconf software like
| Zoom have them.
| ghaff wrote:
| Unless you have a green screen and proper lighting, my
| observation is that background replacement is often
| obvious and distracting. (Background blurring is somewhat
| better.) My observation is that, once people got over the
| novelty, many stopped using it.
| bonoboTP wrote:
| Noticeable yes, but you get to display a nice full
| bookshelf behind you instead of your messy bedroom.
| You'll look smart.
| ghaff wrote:
| Fortunately I have an office I was able to more or less
| stage manage. You're right that in a lot of circumstances
| virtual backgrounds will still be better than reality.
| ghaff wrote:
| There are things you can do with hangings and screens and
| so forth if you want to. I do have an office but my
| background includes some ugly file cabinets so I got a
| fabric print to hang over them. You can also do virtual
| backgrounds with a lot of software _if_ you rig up a green
| screen. (That 's not absolutely necessary but it tends to
| look bad otherwise.)
| bonoboTP wrote:
| Zoom is quite good in virtual backgrounds even with no
| green screen (on Win and Mac. Linux is worse)
| ghaff wrote:
| Probably depends on lighting but I'm not sure I'd call it
| "good." I find it's often a noticeable distraction when
| people move around.
| Tepix wrote:
| If you use a real camera with a fixed focus lens, the
| background will be blurry! You can use most photo cameras
| as a webcam with a cheap (less than $20) HDMI capture USB
| cable.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _I think a lot of people get wrapped around the axle of
| having the "right" $500 microphone whereas there are a ton of
| decent USB mics under $100 that will make a big difference._
|
| Yes! Even a Monoprice $20 dynamic mic is probably not going
| to be the weak point in your audio path.
|
| > _Also consider a good external webcam and doing something
| about lighting if you can._
|
| Another great point. An Elgato Key Light Air is $130, and
| made a huge difference for me.
| ghaff wrote:
| I got one of those lights as well. The lighting in my
| office is pretty good and I could probably use one of my
| dual monitors as effectively a lightbox if I had to. But
| the Key Light makes it really easy to adjust frontal
| lighting so it's balanced with my track lights and natural
| light coming into the room. (Both of which I tend to
| ratchet down when I'm doing video for more even lighting.)
| Macha wrote:
| Why? The audio component, if it's bad, makes you hard to
| understand and makes its harder to contribute. The visual
| component is basically just a way for people to know that I'm
| there and a backup channel to indicate that yes, I am aware
| meet has once again decided not to recognise my mic and that
| I'm working on it. If I find a workplace that's ergonomic and
| works with my home environment, then the fact that there's a
| window with bright objects visible behind it that screws with
| the auto balance on the webcam 2 hours a day is a distant
| concern. I'm not going to compromise on the prior points to
| fix that.
| ghaff wrote:
| >Why?
|
| First of all I agree that if you could only fix one thing,
| audio should take priority. Fortunately that's pretty easy.
|
| I guess my context is that I'm on video a lot including
| with large audiences and for external consumption. So, yes,
| it matters to me whether my video is good. I also know
| people whose video is routinely terrible that they could
| likely improve significantly with very little effort.
| curryst wrote:
| I don't have data, but I strongly suspect it has an impact
| in the same way audio does. That person who's office is so
| dark their webcam gets grainy trying to compensate just
| looks less professional.
|
| Like it or not, videoconferencing is becoming more and more
| a professional skill, and part of that skill is being able
| to get decent audio and video quality.
|
| > there's a window with bright objects visible behind it
| that screws with the auto balance on the webcam 2 hours a
| day is a distant concern
|
| On the other hand, those are the only two hours a day where
| you have anything approximating in-person contact with your
| coworkers. Those two hours probably have an outsized effect
| on what your coworkers think of you.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| In my discord calls we have effectively resorted to shaming
| people into accepting a gifted clip-on amazon mic if they have
| an awful microphone. $10 every couple of months and no ear
| bleeding.
|
| That said, I really think some people are just immune to it. My
| mom for instance prefers to use the standard definition
| channels because the channel numbers are easier to remember and
| type. She says she can't tell the difference between that and
| full HD so :shrug:
| vxNsr wrote:
| > _gifted clip-on amazon mic if they have an awful
| microphone_
|
| Which one do you buy? I'm in the market for a good clip on
| mic
| bscphil wrote:
| > My mom for instance prefers to use the standard definition
| channels because the channel numbers are easier to remember
| and type. She says she can't tell the difference between that
| and full HD
|
| Is this referring to something on Discord or traditional TV?
| If the latter, is it referring to audio or video? Your
| replies have all assumed different answers to those
| questions, I believe.
|
| (If it's audio, your mother is probably right.)
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| And that's why I move the HD channels to the numbers of the
| traditional ones.
| andrewnicolalde wrote:
| How are you doing that?
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| Oh, sorry, I was talking about the traditional TV that
| comes through the old standard antenna cable. In those,
| the TV itself lets you do it, but I realize that it may
| not be possible in paid TV services. I wonder why they
| don't themselves move the HD channels forward, though...
| I suppose by now, an overwhelming majority of TVs have
| HD.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| I don't understand why those TV services don't have
| channel translation. Where the HD boxes default to the HD
| channels and the SD boxes default to the SD channels.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Your television probably lets you remap it, in the
| settings near retune.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| A lot of broadcast services don't let you do this.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > My mom for instance prefers to use the standard definition
| channels because the channel numbers are easier to remember
| and type. She says she can't tell the difference between that
| and full HD so :shrug:
|
| Pretty sure our cable box just automagically switches over to
| the HD channel when you tune into the SD one.
| hammock wrote:
| Which mic?
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Pro sound engineer here. There is not that much difference
| between SD audio and HD audio. SD only allows stereo and not
| surround, but can deliver perfectly good quality, assuming a
| clear broadcast signal.
| asimpletune wrote:
| This is random but universal audio (interfaces + plugins)
| way overrated?
|
| Follow up question, but once you get to a certain point of
| converter+preamp quality, is focusing on something that
| improves workflow what really matters?
| scottious wrote:
| > It also often makes the difference (given equal visuals)
| between great amateur and pro in e.g. the YouTube scene.
|
| Good audio and good lighting can really make all the
| difference. It pains me because it's actually a very cheap
| problem to solve. Lighting, an audio interface, and a decent
| mic could cost no more than a few hundred dollars for a starter
| pack.
|
| I'm on conference calls all the time where people have overhead
| lighting that makes them look like a sith lord and their mic is
| trash and picks up way too much room sounds and echos. It makes
| them look and sound bad. People notice that stuff.
| himinlomax wrote:
| > People vastly undervalue good audio quality
|
| Providers of conferencing tools undervalue audio quality as
| well, as evidenced by the fact that they don't provide tools
| that have been common for audio recording for nearly a century,
| such as simple vu-meters.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Okay, you are suggesting something (level meters, "you are
| clipping the shit out of your input"-indicators) that would
| actively improve things.
|
| Let me suggest instead that they shall start by not actively
| harming things. Microsoft Teams is an excellent study subject
| for "how on earth do you make something this bad while owning
| all of Skype's IP?".
| rightbyte wrote:
| Ye. How about a simple bar indicator to see if your mic
| works when you speak.
| walshemj wrote:
| And have the ability to turn of AGC !!!!!!!
| ryankrage77 wrote:
| Tomska used to have a video mentioning this (though in the
| context of making YouTube videos), in which he demonstated that
| video from a iPhone camera in conjunction with a professional
| mic was much more watchable than video from a professional
| camera with an iPhone mic.
|
| Sadly the video seems to have been removed, the only reference
| I could find was the last paragraph of this Wired Article,
| https://www.wired.co.uk/article/tomska-wired-2015.
|
| "use any camera, but get a good microphone. 'I started with a
| camera that's probably about ten times worse than the one in my
| phone,' he said. 'Bad sound will make anyone close a video in
| three seconds flat. Get a good microphone before you get a good
| camera.'"
| bserge wrote:
| And that was in 2015, wow. Nowadays a high end smartphone's
| camera delivers results close to a dedicated camera, assuming
| _good lighting_ and stock lens. The difference is pretty much
| unnoticeable if you watch it on a smartphone, tablet or any
| small screen. If you 're just starting out with video, it
| makes little sense to invest in a dedicated camera.
|
| Audio, on the other hand, a couple hundred dollars on a good
| mic and preamp/recorder will be worth it 100%. It will make a
| noticeable difference on both good speakers/headphones and on
| the small speakers in phones.
| criddell wrote:
| Is there some way on the iPhone / iPad to shoot video with a
| Bluetooth mic? I bought a BT lapel mic and whenever it was
| connected to the phone, it showed up as headphones and audio
| wouldn't play from the phone until I disconnected it.
|
| If Bluetooth is the wrong technology, what would you
| recommend?
| geerlingguy wrote:
| IMO the best current solution for wireless audio of decent
| quality is a Rode Wireless Go. The original version (that I
| use) requires a receiver and analog adapter cable to get it
| into the phone, but especially paired with an external lav
| mic (not required, but helpful if you don't want a square
| mic visible in a shot), it's better than my ancient and
| much larger UHF wireless mics.
| jtbayly wrote:
| Bluetooth is wrong because it is almost always low quality.
| You need a wired mic.
| criddell wrote:
| Is the audio quality recorded from a Bluetooth microphone
| worse than audio played through Bluetooth headphones? (ie
| is recording worse than playback?) If not, then that's
| okay because Bluetooth headphones sound fine.
|
| A wired mic isn't really an option in the environment I
| want to film in but I want something better than the on-
| camera mic because I'm occasionally pretty far away from
| the camera.
|
| I also don't want the hassle of recording audio on a
| separate audio recorder and then mixing that into my
| video. I want decent audio from a wireless mic recorded
| onto the phone video. I didn't think that was a big
| ask...
| viraptor wrote:
| > is recording worse than playback?
|
| Yes / kind of. Bluetooth headphones can be in a few
| modes, but generally they're either "high quality
| playback" or "crap playback with crap input". As soon as
| you activate the mic, the playback quality will drop. But
| for the isolated playback of a recording, you'll get
| better quality.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Worse, far worse, just forget Bluetooth.
| [deleted]
| hctaw wrote:
| Using a separate recorder here has the best price to
| performance for you, I think.
|
| Sennheiser has several wireless systems designed for your
| needs: https://en-us.sennheiser.com/wireless-systems
| criddell wrote:
| The hassle factor is way too high and it doesn't work
| easily for live streaming from a phone.
| hctaw wrote:
| I think your fundamental issue might be expecting a phone
| to be a decent multimedia capture device (phones ==
| content consumption, not content creation). If it's an
| iPhone and you just care about speech, air pods will be
| hard to beat.
| criddell wrote:
| The Rode product that somebody else mentioned looks like
| it's worth a try. It's a wireless mic where the receiver
| plugs into the phone.
| bserge wrote:
| I believe Bluetooth is still worse than even analog 2.4Ghz
| transceivers due to compression. Perhaps it's good enough
| for a lapel mic if it uses aptX or whatever there is now,
| but uncompressed audio (preferably through a balanced
| connection) would be best.
| criddell wrote:
| I'm not looking for the best audio, just better than the
| on-camera microphone without introducing more gear or
| post-processing steps.
| bserge wrote:
| Well, it should suffice. Not sure how the iPhone works,
| can you at least record while it's connected?
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Because in most cases, people can't hear their own audio
| quality.
|
| They only hear the poor audio quality of _other_ people in the
| conference.
| hn8788 wrote:
| I feel the same way about audio quality. There are enough
| people making informative videos on similar topics that bad
| audio is a deal breaker, so I'll look around until I find one
| that doesn't sound like it was recorded on a 5 dollar walmart
| microphone.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| To add to the audio quality discussion, well-meaning people who
| want to improve their quality often make the mistake of buying
| the mic with the best spec sheet. That ultra-sensitive
| microphone will make you sound more natural than your built-in
| mic, but it will also pick up dogs barking down the street and
| your neighbor mowing her lawn. If you're not in a studio-like
| office, a less-sensitive dynamic microphone is often better
| than the condenser with better specs. That said, both options
| will greatly improve your voice.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| As someone who knows nothing about audio: wouldn't it make
| more sense to get a top quality microphone and apply post-
| processing, rather than deliberately getting inferior
| hardware?
| bberenberg wrote:
| Made for purpose is not the same thing as inferior. You can
| dig with a shovel or a spade. Each was made for a purpose.
| Buying a mic with the right pickup pattern is buying a tool
| that is there for your specific purpose.
| dr_zoidberg wrote:
| You have to run that postprocessing somehow, and sometimes
| videoconferencing software doesn't give you that
| flexibility. So then you have to set a up a virtual
| microphone, which might be a hassle in your platform. At
| that point, and as you said, considering that you may not
| know enough about audio on how to set that up, you're much
| better with an easy-to-use, dynamic microphone that does
| much of what you need on its own.
| AstralStorm wrote:
| Well, given that most people still use Windows, VB-Audio
| software mixer and virtual soundcard plus Cantabile as
| effect host together work exceedingly well.
|
| And cost nothing or very little. (But do support the
| authors.)
|
| Hardware has ease of setup and excellent knobs going for
| it, but if you're going for cheap, you should spend money
| on a condenser microphone, some mounting hardware (e.g.
| gooseneck, spider mount, maybe pop filter) and audio
| interface first.
|
| $200 put there makes for professional quality audio.
| t.bone SC 400 and an interface that does phantom power,
| like one of the cheaper Focusrite or Presonus ones. (If
| you feel extra cheap, you can go lower price on
| interfaces but it's not worth it.)
| glacials wrote:
| Your setup is great for enthusiasts like you and me, but
| everyday folks don't want to deal with mounting hardware
| or audio interfaces or learning what a condenser mic is
| or spending more than $50.
| dr_zoidberg wrote:
| For that case, a couple of years ago I bought a small
| Blue microphone (their cheapest model I think), and got
| amazing audio quality from it. My main requirement though
| was getting a USB mic, since my laptop at the time had
| the nasty habit of getting noise into the audio-in line.
| closeparen wrote:
| No. There is no substitute for capturing the signal you
| want in the first place. And "inferior" is not the right
| word. Even at the high end of pro audio where budget is not
| really a concern, there are lots of different microphones,
| because there are lots of different situations you might
| want to capture and lots of different ways you might want
| them to sound. It's a "right tool for the job" thing.
| yarcob wrote:
| Dynamic mics are usually directional and less sensitive to
| background noise. If you talk into them from the right side
| they'll mostly pick up your voice. A lot of echo will be
| rejected because it comes from a different direction.
|
| Condenser mics are a lot more sensitive and
| omnidirectional. They are great in a studio to pick up
| every detail, but if you use them in a normal room you'll
| end up with lots of echo/reverb which is really hard to get
| rid in post.
| asimpletune wrote:
| You're right in the sense that condenser are more
| sensitive than dynamic (ie better signal to noise ratio)
| but one isn't like more directional than the other due to
| it being condenser vs dynamic.
|
| On the other hand, one that that does matter a lot is
| that dynamic mics can handle a lot more sound pressure.
| So, yeah, you often see them recording things like drums
| and the likes. This on the other hand is actually
| intrinsic with the mic itself.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Sure...if you know what you're doing. Dynamic microphones
| are not inferior hardware, they are the best tool for a
| particular sort of job. In film production I would use
| condenser microphones most of the time, but still made
| frequent use of dynamic microphones for work in noisy
| situations and so on. Live music performance typically uses
| dynamic microphones because if you brought a condenser
| microphone on stage you'd have a lot of trouble getting a
| clear signal out of it, plus they're much more likely to
| distort when a performer lets rip.
| jtbayly wrote:
| Not sure why this was flagged dead, but it seems like a
| reasonable comment to me.
| augustk wrote:
| I have always found it fascinating (and strange) that sound
| reproduction needs to be really bad before people in general
| complain. Compare this to image and video reproduction where
| most people are much more aware of the quality. It seems like
| most people have trained eyes but not ears.
| xenocratus wrote:
| > my ears will continue to bleed from the awful audio people
| broadcast into this world. I wonder, most people must notice
| how terrible everyone in e.g. video conferences sounds;
|
| If it is physically hurting your ears or being difficult to
| follow then it's understandable, but otherwise (as you mention
| with the masks) this sounds very superficial. Do you also
| complain about people wearing the wrong kind of clothes (and I
| don't mean tailored confederate flags)?
|
| I hope to one day see the day when most people realise it's
| none of their business how others present themselves.
| gbrown wrote:
| This isn't an issue of fashion, it's an issue of cognitive
| load. Bad audio is distracting, and requires more mental work
| to process. It's fatiguing, and as someone who spends an
| absurd amount of time doing video conferencing, it makes a
| huge difference.
|
| I'm also a teacher, so I bought a nice microphone and some
| acoustic panels to help my students focus on the material.
| simplyinfinity wrote:
| Acoustics & audio quality is important when trying to pay
| attention. Crappy acoustics can fatigue you and give you
| headache. Crappy audio can distract you, make you mishear
| things and overall is tiring to listen to. I've skipped
| online videos and lectures due to crap audio. I've gotten
| headaches and sore throat after sitting & talking in echo-y
| rooms for 30 mins.
| xenocratus wrote:
| Fair, though I meant complaining about understandable (but
| low-quality) audio or video.
| recursive wrote:
| Comprehensibility isn't yes/no. There are a lot of
| recordings that are _possible_ to understand, but are a
| lot more work. I have this complaint about phone calls
| all the time. I feel like I 'm taking crazy pills because
| people on a phone call are so hard to understand. Yet
| voice memos I record on my own phone are basically fine.
| I assume it's because phone audio goes through some
| tortured path with 12 layers of translation and
| compression or something, but it's irritating to me.
| ghaff wrote:
| Maybe it's superficial but if you make yourself harder to
| understand and/or unpleasant to look at on video, I'm far
| more likely to tune you out, especially on a multi-party
| conference call that I'm probably only half paying attention
| to anyway.
|
| So present yourself however you want. And I'll pay attention
| however much I want.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| "People vastly undervalue good audio quality."
|
| Absodamnlutely. Perhaps I'm over sensitive to video and audio
| quality issues due to my work life, but I absolutely can't
| believe how poor audio quality can be in the wild.
|
| Lack of full duplex, latency on phones and conference gizmos
| are bad enough, but I'm always blown away by the shite quality
| you run into for recorded university lectures and speeches. It
| makes you want to shake people like a rag.
|
| Also, people don't appreciate how much more important audio
| quality is then video. You can get away with a lot in video,
| it's true to the extent that audio data flow is used as the
| master clock.
|
| note to self: I wonder how far we are from improving recorded
| lectures/speeches via speech->text followed by text->speech as
| opposed to post-processing the audio. By passing through timing
| information you could even keep the cadence of the talking.
| yosito wrote:
| Interesting that this it the top story on HN the same day that
| Zoom is promoting "professional" quality audio. And there also
| seems to be a user in the comments working really hard to promote
| Zoom. Seems like a marketing campaign to me.
| gxqoz wrote:
| Link?
| jakebasile wrote:
| I have no evidence to back this up, but I strongly believe that
| video quality would have similar effects. I am a hobbyist
| photographer and began using my gear to improve my video quality
| on calls 6-8 months ago and people have continually commented on
| it, from executives to regular schmucks like me. We're a visual
| species and having a better view of the person you are talking
| with will help form connections.
|
| It doesn't take a lot, but it will take a bit more cash outlay
| than improving your audio. You can get a cheap camera capture
| card for ~$15, a tripod for ~$50, a quality camera that supports
| running indefinitely on power with clean HDMI out (I use a Nikon
| Z5), and of course a compatible lens (I use a Nikon 50mm/f1.8 Z).
| The camera and lens you use will vary considerably in cost and
| quality, so you'll need to do some research to see if it will
| work for this. The result is amazingly clear video.
| datagram wrote:
| Conventional streaming wisdom is that audio quality matters
| more than video quality. That is, it's better to have bad video
| and good audio than good video and bad audio.
| s_dev wrote:
| >I have no evidence to back this up, but I strongly believe
| that video quality would have similar effects
|
| Any dating website will have this as basic advice. Thats
| evidence enough for me. Higher quality images are associate
| with better looking people -- however this is counter intutive,
| you would think that a lower quality image would leave more to
| the imagination.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| That brings to mind questions about how non-good their
| appearence would have to be to look worse with rising image
| quality. I say non-good because one could look hyperboring as
| opposed to ugly.
| umeshunni wrote:
| But for video quality, it goes beyond the camera but also
| lighting, having a clean background and so on.
| thamer wrote:
| You don't need a professional camera for this. There are a few
| apps like Camo[1] or NeuralCam Live[2] that let you use a
| smartphone as your webcam for a much better image quality than
| most webcams. Just get a phone clip with a flexible arm to
| mount it on your screen.
|
| Note that since they create a custom webcam device, these
| programs don't always work with native videoconferencing apps
| (check their websites for a list of supported apps). A common
| workaround is to use the platform's browser-based call
| interface, where the virtual webcam usually shows up without
| issues.
|
| [1] https://reincubate.com/camo/
|
| [2] https://neural.cam/live/
| jcims wrote:
| I'm surprised nobody has released a reasonable quality USB
| camera that supports standard lens mounts. There are some out
| there but they seem to be suited more for computer vision
| projects than video conferencing.
| jakebasile wrote:
| All of the camera manufacturers tried to jump on the Zoom
| call train to some extent. Every one of them released some
| form of Webcam USB driver, where you don't need a video
| encoder you just plug the camera directly in via USB and it
| shows up as a webcam. The downside is it's not as high
| quality as you'd get with an encoder, and not every camera
| supports charging during use.
|
| Canon at least released a couple "Webcam Accessories Starter
| Kits" that include a little tripod and an AC adapter to work
| around the USB charging limitation. I'm surprised the
| manufacturers didn't jump in even more but perhaps they were
| hampered by the pandemic. There have been significant supply
| chain disruptions in photography/videography industries for
| the past year.
| etblg wrote:
| Even just better lighting alone is a big step up. I started
| using this cheap desk-mounted mini ring light (with a slightly
| warm light) for calls, lighting the shade side of my face, and
| it makes your video look a lot more professional and
| flattering.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Honestly, a camera like that is super overkill.
|
| There are really only three things that matter for image in
| video calls: lighting, exposure, and background.
|
| Lighting is by far #1. Then some kind of exposure adjustment to
| lock it in during your call at the brightest level that won't
| blow out any areas of your face.
|
| As long as you've got those, there will then be zero difference
| between a cheap Logitech webcam and a fancy Nikon by the time
| the image has been downsampled and compressed.
|
| (And make sure you've got the focus and white balance set
| correctly as well of course.)
| jakebasile wrote:
| Oh, it's definitely more than most people will need. I had
| the camera for photography and just decided to repurpose it.
|
| That said, a webcam can only do so much even with proper
| lightning and a clean background. They're never going to be
| as sharp, or as bright, as a nice fast lens on a quality
| camera.
| [deleted]
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _They 're never going to be as sharp, or as bright, as a
| nice fast lens on a quality camera._
|
| If you've got decent lighting, that's not true.
|
| My Logitech C920 -- the most popular webcam of all time --
| outputs a fully sharp 1080p. With normal front lighting, it
| handles 30 fps perfectly without visible noise, i.e. full
| brightness. There's _zero_ quality difference versus using
| my DSLR. It 's as sharp and as bright.
|
| Now sure it can't do low-light conditions well or do 4K or
| depth of field or a fisheye lens or the other million
| things a DSLR can do... but for videoconferencing purposes
| it's literally indistinguishable in quality.
| jakebasile wrote:
| No amount of lighting can make up for the difference in
| sensor size, quality, resolution let alone the aperture
| and quality optics of a photographic lens.
|
| I'm sorry but you're just incorrect here. It might be
| minimal at Zoom resolution but it's absolutely there.
| stunt wrote:
| It really bothers me that I can't lock mic gain on macOS. You can
| adjust it, but then it will self adjust itself automatically.
| Somehow some background noises in my room trigger it to increase
| the mic sensitive to 100% after a few minutes. It's much worse
| with iPhone EarPods.
| jimsmart wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that macOS doesn't do this by default at all,
| based upon over a decade of experience.
|
| This StackOverflow seems to agree -- but it also offers
| suggestions to help find the actual culprit (a lot of third-
| party software seems to auto-level the mic volume), and also
| offers a further suggestion of configuring an Aggregate Audio
| Device (using the default Audio MIDI Setup app) which doesn't
| have a mic-level control that apps can mess with.
|
| Perhaps one of the solutions discussed here might help you.
|
| https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/97810/mac-osx-micr...
| thesumofall wrote:
| I guess, as unfortunate as this is, this comes as no surprise.
| Related, I witnessed a lot of very smart people struggle with the
| basics of conducting a video conference (sharing documents,
| inviting, ...) It is absolutely avoidable and hence automatically
| raises questions on the professionalism and preparedness of the
| person. Honest mistakes happen and might even make a person more
| relatable - but this is a different story
| greenwich26 wrote:
| The audio quality of the inbuilt microphone on my laptop is much
| worse in Linux, than on Windows. I've tried some fixes on
| StackExchange but it doesn't really help. Has anyone encountered
| this? And if I buy an external microphone: how do I know it won't
| have the same problem? Has anyone had good experiences with
| microphones on Linux (specifically Ubuntu 20.10?) Is it some sort
| of driver/firmware problem?
|
| Nowadays I have to switch to Windows (dual boot) when I have an
| important presentation or call, which is really annoying. But
| I've literally had people spontaneously tell me my audio is crap
| (on Linux) or great (on Windows).
| dsr_ wrote:
| Virtually all microphones are USB, and USB Audio is very, very
| standard. This is likely to be a mixer settings issue.
|
| I've been using a Blue Yeti with Debian for several years now
| and have no problems at all with that. (It is annoying how
| often video conferencing problems are solved by reloading a web
| page or restarting the browser, though.)
| hmfrh wrote:
| I've had issues on PopOs 20.04 and 20.10 with microphones
| connected through the audio jack. Connecting through a cheap
| jack-to-USB converter eliminated the background noise. There
| were proposed fixes although none of them worked. Jack-to-USB
| converters are apparently not recommended[1] due to wildly
| varying quality though.
|
| On PopOs 20.10 I'm currently getting good audio from a ModMic
| USB. This[2] review is what made me buy the ModMic USB,
| although I know next to nothing about audio and audio quality.
|
| The Audio Technica ATGM2[3] was also considered, but the
| mounting options for the ModMic USB as well as lower cost in my
| area won me over.
|
| For me a headset mounted mic was a requirement due to space
| considerations and slightly lower cost, although next time I'm
| probably buying a very high quality free standing microphone.
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1v1jtHz4C0 [2]:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qquo2GpSQo4 [3]:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIeJMdv5jxs
| andrewzah wrote:
| "Has anyone had good experiences with microphones on Linux"
|
| I've not had any issues with external mics and usb interfaces.
| Onboard mics aren't really that good to begin with; you'll want
| to get some sort of external lavalier mic, or a condenser or
| cardioid dynamic. Onboard mics and other omnidirectional mics
| aren't great because they pick up sounds from all over. A
| cardioid polar pattern helps a lot with cutting down on sound.
| hanikesn wrote:
| I can recommend USB speaker phones/headsets like the Jabra
| Speak series. Anker recently released their own series as well
| and there's also beyerdynamic phonum. The big benefit is that
| noise cancellation is builtin and USB sound is sufficiently
| standardized that there shouldn't be any issues.
|
| Though I went to the trouble recently to configure builtin
| pulseaudio noise cancellation and got quite good results as
| well.
| ryankrage77 wrote:
| Likely just a driver issue.
|
| I actually had the opposite situation with Ubuntu 20.04 on my
| desktop, got a lot less noise from my mic port under Ubuntu for
| some reason.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "just a driver issue"
|
| Oh. Just a driver issue on Linux. Well then, problem solved.
| gkbrk wrote:
| "Just a driver issue", unless it's a temporary regression
| in the Linux drivers, basically means the hardware
| manufacturer didn't use standard interfaces or write a
| good-enough spec for interoperability.
|
| Solutions are calling your manufacturer and filing a
| support request, or voting with your wallet and picking
| another manufacturer next time.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| Hah, that's a good one. Voting with your wallet never
| helps when you are a niche within a niche, like a Linux
| user.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| How many hardware manufacturers tell you that their
| device is supported on linux?
| gkbrk wrote:
| Lenovo, Dell, Intel, Realtek, nvidia, Logitech, Samsung,
| AMD and many other big brands tell me clearly on their
| product spec that their hardware supports Linux. It's not
| like there is a shortage of choice.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Oh, can you tell me then, of a Laptop with Touchscreen,
| good hardware and Linux support?
|
| I have been looking for one since ages.
| [deleted]
| kissickas wrote:
| Thinkpad X1 Carbon, although I'm not sure what the
| touchscreen support actually looks like (I bought the
| Windows version of the machine and installed my own Linux
| distro)
| gkbrk wrote:
| Thinkpads and a lot of Dell laptop models both have good
| hardware and Linux support. I cannot recommend a laptop
| with a touchscreen, as I have never used nor needed one.
| stevewodil wrote:
| Dell XPS 15 or 17?
|
| I had a Matebook X Pro and it worked really well with
| Ubuntu but the battery life was terrible in Linux. Maybe
| it's something that's been fixed or can be tweaked.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Battery life on linux laptops can be indeed improved by
| tweaking, I did so on various devices. But I never came
| close to windows battery life and I allmost bricked a
| brand new laptop while doing so (only save was to tear it
| apart). So beware of what you are doing.
| ryankrage77 wrote:
| Either you can install good proprietary drivers from the
| manufacturer, or they don't exist and you have to make do
| with the open source ones.
| benkuhn wrote:
| Shot in the dark, but many of my Linux coworkers have a problem
| where their video chat software sets their mic volume/gain to
| 100%, which causes horrible sounding clipping. Check your mic
| gain settings and perhaps disable the automatic volume
| equalization in whatever video call software you're using.
| taeric wrote:
| This is killing me right now. :( And I'm not finding a clear
| "this disables it" setting.
|
| For the record, I'm trying to use Google Meets and it seems
| to be the culprit in what is doing the "push it to 100%".
| justincormack wrote:
| I ended up buying an audio interface that has no digital
| volume control, only analog, so applications cant mess up the
| levels at all. Its amazing how conferencing apps just think
| that 100% is better.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| Audio carries 80% of the intellectual content on television.
| That's why when the news does a live cross and the sound doesn't
| work, they go back to the studio until the technical problem is
| resolved, even though the vision is faultless.
| darkerside wrote:
| Does the opposite hold true? Do newscasts that carry audio but
| have lost video tend to continue? Just realizing I've never
| really seen that that I can think of.
| the-dude wrote:
| Reporters calling in on a phone when the regular connection
| could not be set up?
|
| I have seen those.
| dijit wrote:
| Yes, it does, usually they show B-roll or a static image with
| the audio.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Not sure about an unintentional loss of picture, but it's
| fairly normal to have an audio-only feed when video isn't
| available.
| Macha wrote:
| Yes, all the time. You get a static picture of the reporter,
| or shots of the presenter or studio, or b-roll, or an
| animation of a waveform.
| geopsist wrote:
| A lot of people are posting links to
| microphones/headphones/stream-decks/etc... My personal experience
| from a series of podcasts at home and with 2 kids, a super duper
| mic would not solve my problem. A lot of the audio issues you see
| at events and streams like these stem from bg noise, echo, no
| pop-filter, stream lag. It's usually a case of repair, not
| replacing equipment. New microphones bring risk potential with
| excessive gain, headphones can make you too self-conscious or
| focus on the wrong thing. Like, rather than spending X amount on
| a new setup, just use some tools/plugins in post - most can be
| ran through OBS live, despite initially seeming like a post-
| production technical thing. I lost a lot of time repairing my
| audio in various tools when software plugin bundles like this -
| https://accusonus.com/products/audio-repair/era-bundle-stand...
| -gave me a way better recording upgrade, as opposed to a new mic.
| tmaly wrote:
| I have been using a Blue Yeti usb condenser mic for all my team
| calls. I paired it with a nice set of computer speakers. It does
| make a difference.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Radio hosts vs. the wacky people that call in. Being on a phone
| in 2021 on a radio program just sounds subpar.
|
| Like what other people have said, if you're having issues, get a
| decent wired microphone (with a cardioid pattern if available),
| and possibly some good noise cancelling software like Krisp,
| nvidia RTX, etc.
|
| And totally optional, but VoiceMeeter on Windows can be a kind of
| equalizer for an input which can give a bit more clarity and bass
| if desired.
| bytematic wrote:
| Rode NT-1 Mic, some interface, some stand. I positioned it coming
| above my monitor and I never think about it anymore. Too bad my
| voice sounds terrible, that is harder to fix
| jmkr wrote:
| I picked up a GLS es58 on Amazon a while back because I got an
| audio interface and figured might as well get a mic. Chose it
| because it's a shure 58 clone.
|
| It's made quite a difference and importantly it makes you feel
| better to use.
|
| I've been convincing my friends to pick up dynamic mics to lower
| their surrounding noise and sound clearer.
|
| There's an Audio Technica that's usb/xlr. So you can start with
| usb and upgrade to xlr when you get a preamp.
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