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Show HN: A macOS app to prevent sound quality degradation on AirPods

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Re: Show HN: A macOS app to prevent sound quality degradation on AirPods

#271

Post by adastra22 »

alfonsodev wrote: post #263
radicality wrote: post #258

> Most of the time, you have much higher quality microphones built in, so in most use cases, you want to hear from your AirPods but be heard from your internal microphone Is that true, have I been doing my google meets wrong this whole time? So you’re saying if I’m on my Mac and having a google Meet, and I’m using my AirPods, then I should have my mic input as MacBook and not as AirPods? Do you have any sources or yo…

It depends if you sit for a long meeting or short but important, I’d definitively change the mic to use MacBook it’s not only your quality of mic for them, you’ll hear them much better too. Now if you want to be walking around while talking then obviously keep the default mic on the AirPods.

I'm stupefied by this comment thread. I routinely have meetings where my microphone quality (built-in MacBook Pro or iPhone 14 in speaker mode) is absolute shit and the person on the other side tells me to put on my AirPods, at which point my audio becomes crystal clear for them.

Re: Show HN: A macOS app to prevent sound quality degradation on AirPods

#272

Post by ivanjermakov »

ClassyJacket wrote: post #197
Osiris wrote: post #75

This is really a Bluetooth issue. The same happens with any headphones that have a mic on any OS. When Bluetooth mode is switched from Headphones to Headset (with mic), only much lower quality audio codes are used. Does anyone know if Bluetooth 6 adds support for higher quality codes for Headset? It's a big issue, in my opinion.

Why is Bluetooth so bad? This, plus the literal second of latency to my car's speakers. All these problems are solved by headphones with proprietary wireless dongles and they work great, so why can't Bluetooth incorporate those improvements so we can get them on other devices than desktop PCs?

> Why is Bluetooth so bad?

From what I read online, Bluetooth standart is bloated with outdated profiles and not free for manufacturers to implement. Because of that, manufacturers strap own proprietary extensions on it that only their devices support (e.g. AirPods audio qulity with mic is only good on Apple devices)[1].

Others mention that bluetooth was initially designed for less capble devices, thus suffering from low bitrate and signal strength.

Adjacent discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40180133

[1]: https://medium.marco.zone/apple-implemented-the-biggest-impr...

Re: Show HN: A macOS app to prevent sound quality degradation on AirPods

#273

Post by vouaobrasil »

adastra22 wrote: post #270
KingOfCoders wrote: post #268

"you want to hear from your AirPods but be heard from your internal microphone" I wish all people would know this, I have CTO coaching sessions and when people attend with AirPods microphones, 60minutes is such a drain because of the bad mic quality of AirPods - and people seem not to realize this.

Internal microphone being what? The laptop or the phone? These have absolute shit input when sitting relatively far away on the desk or pocket. In my own experience, AirPods offer the absolute best microphones for zoom calls, other than professional-level equipment.

Or a decent quality but entry-level USB mic, which is certainly not considered "professional-level" by any standard.

Re: Show HN: A macOS app to prevent sound quality degradation on AirPods

#274

Post by adastra22 »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #273
adastra22 wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Internal microphone being what? The laptop or the phone? These have absolute shit input when sitting relatively far away on the desk or pocket. In my own experience, AirPods offer the absolute best microphones for zoom calls, other than professional-level equipment.

Or a decent quality but entry-level USB mic, which is certainly not considered "professional-level" by any standard.

I was implicitly comparing within the same form factor...

Re: Show HN: A macOS app to prevent sound quality degradation on AirPods

#275

Post by eptcyka »

lloeki wrote: post #242
viraptor wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a Bluetooth issue years ago. Now it's only an Apple issue where it can't use a more decent codec. On Linux you can choose the mSBC codec and get decent two-way quality on a modern headset.

> It was a Bluetooth issue years ago It still is, mSBC is really not that good, plus all things considered reasons go beyond just the codec, see my nearby comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41705258 Switching to "2x half-duplex" on both ends is really the best thing. I hate it that you can't separately select audio input and output in iOS.

mSBC has garbage audio quality.

Re: Show HN: A macOS app to prevent sound quality degradation on AirPods

#276

Post by johnwalkr »

jjcm wrote: post #154

Subscription discussions aside, if you're looking for more feature requests, one thing I'd love is the ability to completely disable audio input devices on OSX. It's something you can't do today. My monitor has an audio in, and shows up as a valid audio input, but there's no mic connected to it. Zoom loves prioritizing it as a device though every time I disconnect my microphone. Likewise other bluetooth headphone aud…

A system-wide mute button and a system-wide setting to say "this is the only microphone I want to use and when it's muted I don't want another mic to be used" would be nice. Wired headphones often have a physical mute switch, but zoom will happily switch to another microphone the instant you use the mute switch.

Re: Show HN: A macOS app to prevent sound quality degradation on AirPods

#277

Post by joenot443 »

Sorry, chief. I've been a macOS dev for 10 years now. I think charging a subscription for a menubar app with a singular use-case is just the absolute worst.

"not one time payment because I don't know what would the right price be for supporting an app for years to come and still have people willing to pay for it"

The right price would be about $5-10. If you want to be kind, $0.

Re: Show HN: A macOS app to prevent sound quality degradation on AirPods

#278

Post by joenot443 »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #217

A good trick to prevent this is to set your microphone to an aggregate device that you create with the Audio Midi Device tool that comes with your mac. Open that, and create a new aggregate device with just the system microphone. Then set that as the default microphone. And now when applications access the microphone for whatever reason, your bluetooth headphones don't switch profile and keep on using the aggregate m…

Yep. If you want to avoid paying a monthly fee, I'd highly recommend this approach. I've shown a few of my friends this trick and its worked for years.

Re: Show HN: A macOS app to prevent sound quality degradation on AirPods

#279

Post by joenot443 »

mrtksn wrote: post #84
jccalhoun wrote: post #78

I don't have a mac or airpods so maybe I'm missing some context but paragraphs 2-4 seem to be a digression and actively confused me as to what this does. I would suggest removing or rewriting them for clarity.

Apologies for the bad writing, wrote everything at once and posted right away and looking back I see plenty of room for improvement. The app simply sets the system default sound input/output device in a specific way depending on what’s connected. This fixes the sound quality degradation on Bluetooth headphones with mic. The issue arises when the computer tries to use the Bluetooth mic, in most cases it’s better to us…

If you're announcing a product on HN, it's worth going back and doing some edits on what you're posting before you click submit. You only get to do this once, and as many have learned, you can't go back and edit. There are a good handful of English and spelling errors which even a quick pass through a spellcheck may have caught :)

Re: Show HN: A macOS app to prevent sound quality degradation on AirPods

#280

Post by joenot443 »

mrtksn wrote: post #226
sutra_on wrote: post #204

> I decided to go with a very cheap subscription model because I suspect further development might be needed as bugs emerge or API behavior changes Right, makes me wonder how did companies even exist before the subscription model. > I don't know what would the right price be for supporting an app for years to come and still have people willing to pay for it Not to sound too negative, but your app might not even exist…

>Right, makes me wonder how did companies even exist before the subscription model. They abandoned their products once the growth stopped and/or switch to subscription and gave their one time purchase makers a year of subscription to make it up. One time payment for lifetime support doesn't make sense whatsoever. If it is a large company they have to employ people for a product that doesn't bring in money and for ind…

> They abandoned their products once the growth stopped and/or switch to subscription and gave their one time purchase makers a year of subscription to make it up.

That's categorically untrue and if you're doubtful, I'd be happy to give you a list of wonderful software I've bought over the years for a singular license which has remained well supported and functional for years to come :)

I understand a lot of people are telling you the same thing here, but hopefully it will serve as a lesson. If you want any success in this space, you need to figure out your pricing.

> Having a live product is a full time job even if you change a single line of a code once in a while.

I run several live products and also hold a full time job. This isn't true.

> Other options exist of course, like giving away the product for free

I think this is exactly what a junior macOS developer should do if they want to get good enough to start building real products.

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