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Show HN: Unclack – a macOS app that mutes your microphone while you type

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Re: Show HN: Unclack – a macOS app that mutes your microphone while you type

#91
post #7

A solution like rtx voice seems a better way to go tbh. For those who don't know, it's an nvidia thing that uses a GPU accelerated (ofc, it's nvidia) neural network to denoise voice calls, from all kinds of noise, not just typing. It's really pretty impressive, here's a demo: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uWUHkCgslNE I wish it wasn't proprietary though (and worse, hardware specific). And windows only of course.

Off-topic but I wonder if there's some creative department at Nvidia, whose job is to invent a compelling mass-market uses for their beefy GPUs, as crypto rush is fading out and the gaming market hasn't much potential to grow further.

Crypto rush is doing anything but fading. Eth mainnet has more hashing power on it now than it ever has. Nvidia is selling 30 series cards directly to mining firms, much to the chagrin of anyone who wants to buy one for themselves. https://etherscan.io/chart/hashrate

Re: Show HN: Unclack – a macOS app that mutes your microphone while you type

#92

I thought this was going to be an app that emits some kind of inverse sound through the laptop speakers to neutralize the keypress sound in real life. I wonder if that's possible.

That's my reaction, too. What kind of black magic can mute a physical keyboard? And I was a bit disappointed when I actually clicked.

Mac book keyboards can be so loud. I remember in college, a guy in front row took notes on his laptop, and his typing was overpowering the professor. And the professor had a microphone.

Re: Show HN: Unclack – a macOS app that mutes your microphone while you type

#93
post #6

This is genius but I usually mute myself before and after speaking. Great idea though for us mechanical switch folks.

Zoom makes this easy with spacebar as push-to-talk button https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/360000510003-Push-...

Space bar as push to talk in Zoom is terrible. After countless time it sends the spaces to the chat box while I'm talking, I'm now back to reliable mouse click.

Re: Show HN: Unclack – a macOS app that mutes your microphone while you type

#94

I thought this was going to be an app that emits some kind of inverse sound through the laptop speakers to neutralize the keypress sound in real life. I wonder if that's possible.

No need to go through the speakers, you could detect keystrokes, map them to transients in the recorded audio stream and use a noise gate to reduce their volume (at the cost of a little added latency).

Bonus point: this would allow you to speak and type at the same time with minimal reduction of speech comprehension, especially if using a multi-band noise gate (that acts on various frequency bands independently). It's a technique we used for dynamic de-essing (removing plosive "S" sounds in post-prod recordings) in a previous company.

Re: Show HN: Unclack – a macOS app that mutes your microphone while you type

#95
post #39
post #7

A solution like rtx voice seems a better way to go tbh. For those who don't know, it's an nvidia thing that uses a GPU accelerated (ofc, it's nvidia) neural network to denoise voice calls, from all kinds of noise, not just typing. It's really pretty impressive, here's a demo: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uWUHkCgslNE I wish it wasn't proprietary though (and worse, hardware specific). And windows only of course.

If you use GSuite Enterprise, you can use Meet's built-in noise cancellation which runs on TPUs in a DC. It's basically magic. You can have someone vacuuming the room right next to you or cook dinner and your coworkers won't notice. Typing noise is just gone. It has improved our meetings so much. https://krisp.ai works locally and is cheaper, but it noticeably degrades quality (tested with the Chrome extension only).

Can you describe this? Tried googling but couldn’t find due to TPUs being so ubiquitous.

Re: Show HN: Unclack – a macOS app that mutes your microphone while you type

#96

The sentence explaining what it does has a typo which makes it confusing: > Unclack is the small but mighty Mac utility that mutes your keyboard while you type. This should say "mutes your _microphone_ while you type". You can't mute a keyboard

Colloquially we say "mute yourself" or "mute this or that person," so it functions in that context.

Re: Show HN: Unclack – a macOS app that mutes your microphone while you type

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had people complain they couldn't hear me well when I used their (deprecated) iOS app. I kept having to turn off the ML noise-cancelling.

I had similar issues with their macOS app using a pretty basic headphone+microphone setup (EarPods). I ended up leaving it off and not re-installing in on my latest setup. I've had a subscription from mid-2019, though I no longer use it. I find Zoom's basic noise suppression good enough for calls.

I believe Zoom licensed Krisp to handle noise-cancelling in their client.

Re: Show HN: Unclack – a macOS app that mutes your microphone while you type

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO mute should be the default in most meetings; plenty of apps (I know Zoom and Skype) have the spacebar as a "push to talk" button. PTT should be a standard in most meetings. I used to play eve online, having a few hundred people in a voice channel would be impossible if push-to-talk wasn't made mandatory.

Honestly boggles my mind that software like Google Meet hides the mute button if you stop moving your mouse and PTT isn't considered a base feature.

Microsoft Teams does the same, on iOS at least.

Re: Show HN: Unclack – a macOS app that mutes your microphone while you type

#99
post #3

Is it Big Sur only?

I'm speculating here, but maybe there are better controls in Big Sur to easily mute input devices compared to prior versions of OSX. I've attempted building a global microphone mute app (for external microphones) on Catalina but never found an easy way to fully mute all mics such as external USB mics or a those connected through a USB ADC. The best I could get on Catalina was to lower the inputVolume to 0 which does not truly mute the microphone. I never found an app that "solved" this problem for all microphones on OSX versions prior to Big Sur.

Re: Show HN: Unclack – a macOS app that mutes your microphone while you type

#100

Here's a tip from people I know that do streaming from their computer: get the microphone off your desk. Find something else to put it on or buy an arm it can attach to. The fact that your device or mic are sitting on your desk where the keyboard clack vibrations are traveling right through amplifies them.

I have a fancy well-tuned microphone off my desk and on a baffle mount and it still picks up keyboard sounds just fine. It's quieter, but it isn't a perfect cure.
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