Higher quality audio makes people sound smarter • Hacker News Board

Re: Higher quality audio makes people sound smarter

#361

Post by ravenstine » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 6:18 PM UTC

technofiend wrote: post #324

benkuhn wrote: post #13

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 heads…

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…

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.

Re: Higher quality audio makes people sound smarter

#362

Post by chenxiaolong » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 6:26 PM UTC

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.

Re: Higher quality audio makes people sound smarter

#363

Post by dreinhardt » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 6:28 PM UTC

oauea wrote: post #242

nvarsj wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hav…

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.

Which mod mic do you use? The QC35s have the extra small plug so I thought most mod mics would not fit.

Re: Higher quality audio makes people sound smarter

#364

Post by yarcob » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 6:32 PM UTC

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #170

BeFlatXIII wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 oft…

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?

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.

Re: Higher quality audio makes people sound smarter

#365

Post by heyparkerj » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 6:37 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #327

brundolf wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Higher quality audio makes people sound smarter

#366

Post by analog31 » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 6:40 PM UTC

robbrown451 wrote: post #345

analog31 wrote: post #280

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 commerci…

"If you can hear it, the microphone can hear it." Not great advice if there is a chance they want you to hear it.

What I mean is if you can hear background noise in your room, it will be audible in your recording.

Re: Higher quality audio makes people sound smarter

#367

Post by adrianmonk » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 6:45 PM UTC

rectang wrote: post #330

ghaff wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 micro…

> 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.

Re: Higher quality audio makes people sound smarter

#368

Post by glacials » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 6:48 PM UTC

AstralStorm wrote: post #258

dr_zoidberg wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

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.

Re: Higher quality audio makes people sound smarter

#369

Post by oauea » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 6:49 PM UTC

dreinhardt wrote: post #363

oauea wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Which mod mic do you use? The QC35s have the extra small plug so I thought most mod mics would not fit.

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.

Re: Higher quality audio makes people sound smarter

#370

Post by jscholes » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 6:50 PM UTC

ricardobayes wrote: post #171

benkuhn wrote: post #13

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 heads…

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.

> 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.