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Why don't more people use throat mics?

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Re: Why don't more people use throat mics?

#251

Post by hnbad »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #115
hnbad wrote: post #17

> People can hear me gulp That's one of the biggest reasons you don't see them in business settings apart from the tacticool tackiness. The point of a good microphone is not just to clearly hear the voice and to cancel out outside noise but also not to pick up the meat sounds. Especially when using headphones, other people don't want to hear your meat sounds. They don't want to be constantly reminded that you're made…

> Especially when using headphones, other people don't want to hear your meat sounds. They don't want to be constantly reminded that you're made of meat because they're trying their best to pretend that they aren't either. A reference for people who just think this is worded weird: https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/think...

I was thinking of the amazing short film adaptation but yes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6JFTmQCFHg

Re: Why don't more people use throat mics?

#252

Post by kodah »

ska wrote: post #183
kodah wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Throat mics are designed for loud, high intensity situations. For the use case of a throat mic, "good audio quality" means the receiver can actually understand what you're saying, something that is pretty easy to achieve in a home office environment. I've only configured a handful of throat mics, but they actually are designed to be used when you're speaking at a whisper. That's one of the main features, you're not…

Isn't it basically the same situation from a signal processing point of view? i.e. the SNR is bad but you can localize and pull out signal.

Well, they're physically adjustable. iirc there's two mics and you can move them closer or farther away from your throat, which has an affect on what's picked up. The Harris radios also support a load of customizations to input, but it would be a real drag doing this because no team or squad has dedicated radios, and the shop ROs are likely defaulting the radio before configuring it.

Re: Why don't more people use throat mics?

#253

Post by fire »

digitallyfree wrote: post #113
hardwaresofton wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This actually sounds sick :) You know what is crazy, those microphone guns[0] mics might actually be amazing. I know that people (youtubers) actually have problems with being able to turn their A/Cs on because of the background noise... Rather than trying to remove that noise with AI/post processing or turning the A/C off maybe people should be looking into microphone guns. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Sony-ECMGZ1M-Zoo…

Marketing has pushed a lot of Youtubers towards LDCs like the Blue Yeti, which are great in a studio setting but pick up lots of background noise. For some reason everyone considers the SM7B as the way around that (despite being overkill and overpriced for their applications), which is a broadcast dynamic. Dynamics can handle fan noise and busy streets no problem. There are less expensive handheld dynamics which are…

> If those don't provide enough isolation there are ENG dynamics that are designed to handle interviews in the middle of loud protests and such.

Do you have a link? "ENG dynamic microphone" doesn't bring anything useful up for me

Re: Why don't more people use throat mics?

#256

Post by GekkePrutser »

I tried one before but I had difficulties registering hissing sounds like the letter 'S', making the audio hard to understand. I understand this is part of how a conduction microphone works, as these sounds are not generated in the throat but the mouth.

I'm surprised not to read about this in the article. Perhaps I did it wrong or I had a really bad microphone.

Re: Why don't more people use throat mics?

#258

Post by hardwaresofton »

aidenn0 wrote: post #198
hardwaresofton wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what if it had bluetooth though? There's a kickstarter in here, I know it! I just need someone on HN that is crazy about hardware to see this post.

https://iasus-concepts.com/wireless-headsets/stealth/

That link is in the post :)

Re: Why don't more people use throat mics?

#259

Post by flobosg »

Speaking of contact microphones: The saxophonist Colin Stetson makes extensive use of them, including one on his throat. To see (or rather hear) them in action check out this video of one of his tracks[1] along with an explanation of his technique[2].

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMkYF2vJjzI

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UejNbSrJIuA

Re: Why don't more people use throat mics?

#260

Post by hardwaresofton »

chrismorgan wrote: post #134
hardwaresofton wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On Bluetooth audio issues: try switching from PulseAudio to PipeWire; it’s better in every way now save perhaps for one or two remaining tiny niches, and pipewire-pulse lets it act as a drop-in replacement for pulseaudio. The usual installation experience is completely uneventful: you install it, restart your session, and everything works at least as well as before. I did! Pipewire is working awesome -- I'm using p…

Thanks for the sample. That sounds very bad. Not quite as bad as any samples I had found, and still reasonably understandable, which some lousy device microphones (especially laptops’) aren’t—it’s bad in a somewhat different way. But I would strongly dislike having to talk to you with that as your microphone, especially if you were in a context where you could have used almost any other microphone. If I knew that you…

Noted, thanks for the honest feedback, looks like the tech is just not ready for primetime.

I don’t think it’s so bad but people definitely have strong (mostly negative) feelings towards this experiment!

The reactions after adding the audio sample are also pretty negative…

> No. Absolutely not. Any podcast using such a microphone will bomb hard.

Well I wouldn’t go as far as to say it would tank a podcast — but I agree that they are not the ultimate in high quality audio for cheap!

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