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!)
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.
> 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?
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.
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
This depends. On my (dell) laptop, the mic is basically right between the two speakers, below the lip of the laptop. It’s possibly the worst placement you could come up with for a microphone, because it barely picks up voice, and picks up all the typing, desk noises and speaker echo in the world. But I suppose that’s not surprising from the company that thought that a webcam beneath the laptop display would be a good idea...
I really thought they had some clever software or leasing to make the picture appear as if you were looking into it because of the placement but nope...just a nose cam.
Google hangouts is the worst in my experience. Bringing external people in who aren’t used to google meets are always surprised. We buy everyone nice microphones and our meeting protocols are you unmute you talk then remute when done. We have a bunch of parents so this has been a good practice no matter what.
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.
Almost. The laptop of the person being interrupted is essentially muting its mic temporarily to avoid sending an echo of the interrupter. You could say it's prioritizing its speaker over its mic.
Basically, of all the ostensibly unmuted mics, only the one with the loudest human is truly unmuted.
It's closer to half-duplex than full-duplex. Full-duplex with no artifacts requires no echo cancellation which requires headphones.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
I live next to a U.S. Marine Air Station. Until you get to share the full force of F/A-18s buzzing your place at full throttle, you haven't lived. Seriously - very loud.....
When Moffet Field was an operational Naval Air Station we would get P-3s, both going out to/returning from patrols, and circling around for touch an go landings for training, also C-5s and C-17s, and some fighters. The fighters were of course the noisiest, so you've got some serious loudness going on.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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").
one more damn thing to acquire that you maybe hope to never ever use again after the Year Of Videoconferencing is over and will have cluttering up your life forever after unless you find someone to pass it off to
(if you are really passionate about it: cut the gordian knot of all those problems by convincing whoever holds the purse strings that it would make all these interminable meetings much better if everyone had a nice mic, and get the company to buy a bunch and send them out.)
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.
> 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.
Reminded me of this article, easily one of the top 20 I've ever read (Brian Eno, Francis Crick, Italo Calvino, roller coasters, trepanation, time, death, drumming)
> “I was working with Larry Mullen, Jr., on one of the U2 albums,” Eno told me. “ ‘All That You Don’t Leave Behind,’ or whatever it’s called.” Mullen was playing drums over a recording of the band and a click track—a computer-generated beat that was meant to keep all the overdubbed parts in synch. In this case, however, Mullen thought that the click track was slightly off: it was a fraction of a beat behind the rest of the band. “I said, ‘No, that can’t be so, Larry,’ ” Eno recalled. “ ‘We’ve all worked to that track, so it must be right.’ But he said, ‘Sorry, I just can’t play to it.’ ”
> Eno eventually adjusted the click to Mullen’s satisfaction, but he was just humoring him. It was only later, after the drummer had left, that Eno checked the original track again and realized that Mullen was right: the click was off by six milliseconds. “The thing is,” Eno told me, “when we were adjusting it I once had it two milliseconds to the wrong side of the beat, and he said, ‘No, you’ve got to come back a bit.’ Which I think is absolutely staggering.”
I also go to a game developer meetup. This developer was actually delaying all of the players, so that 40ms was their typical latency, no matter what. The developer had done some research with his multiplayer game, and concluded that most people didn't notice under 40ms round trip.
Some of the hardcore FPS players in the group could definitely tell!
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!)
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.
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".
> 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.
> 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.
> 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.”
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.
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/
I wouldn't get a Blue Yeti for voice calls. Besides being pricey, it's a condenser mic and a lot more sensitive and prone to picking up other sounds you probably don't want.
Something like the Audio-Technica AT2005 also supports USB plug and play, is half to two-thirds the price, and is a dynamic mic so will reject a lot more of the undesirable sound before it even gets into the computer.
It's easier to not capture undesirable sounds than it is to try and clean it all up after.
I have a ModMic 4 and I am disappointed. I used it for voice calls with my Sennheiser Momentum headphones.
- Accidentally pulling on the wire will cause it to turn on the magnetic handle and create unpleasant noise for others.
- It picks up signal from the phone trying to connect and transmits it to the listeners as buzzing sound. So I had to put my phone far away to avoid that.
- The mute switch does not really mute, it’s more like turning the volume to 10%. Learned that the hard/awkward way.
- Sound quality is mediocre, to me it always sounded like any generic mid-range headphones+mic combo.
If I could test ModMic before buying it, I would pass. I’d rather put the money towards a standalone mic (e.g. yeti) + boom arm. It’s expensive, but the quality is way better. I now use Røde PodMic with Scarlett Solo. It’s whole other price tier, but I do not regret spending that money, which I cannot say for the ModMic.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
AirPods have a worse mic than pretty much anything you can get. Macbook Pro's built-in microphone or Apple's $20 wired earbuds both have much better mics than AirPods.
I would suggest recording yourself using different microphones and comparing them to see how bad Airpods mic is.
Just did this. My AirPods Pro sounded a lot worse (very soft, muffled and way less resonant) than the pair of analog 3.5mm wired earbuds that came with an older iPhone.
I suspect it's because the wired earbuds had a mic near my throat whereas the Airpods' mic were up near my ears. The difference is very noticeable.
Looks like I'll be keeping my wired earbuds around for future conference calls.
Airpods can't compete with a decently priced boom microphone that actually comes close to your mouth. The distance from your mouth to your ear (where the mic resides) is quite long especially considering how little space they have to throw in a capsule into.
So, either you'll get a lot of ambient noise, the signal is quiet or Apple will do some algorithmic trickery that tries to approximate some kind of echo cancelation on the audio signal, but compared to a simple dynamic microphone that just has a more favorable position and form factor, it'll always lose.
Hmm. I just measured the distance between my Airpods and the corner of my mouth at 3" or around 7.5cm. Very approximate measurement, but it seems to be not far off of recommendations for where to place headset boom mics (google says 1-3 inches from the mouth.)
Also, it's worth noting what the goal is here. The aim is not to capture the most accurate sound period. I've had calls with people who clearly have very expensive setups, but I end up hearing pen clicks, keyboard sounds, breathing, swallowing etc. The Airpods seem to do a great job of making my voice sound good in general. I've gotten compliments on my audio (so it can't be that bad) and the Airpods don't seem to pick up my breathing, typing, etc so I'm happy.
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.
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).
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.
That depends on the pickup pattern of the microphone, the gain on the mic and the distance between the mic and the keyboard.
The pickup pattern dictates which direction(s) the microphone is sensitive to: see https://ehomerecordingstudio.com/microphone-polar-patterns/ as one example. You'd want a cardiod mic turned so that the least sensitive part of the mic faces your keyboard.
Secondly you'll need to get the microphone close to you so you don't need a ton of gain to be heard well. You can put the mic 10 feet from you and with enough amplification people will hear you, but they'll hear every chair squeak and you shuffling your feet and the ac coming on as well. Get it close and you don't have to increase gain nearly as much.
Finally the greater the distance between the mic and keyboard the less likely your tapping will be heard. But again if gain has to be used to pick you up, you're more likely to hear the keyboard even with a cardiod mic because sound still reflects and echoes. Consider something like the Blue snowball as an intro microphone or call up a supplier and have a conversation with a real audio tech, which I am not.
The issue is once you get off into mics then you have to ask yourself which input type(s) do you want, what sort of pre-processing you may want, etc.
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.
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).
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.
> 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.
> 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.
As someone who recently forgot they were still sharing their screen while simultaneously starting to chat with a colleague about how incompetent the person currently talking is... I feel your particular kind of pain.
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.
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.
The "pop-less" microphone switch is generally a series R-C pair, where the R is, say, 1 MOhm, and the C a few µF. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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).
> the problem is that you dont know if the other people are actually paying attention and human interactions need that feedback
This is going into the realm of the kind of monitoring software that tracks your eye movement to make sure you're concentrating.
If people are not paying attention to whatever you're presenting in your meeting, maybe the meeting is not relevant for those people. Consider cancelling it.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
>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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
Put on headphones, linked to your phone, mute the phone mic (do not skip this step), and hold a video call with yourself between your computer and your phone.
Quality supercardioid microphone will reject echo well enough for most rooms and a meter or two distance. That is usually enough distance to not typically require a pop filter, this giving improved clarity.
Hypercardioid "shotgun" works too as long as its back is placed far enough off a wall, however these tend to have sound coloration.
It just so happens that most microphones are the less directional cardioid. Or worse, omnidirectional.
Step 1. Get a quality mic.
Step 2. Control the sound in your environment. The best mic in the world won’t help if you sound like you’re recording in the middle of your kitchen.
One of the worst aspects of listening to a great interview is when the guest is in a space with tons of audio reflections. You want the sound of your voice, not the room.
Many podcast hosts climbed into closets with sound dampening clothes on hangers during the pandemic. It worked out reasonably well.
If you’re doing audio professionally, consider treating the recording space. If you don’t want to put panels on the walls, get free-standing panels that can be stored when not in use:
This video from Electroboom has a lot of similar comparisions, examples, tips and tricks for high quality audio. With all the science behind to back it up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7CtnR47w20 (Fantastic channel btw)
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.
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.
I've seen in some places that this might need some power (as a Rodes VideoMicro needs from the camera) so it wouldn't work in a laptop. Where did you connect it?
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.
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.
In nearly every case, a dedicated usb interface is going to have better quality ADC and mic preamps. High-quality sound cards are not prioritized by consumers, so they remain rather poor quality in most laptops and pcs. Even something like a focusrite scarlett is going to improve the signal chain immensely (plus you get the added bonus of a decent DAC as well).
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.
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.
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.
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 !
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.
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.
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!
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.
I love the modularity of the boom mike attaching to existing headphones. I have been using a Bluetooth adapter which keeps things modular. You can plugin a wired headset to it. Of course, keep things wired when talking with someone else. But you can reuse that wired headset as Bluetooth when you just want to listen and want to roam around. https://www.amazon.com/Mpow-Bluetooth-Receiver-Connection-Ha...
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
This depends a lot on your budget, voice and whether your room is treated or not. My room is not treated. I use a Røde 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 Røde 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 Røde, just happened to like their mics. There are many other good choices in the same price ranges.
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.
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:
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.
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?
No and yes. I am not a particular fan of UA and don't own any of their gear but unless something has changed in recent years I think they deserve their good reputation. I think of them as good middle-range rather than fancy or premium.
In general the more something is marketed to musicians, the more it is likely to have a slight bias designed to flatter the source material, and your tastes may vary depending on what sort of music you like, eg British stuff tends to have a gentle double EQ peak, American stuff tends to be a little more punchy in the midrange, Japanese stuff slightly more flat, Swedish and German stuff has a sound of its own, and so on. These are very slight biases, and maybe they're what 'sounds good' to engineers based on linguistic and musical differences.
Stuff marketed to film/broadcast tends to emphasize accuracy and fidelity (in the marketing materials anyway...). These days anything other than bargain basement is neutral and clean enough for that sort of work. Although I owned much more bulky and expensive gear, I've done several feature films with a small portable recorder by Zoom that costs only a few hundred dollars. It sounds great, because I plug great microphones into and use great headphones to monitor (and know how to listen!), plus I work hard to control the dynamics and you generally don't need the same sort of dynamic flexibility for film work that you need for musical performance.
If I was recording music I'd say the same recorder is just adequate because for musical purposes you want some nice color and pleasing dynamics. If you're lookinga t several options in the same price bracket and not really sure which to go for, play around with the external controls. The quality feel of the front panel, knobs, and buttons/switches is a reflection of the internal engineering quality. If you like the physical feel of one unit over another, you'll probably have the same experience with the audio path and the software stack, if it's digital.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
I was referring to the video. It was a little bit of a leap that I didn't make clear, but it was just an example of someone able to completely tune out the quality of the media they are consuming and I imagine that can carry to voice calls
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.
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?
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.
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.)
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.
It's a supercardioid (partly directional) microphone. The only difference for user is that it is XLR and needs the 48V button set to on, and a shock mount because this specific one is sensitive to hits. It comes with an ok spider mount, but you need at least a tiny extra tripod.
$50 is about the price of the microphone.
It so happens that there's the $70 USB version of it too, but the interface in it is just acceptable, as opposed to being superb. (This microphone sounds as good as $400 RODE products, using it with bad interface is a disservice when $80 gets you a great one.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It's unfortunate that this article recommends a condenser mic at the end. In my opinion, most people who need better audio for video calls are better served with a dynamic mic. Very few people have a bedroom or office room with proper acoustic treatment. A dynamic mic will be better for most consumers trying to get better audio for Zoom, Meet, Teams, etc.
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.
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+.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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]
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.)
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.
"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.'"
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.
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?
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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?".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
I've been using the kit with the arm for about a year now. I bought it just for meetings as I don't stream games or do podcasts. The kit itself is freaking amazing. Almost all parts are made from smooth-non-gloss metal and the audio quality is amazing. People from the office commented on it when I switched over since the mic on the macbook makes my voice sound like I'm talking from a tin can and the voice was very nasal-like (+ the obvious echo issues). Now I sound like myself and I would dare say, more manly. Deeper sound etc. I recommend the kit to everyone I can. It is the best "cheap" kit you will find and won't need to spend thousands. The mic itself has a small volume knob that that I set to about 10% to 15%. I can have my washing machine run in the background and nobody can hear it. It uses 1x usb port and work on Windows/Mac/Linux - I'm currently using on a MacBook Air that runs Fedora 33 (mic volume knob at ~15% and PulseAudio mic volume 85%). Gaming headsets are all basically garbage, don't bother with them. Other than that, I use a Samson SR850. It's a cheap studio headset that is decent quality - I bought it because the Roland model I wanted was out of stock.
That is awesome, I def. also will get the arm (and esp. the shock mount). Do you have the mic close to your mouth "podcaster style" for optimal results or rather away and out of frame? I still struggle with that. I don't want to look like I'm trying too hard and it seems a bit restrictive having it hang between keyboard and screen. Having it next to my keyboard is already a huge quality improvement so I keep it there.
I am also not afiliated in any way with Fifine but I was really impressed by the build quality of the mic.
I am also on Fedora and on the journey of improving audio I also have been playing around with Pulseeffects. Playing around with gate, compressor and limiter, etc. can certainly improve even more (and cut off some noise, etc.) but I am still figuring things out:
So you can keep it further away from your face, but then you have to up the volume knob on the mic itself. But that makes it a bit more sensitive to other noises (like breathing, typing on keyboard etc).
The kit also comes with a little tri-pod to mount the mic. So instead of having the mic hang in front of you face/camera, you can put it between your hands in front of you, the same way you can put a cup of coffee between your hands/arms while typing. Then just speak downwards toward the mic instead of stretching your neck towards the mic on the arm and looking like a podcaster/streamer.
You also don't really need the extra pop filter in the kit - the mic sock works fine enough on its own.
Then I'd recommend using a recording app (pulsecaster on fedora) and record yourself! Listen to what the mic does to your voice at different volumes (always leave the pulseaudio volume at 85%, use the knob on the mic).
If you want to loop you own voice back through your headphones (and typing noises), run the following command:
pacmd load-module module-loopback latency_msec=5
and to unload it:
pacmd unload-module module-loopback
Sometimes I would just sit alone (not in a meeting), without any music and just listen to my typing while I code (looping the mic back into the headphones). Feels like you are sitting underneath the keys! It's soothing in a way.
I mean I have the Fifine with the non-tripod stand (linked above) and mic sock and use it already besides my notebook slightly angled towards my mouth out of the frame. I keep gain knob down and when I am lazy, I just set Zoom's auto audio gain adjust which makes for an even output signal even when you move slightly.
On conference calls my headphones are usually plugged into the audio-out of the back of the mic so I can monitor my audio (and Linux can also output the system sound to that channel).
Is it ethical to buy such equipment from China? You never know how it was made and that country does have a record of human rights abuse.
I'd rather pay more and buy something made locally.
> I'd rather pay more and buy something made locally.
Do you mean the lavalier mic from Aliexpress I mentioned? Well I first ordered one from Amazon and from knowing that and from looking at many other offers it is clear that these are pretty much all the same model.
And so you pay for different marketing.
When it comes to “not knowing how it’s made”: It is not even using a USB connection but rather plugs right into the microphone jack. So not sure how this could be used for surveillance.
And regarding the human rights: Sure that is not ok. But most things are made in China and it is hard to escape.
But if you find something good made “locally” (wherever that might be for you) then please share!
I did a little research when I was looking for a lav microphone and narrowed it down to those options - Sanken Cos-11D (Japan) and DPA 4060 (Denmark). I also considered Sennheiser ME-2, as it appears to be made in Philippines.
Eventually I got Sanken. I costs about 10 times more than Chinese microphones on Amazon, but I feel better knowing I am not helping building Chinese vision of communism.
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.
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....
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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!
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.
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.
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.
It exactly confirms how that expression became popular there. A direct false association with "improving" "the look of the vehicles." (das Fahrrad == a bicycle)
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."
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:
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.
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.
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 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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
(As I noted in another comment, it's also true that if we talk over each other, it's mostly accidental.)
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)
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?
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
Thanks. Most of the small condensers seemed to be designed for instruments which is why I thought shotgun would be better. I really could live without a 12 inch long mic so I'll take a look.
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.
@xiii1408 - just to add to this. I've went and bought the mic that you and others in this thread recommended. I've used it for a few hours now and compared it with BoseQ35 mic and of course it's amazing.
For anyone else reading: do it. Buy it. You'll sound more real on teleconference calls and.
As for (1), I'm not bothered about video too much so use 720p webcam.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.)
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.
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.)
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.
> 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.
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.
My point is that all of those things you're talking about are already at full quality in a Logitech C920 for 1080p.
The sensor size, the resolution, the aperture, the optics -- they're all sufficient. There's nothing to improve upon that will yield a measureable difference. There's no distortion, no chromatic abberation, no noise with decent lighting, nothing.
Everything you're talking about matters if you're dealing with low light, or zooming in, or you want depth of field, or 60fps, etc etc etc.
But what precise detail do you claim is better at 1080p with the DSLR? Because from your list, it's not resolution. You don't want a larger aperture because you don't want depth of field on videoconferencing. And "quality optics" means nothing -- if there's already no distortion, no blurring and no aberration at 1080p, then there's no more quality to be found.
It's just the physics of photography and sensors. Photographic equipment is designed around thresholds of quality. If your equipment is already above the threshold you need, even better equipment makes zero difference.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Oh no I love sci-hub but I second-guess linking it. Thanks for the mirror!
So, reading the paper proper, I was wrong about it being the authors' talks. They picked existing engineering talks and interviews. It'd be nice to be able to actually see the clips to get a sense of how much they changed the quality. They say they put the clips on youtube for the test but don't take the opportunity to link the clips.
In the Science Friday graph all the error bars overlap so meh. For the combined technical talks the error bars don't overlap and they're all in the same direction, which is way more encouraging, though I really wish they'd tried it with a pool of more talks to remove that systemic effect. I also worry about the fact that random mechanical turks may differ from the usual audience for a technical talk in important ways (e.g. not knowing the subject and so having nothing to go on besides audio quality). They say in a note at the end of the paper that they tried filtering by correctly answering a question at the end, and that the effect was still there, but they don't show the data for it or say if it affected the strength.
Overall I feel it's a reasonable methodology and certainly suggestive results, if a bit lacking in the exact methodological details and the number of talks they tried it on. And it's not like I have a prior that audio quality doesn't matter...
Yeah, that was my overall take: reasonably convincing, neither a dumpster fire nor a slamdunk.
These days I don't believe these sorts of psychology effects until I see a Registered Report, but this also isn't the hot steaming garbage you'd expect from the OP summary. It's more or less what you'd expect from a small but not super-small sample investigating a moderate real effect across the board which does seem pretty plausible a priori.
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.
That's why Nvidia Broadcast is such a nice app. I recommended it to a work mate who just got a newborn and more or less only one room.
It removes the background from the webcam and all background noises, including other humans, from the audio. It's impressive how good it works. Not perfect. But impressive.
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 ;)
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).
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.
It's a simple correlation. Our brain does this all the time.
And not always in sense of "better quality" -> "smarter".
For example, we're so used to cheap TV content, that when a movie is played at higher TV framerate, it looks "cheap" to us.
I've heard a few attempts to explain this as "in higher framerate you can see the sets are fake", but that makes no sense, especially if the set is not moving.
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.
[Lady] "Gaga singing into the wrong side of a $20k microphone live on 3 networks is the single greatest example of the importance of audio engineers there may ever be."
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.
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.
- 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I got a nice microphone but it's not directional and it picks up way too much ambient noise. Also I think it might echo (MacBook pro) so I just switched back to the internal microphone cause it seems to noise cancel correctly. Does anyone know a solution for that? I use MBP speakers for output.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
Author nowhere mentions about the bitrate or what constitutes as "high quality" and what constitutes as "low quality". Would be helpful to have this info.
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
I'm struggling with audio quality over zoom on Linux. Anyone could recommend a good microphone that sounds reasonably fine. Preferable something below 100$.
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:
If you’re on Mac a fairly cheap way (around $300/£250) 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.
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.
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.)
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!)
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.)
Ah, I see you're a man of culture as well :) I've seen exactly what you're talking about, and yes - once a DAW is in the mix you have to account for the DAW's routing.
Historically, audio routing is something you do within a DAW, between tracks and plugins and the like - and routing sound between separate apps is a niche OS feature based on hacks and workarounds (like VAC) instead of the OS providing primitives that map to the concept model. In an outboard setup you could at least trace the cables to see what's connected to what... and that's what audio routing on any OS lacks (JACK patchbays notwithstanding, since JACK is a pain to run alongside normal PulseAudio).
If I remember correctly, it was non-obvious how to set up monitoring with Live and VAC, so I ended up using ASIO4ALL which can bridge multiple soundcards - but prevents other programs besides your DAW from using them. You're right, audio routing on Windows is a bit of a mess, MacOS is plug and play with strings attached, and on Linux there's JACK which has potential for greatness but is somewhat underdeveloped. Same as any desktop feature on these OSes :)
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
with Zoom/etc. one can also add voice cleaner/improver similar to that software that makes a pop-star singer out of a nobody. Instead of bubbling you will be delivering into the ears of your team like the Voice was delivering the Commandments to Moses.
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).
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 RØDE NT-USB for this purpose - all it needs is an available USB-A port.
Most of these are great options but I don't have the will nor interest in buying some new interfacing device to mimic a radio jockey-esque voice over environment.
Just a simple plug and play will do, I actually just searched hard and finally ordered the Rode NT-USB. thank you.
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.
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.
I'm surprised at the tune of HN about advocating towards higher quality audio input tech.
If anything, we should be actively fighting this trend and instead focus on training ourselves to listen carefully rather than relying on 'good audio' to hear a message.
You're talking about a training effort of unknown structure and length, for millions of people, who are already mostly confident they're "listening carefully." Better quality audio tech, is much cheaper and easier.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
(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...