[HN Gopher] Tips for immersive video calls
___________________________________________________________________
Tips for immersive video calls
Author : luu
Score : 119 points
Date : 2020-09-27 21:12 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.benkuhn.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.benkuhn.net)
| ponker wrote:
| One thing that people don't mention is just having a beefy
| computer. Programs like Zoom and Teams are a combination of
| horribly engineered and replete with processing-intensive
| features like virtual backgrounds and noise/echo removal. Using a
| desktop PC instead of a closed overheating laptop goes a long
| way.
| munificent wrote:
| Since I don't see anyone mentioning this yet, I want to emphasize
| the recommendation for open-back headphones. This is by a large
| margin my favorite piece of hardware for making video calls
| tolerable. I never deal with echo, noise cancellation, or shitty
| speaker output. But at the same time I can hear myself perfectly
| fine when I speak and I don't get the claustrophobic feeling of
| having the external world shut out.
| mwcampbell wrote:
| Did you get separate headphones and mic as Ben suggested, or an
| open-back headset with an integrated boom mic? I think I'd
| rather go the latter route if I can get a headset with a good
| mic; the Sennheiser GameOne looks like a good choice.
| munificent wrote:
| For a while I was still using my laptop's mic. Now I do have
| a separate microphone as well.
|
| I don't use a headset mic. My experience is that those rarely
| sound good and tend to end up with even more breathing and
| mouth noises and stuff than even a computer's built in mic.
|
| I have a Blue Yeti that work got me. I've asked other people
| on video chats and they say the mic is a big improvement over
| my laptop's. I think that particular mic is a little bulky
| and ostentatious but it seems to get the job done.
| gomox wrote:
| The ambient sound rejection of boom microphones (the ones
| on headsets) is superior to anything else just by virtue of
| how close they are to your mouth.
|
| You have to do a modicum of adjustment to make sure you are
| not breathing on the actual microphone, or chewing on stuff
| while you are not muted. I shift to my ambient microphone
| if I'm eating on a call.
|
| Unless you are in a studio-grade environment (including not
| typing on your computer) or doing some serious voice
| recording, I have found boom microphones to be the better
| tradeoff for actually talking to others.
| falcolas wrote:
| Wired internet and wired headphones make such a huge difference,
| it's almost unreal. My best video conversations are always with
| others are with those who do the same thing. There are just fewer
| gaps in the conversation, fewer "can you hear me now" moments
| when headphones unpair, and fewer "Mr. Roboto" moments.
| tjansen wrote:
| I had a lot of issues with bluetooth headphones as well, but at
| least Logitech's USB dongle headsets never caused any issues
| for me. I'm using a H800. The audio device is always available
| as long as the dongle is plugged in, even if you turn off the
| headset, so you never have the issue of your audio device not
| being available and your software switching to a different
| device. You only need to turn the headset on and it works.
|
| Jabra has a similar USB dongle (Jabra Link), but I haven't used
| it yet.
| JustResign wrote:
| Agreed. I use the Jabra dongle and it's great, even switching
| machines via USB hub
| gomox wrote:
| That's because the actual silent killer of conference calls is
| people that use speakers.
| BuildTheRobots wrote:
| I find wireless headphones to be amazingly liberating -
| especially if they have their own mute button. Being able to
| pace around in the middle of a meeting, or even nip to the loo
| and not miss the conversation (we've been here 70min and I've
| been muted for 65 of them) means I actually pay far more
| attention to what's going on.
| falcolas wrote:
| A lot of headphones have long cords, which can give you 10+
| feet of movement options. Bluetooth may give you freedom, but
| you sacrifice latency and reliability.
| gomox wrote:
| The higher end Jabra's are wired _and_ wireless (USB cable
| that can be detached) so you can get the audio quality or the
| freedom depending on what is more appropriate at a given
| time.
|
| Keep in mind: Bluetooth audio _sucks_ for calls, it's way
| lower bitrate than normal music-mode bluetooth audio.
| mcny wrote:
| I was thinking about getting "better" bluetooth headphones than
| my current cheap one ear one mic headset Sennheiser headset but
| between your comment and the article
|
| > (~$100) Buy open-back headphones, which let you hear your own
| voice normally and are extremely comfortable.
|
| I think I might stick with what I have.
| gxqoz wrote:
| My understanding is that newer Bluetooth sets can at least
| get closer to being better. But still not as good as a wired
| set.
| toast0 wrote:
| Indeed. All the latency (well most of it) adds up. If you're
| running wifi on the same spectrum as audio, that adds latency
| and jitter too.
|
| In an ideal world, voice would be over (real) PTSN which has
| tremendously low latency compared to anything modern. Cost and
| convenience make that unlikely though.
|
| Not everyone has a stable desk they can run wired ethernet to,
| but if you can it makes things better.
| jeremy151 wrote:
| I took this to a bit of an extreme, using a Sennheiser
| broadcast headset into a USB sound card. I also added a
| hardware mute button inline, with a big clicky button with
| which you can easily tell the mute status (and mute/unmute)
| regardless of which window is up front. It also lets you pipe
| your own voice back into your ear, which can be a bit more
| comfortable listening wise. It really takes the guesswork out
| of quality and makes it much easier to use, especially when you
| might have to use 4 different conference applications in a day,
| and can't quickly recall where the mute button is in a
| particular one.
| sneak wrote:
| What model headset do you use?
| jborichevskiy wrote:
| I remember doing live A/V broadcast and we had a similar
| setup for comms for the whole team - a hardware push to talk
| switch was amazing. Might have to invest in something similar
| for my home workstation too.
| jeremy151 wrote:
| Yes, exactly that. I was in live production for some years,
| that's where I grew to like the simplicity / bullet proof
| nature of that style. It would be nice if a manufacturer
| would release a USB headset that allowed monitoring of ones
| own voice, and a hardware talk switch.
| jonpurdy wrote:
| I wrote an article with some overlap with Ben's article about
| this back in March[1], so I've been experimenting with trying to
| get better audio and video outside of Zoom and other apps.
|
| They tend to optimize for the lowest common denominator. Despite
| having a nice headworn mic and earbuds, great webcam and good
| lighting setup, Zoom and other apps tend to optimize for using as
| little bandwidth as possible so my audio doesn't sound nearly as
| good as it could.
|
| Ben makes some good points that I didn't mention or consider
| myself: - I wasn't aware of Zoom's "use original audio" feature
| so I'll need to give that a try. - Dedicated monitor is great;
| having a presentation monitor allows you to keep your shared
| screen clean but still have notes and other stuff available. -
| Open back headphones to hear your own voice: good idea if you
| have a dedicated space to yourself, but not if you share the
| space with anyone else
|
| The biggest problem with this is other people: you won't get any
| benefits from others if they have a bad setup. So it requires
| everyone to have a reasonable setup (even just a headset makes a
| huge difference).
|
| [1] https://jonpurdy.com/2020/03/how-to-improve-your-
| zoomskype-t...
| ghaff wrote:
| >Dedicated monitor is great; having a presentation monitor
| allows you to keep your shared screen clean but still have
| notes and other stuff available
|
| I have a dual monitor setup but what I find works even better
| for notes and other shared docs a lot of the time is working on
| a laptop alongside my desktop computer. Admittedly I'm in a
| dedicated office so I just need to turn a bit to type on my
| laptop.
|
| One of the advantages is that I have a very clicky mechanical
| keyboard on my desktop so typing while on a call is noisy if
| I'm also speaking so can't be muted.
| BossingAround wrote:
| > Don't mute
|
| No, please, do mute. I don't want to hear a baby crying in the
| background while the SO tries to calm them down, nor do I want to
| hear someone doing the dishes, or the police siren that seems to
| have stopped in a congested area. We have work to do. Please,
| let's get it done and stop the meeting.
|
| Also, thank you Google for enabling people to mute other
| participants who do not realize how loud their environment is.
|
| This article seems to come from a place where people live in big,
| spacious places (possibly rural North America? I could see
| Canada). The reality for me is that most of my coworkers work
| from a 1- or 2-bedroom studios crammed with kids and/or their
| significant others.
| falcolas wrote:
| Highly personal opinion, there's no need to mute in those
| scenarios either (at least in low participant count videos). It
| makes the speaker able to adapt to things that are impacting
| their listener's attention. Even if they're muted, a child
| crying is going to take their attention, and its better that
| the speaker is aware of it.
|
| A simple noise canceling microphone takes care of distant, and
| thus unimportant sounds.
|
| EDIT: Please take note of the "in low participant count videos"
| caveat above before lambasting me about how this doesn't work
| in 40 person meetings. I'm talking about meetings with 3-4
| people.
| GhostVII wrote:
| Hearing a child crying doesn't just make me aware that
| someone is distracted, it also distracts me and makes it much
| harder to communicate. I would much rather have one person on
| the call be distracted while on mute than have the entire
| call be distracted. Also depending on what video conferencing
| software you use, background noise like crying continually
| interrupts the speaker and makes it really hard to hear.
|
| Nothing annoys me more than people having background noise
| and not muting themselves, no one should be pushing crying
| babies and barking dogs to my headphones without a reason it
| completely ruins the call for me. If I really need to know if
| they are distracted, I can just look at their video.
| saurik wrote:
| I think a big difference is the assumption of the kind of
| meeting you are in; for most of the business meetings I
| consider valuable, if there is someone distracted by a
| transient issue the meeting should stop and wait, and if it
| doesn't they are just going to have to stop everything
| themselves to request things be repeated for them. If you
| are in a meeting and it doesn't matter if you are
| distracted you aren't really participating, are you? ;P So
| like, definitely mute the call as you are just an observer.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| This simply doesn't work in the long run, and/or at scale.
| For me someone who doesn't mute while they're not talking is
| a dead giveaway they haven't been doing remote work for very
| long.
|
| It's simply rude to broadcast your noise to the entire group
| of people, let alone dozens of people doing so at the same
| time. If your child is crying, it's fine, I understand how
| things are, and of course I'll understand you're distracted.
| However, I'm not fine with your child distracting all 20
| people on the call.
| juliansimioni wrote:
| The answer probably depends on if it's a big or small
| meeting.
|
| For a 1-on-1, you absolutely want to know if the other person
| on the call is going to be distracted, or you're wasting your
| time.
|
| For a 40 person all hands, the meeting could probably never
| proceed if it waited for everyone to be completely
| distraction free.
| pen2l wrote:
| My opinion: no, do mute, as just another adhd kiddo, man
| those police sirens will bring me down in no time. I get what
| you're saying though, and I recognize there's value in folks
| getting to know a little bit of each other's situation -- but
| I think we can just let each other know of our situations
| verbally when an event rises to the level of a certain
| importance, and minimize the unimportant sounds as much as
| possible.
| spullara wrote:
| Highly recommend NVIDIA Broadcast which will silence almost all
| background noise.
| pwinnski wrote:
| The TL;DR has as point 1: don't work in a place where babies
| crying or dish-washing or police sirens are an issue, and then
| as part of point 4: therefore, don't mute.
|
| If you have a baby crying or police sirens, then yes, for the
| sake of everybody's sanity, mute yourself. For sure.
| kazinator wrote:
| > _don 't work in a place where babies crying or dish-washing
| or police sirens are an issue_
|
| I.e. don't work in the middle of a global pandemic.
|
| A headset mic will pick up your loud typing, sniffling,
| clearing your throat, and whatever. Even if you are working
| out of a sound-proofed office, and in a group call, mute your
| mic when not speaking.
| gomox wrote:
| Not necessarily. I can vacuum my house with my Bluetooth
| headset and you can't hear it on the other end. Your issue
| is with people that use ambient microphones, more than with
| people that don't mute.
| falcolas wrote:
| > A headset mic will pick up your loud typing, ... and
| whatever.
|
| Not necessarily. A cheap one will, since it acts as an
| omnidirectional microphone. A good one, however, will have
| a hypercardoid microphone and an externally directed second
| omnidirectional microphone hooked up to a noise canceling
| circuit that renders external sounds effectively inaudible.
|
| I can type on my keyboard with my Antlion mic on, and it's
| not audible to others (even though it's fairly loud to my
| ears). And yes, I tested this with a local recording first.
|
| That said, I agree that coughing, clearing your throat, and
| such are definitely mute moments.
| LukeShu wrote:
| I had a headset mic that worked fine as long as I plugged
| it directly in to my laptop.
|
| Then one day I plugged it in to the port on my laptop's
| dock, instead of the plug on the laptop itself. In the
| dock's port it was suddenly so sensitive that it was
| picking up the slightest sound out of the headphones (and
| immediately feeding back)! And a conversation going on in
| the neighboring conference room, that I couldn't even
| hear on my own! Unless you really focused on something it
| was just _insane_ loud background noise. But, it was fine
| once I turned the mic volume down to like 2%. But also,
| my words could be made out even with the insane
| sensitivity--I guess that 's pretty impressive dynamic
| range.
|
| So:
|
| 1. If you're picking up things on the mic you think you
| shouldn't, try turning down the mic's volume, it might be
| that your voice stays loud enough, but everything else
| drops off.
|
| 2. If you're getting background noise now, it might not
| be your new setting, it might be your computer hardware.
| If you're using different computing hardware maybe you
| need to fuss with the volume even though it's the same
| headset as before.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| > A headset mic will pick up your loud typing, sniffling,
| clearing your throat, and whatever.
|
| It won't if you spend 2 minutes setting your audio
| thresholds.
| pwinnski wrote:
| This is just not true in my experience.
|
| A poor-quality headset mic and sub-standard audio software
| might. People dialing in on a phone should always be muted
| at all times, even when they have something to say, because
| phone quality with Zoom isn't good. But on my laptop, with
| my headphones, I can even chew and no sound is transmitted
| at all. I can see this on my real-time level monitor, and
| have confirmed it with others. I _don 't_ eat during
| meetings, but I could.
|
| Typing and sniffing sounds like people using a built-in
| laptop mic as a speakerphone, not a headset.
| camgunz wrote:
| I take your point--these are weird times. But one,
| hopefully they won't last forever and remote work will be
| here to stay. Two, I've maybe never had a workplace that
| wasn't full of distractions, including police sirens and
| dishwashing (but let's toss in random political
| conversations, free lunch food, ping pong, doors slamming,
| etc etc). I'm on team Spolsky where everyone gets an
| office, but I'm also aware it'll never, ever happen.
| notatoad wrote:
| i'm not sure why you're getting downvoted because this is, as
| far as i can tell, the central point of the whole piece: the
| most important thing you can do for making a properly
| immersive, high-quality video call is to isolate yourself
| away from background noise. once you've done that, then go
| ahead start geeking out over the quality of your mic, your
| camera quality, your backlighting, and all the other details.
|
| but if you can't isolate yourself from background noise, then
| there's no point in getting fancy equipment for the rest of
| the stuff. just put yourself on mute and use your laptop's
| built in mic and webcam, because nothing you try will fix the
| background noise.
| pwinnski wrote:
| I'm not sure why I'm being downvoted either, but I guess
| many people find it hard to believe that not everybody has
| the same experiences they do?
|
| Like, I don't have a baby crying in my house because I
| don't have a baby. Or pets. If you do, stay muted. Where I
| live my environment is very, very quiet. Which the article
| says is step 1. If you can't do step 1, then yeah, this
| article isn't for you.
| ghaff wrote:
| I think people were mostly reacting to the suggestion
| that you don't need to mute in a quiet environment.
|
| Which I sort of agree with in a small call where people
| are having back and forth conversation with each other.
| If I'm in a 1:1 I don't mute.
|
| But it's still a good idea on larger calls or even a
| smaller one where you're just going to be listening to a
| presentation. In general, there's not a lot of cost
| associated with going on mute.
| [deleted]
| chrismorgan wrote:
| You seem to have skipped the entire context of the article and
| that point, which is having good acoustics, including "get away
| from other people" and "get a better microphone". If you don't
| have both of those, then the advice is manifestly inapplicable.
| skratlo wrote:
| So to summarize:
|
| $800 dollars for what? "Immersive video call"?
|
| And this one made me laugh:
|
| > Prefer Zoom to most alternatives
| sneak wrote:
| It is upsetting that the advice for best quality / lowest
| friction is still basically "use a service that surveils and
| records your whole call".
|
| I look forward to the day when high quality doesn't also mean
| "private conversation is impossible".
| tjansen wrote:
| For me, getting a USB speakerphone made a huge difference. It's
| so much more comfortable than wearing a headset all day, even a
| wireless one.
|
| After a lot of research (I would recommend this blind test as a
| start: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBRkKAelaKQ) I decided for
| the Calisto P7200. Its microphone quality seems to be comparable
| to a headset, and it will automatically turn off when there are
| no human voices, so nobody will hear you typing.
| ohazi wrote:
| Ugh. Doing this makes the call worse for everybody else. Get a
| more comfortable headset instead.
| Shared404 wrote:
| Seconding this. I like the Arctis line by SteelSeries.
|
| The only exception I can think of is if your environment is
| exceptionally quiet -- It's probably not -- or if your
| mic/computer have better audio filtering then most.
| Wistar wrote:
| Thank you! I just ordered the P7200. Had I not seen your post,
| I'd have not been aware of the device.
| tootie wrote:
| I have a Jabra and I love it, but in a crowded house with
| meetings and remote learning going on, it's not usually an
| option. A USB headset with directional microphone works well
| for me.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| What's the difference between a USB speakerphone and just using
| the microphone and speakers in your computer?
| cj wrote:
| Not the OP, but in my case my laptop is docked (laptop shut)
| when working with 2 external monitors attached.
| FooHentai wrote:
| The mic and speakers on the laptop are designed for a single
| listener/speaker sitting directly in front of the machine.
|
| A USB speakerphone is designed for multiple speakers and a
| wider area in which they could be positioned.
|
| You also get some advantages from isolating the mic/speaker
| from the laptop chassis, noise control and such. Same
| reasoning as using an external DAC/Amp for headphones rather
| than the onboard interfaces.
| gomox wrote:
| It's comfortable but it's not full duplex as opposed to a
| proper headset. Keep in mind everyone else's ability to speak
| to you on a call is impaired by using a speakerphone.
| pimlottc wrote:
| Hmm, the datasheet [0] for the Calisto 7200 claims to deliver
| full duplex audio:
|
| > Four microphone directional array technology provides
| superior echo cancellation and full duplex audio
|
| One of the reviewers on Amazon says this as well [1].
|
| 0: https://www.poly.com/content/dam/plantronics/documents-
| and-g...
|
| 1: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-
| reviews/R1NFJRGUUYWF4F/re...
| gomox wrote:
| I have tried enough conference call speakerphones that
| claimed to be full duplex to know that it's a safe
| assumption that the claim is 100% false.
|
| I haven't tried this specific one but from my point of view
| the odds of a microphone picking up your voice clearly from
| 2ft away, while happily filtering out a very loud sound
| being emitted 1cm away at the same time, are quite low.
| Much lower than the odds of a marketing drone getting away
| with lying on a product brochure.
|
| I'm not an audio expert, but I doubt the SNR is there for
| the noise cancelling to be effective when you have to
| substract a 10db echo to recover a 1db voice.
|
| On the other hand, Katie from the Amazon review seems
| knowledgeable and she has past reviews of other
| speakerphones so it might be worth a shot :) Still, I'll
| believe it when I hear it!
| danilocesar wrote:
| There's another important tip for people using external monitors:
| Please put the meeting window in the same monitor that your
| camera is.
|
| Imagine yourself talking to someone that is always looking to the
| side (even tough, at their point of view, they are looking to
| you).
| ticmasta wrote:
| This advice is all targeted at the technical challenges which, in
| the language of NSB, are all accidental factors. The essential
| challenge of video calls is bandwidth; you just don't get the
| same depth of rich, non-verbal communication. I find I need to
| turn up my antennae to 11 to really "hear" what people are trying
| to communicate, which is incredibly exhausting.
|
| Nothing wrong with the advice here, but done perfectly it will
| take your meetings from a 3/10 to a 6. I was hoping for tips on
| improving communication.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| The tip is to approach the online persona of every person as a
| different person than their offline persona. People act
| differently online than they do offline. People expect to send
| and receive as much information and in the same way online as
| they offline. This is wrong.
|
| Figure out the little facial gestures, the verbal indications
| and such that allow you to get some of the richness back.
| Obviously, you won't get to as good as offline, but if everyone
| puts in the effort, you start to understand the limits of what
| can be sent and received online to each person.
| gomox wrote:
| It's surprising to what extent the technical factors are
| detrimental to the communication. Even if I assume that you are
| a smart person that has spent a lot of time on this, I want to
| question whether you have done a call with a good wired
| headset, on a good wired broadband internet connection, and
| using Zoom's "original audio" setting.
|
| In person is better of course but a low latency, high quality
| connection goes a LONG way and it's rare enough that most
| people have never experienced it.
| avivo wrote:
| There are also now tools like Krisp which use ML to remove
| background noise. https://krisp.ai/ I'm not fully sold on it yet
| (added some fuzz for me), but it seems promising.
|
| I'm most interested in tips on tools or devices that allow you
| get higher quality audio calls while taking walks.
| giovannibonetti wrote:
| We have been using it for a few months at work and we love it!
| dreamercz wrote:
| Or if you are on Linux, you can use
| https://github.com/lawl/NoiseTorch
|
| I've been using it myself and it improved the sound quality
| quite a bit. Or rather, it eliminated a lot of the noise that
| was coming through.
| remexre wrote:
| There's also the open-source RNNoise -- I know Mumble added
| support for it recently, and it's _amazing_ -- if we were
| allowed to use it for work, I'd prefer it for voice-only stuff
| over Zoom.
| fudged71 wrote:
| Is this working for OSX?
| bentcorner wrote:
| If you have an nvidia graphics card you can use their RTXVoice
| app. It says RTX on the tin but you can use it with older cards
| (I'm not sure how far down they go but I can say it works with
| 10xx series cards).
|
| https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/guides/nvidia-rtx-voice...
|
| Nvidia used to restrict installs to RTX cards but people worked
| out how to remove the restriction. Recent RTXVoice versions
| removed this restriction so now you don't need to modify ini
| files to install it.
| kazinator wrote:
| > _You can now leave yourself unmuted!_
|
| Never in in any group call, no matter what your microphone
| configuration is.
| danilocesar wrote:
| +1 for this. 1x1, that's ok to do not mute if you're not in an
| noisy environment.
|
| But for group calls, no matter what, please mute!
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| Open back headphones are a luxury but not necessary: call centers
| have long ago taught us about the $5 one-eared headphone with a
| regular headphone price for one ear and a padded base clipped
| just above the other ear. All audio/video calls are mono (and
| horribly encoded and filtered at that), you're missing nothing by
| listening with only one ear and gaining nothing by paying for
| quality headphone drivers that will go wasted on the barely over
| 8 kHz sampling tinny audio that's coming in over the pipe.
| dreamercz wrote:
| I have the Logitech C920 webcam the post mentions. The white
| balance truly is all over the place, especially if you don't have
| great lightning setup.
|
| I ended up adjusting the image manually with v4l2-ctl (see for
| example
| http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/xenial/man1/v4l2-ctl.1.h...)
| I also pointed my warm white light desk lamp towards the wall
| behind my desk and bounce a bit of light back on my face off the
| wall.
| pimlottc wrote:
| I'm glad to see others pointing this out. Compared to the
| build-in webcam on my MacBook Pro, the C920 is much sharper,
| but I look like a ghost most of the time. And Logitech's
| software leaves a lot to be desired; at one point, it was
| bundled in with their gaming software package and asks for lots
| of extra permissions to control my computer that I don't need
| for the webcam.
|
| If there is a better thirty-party program out there for macOS,
| I would love that.
| ghaff wrote:
| I can adjust the white balance with my Elgato key light and
| that seems to work pretty well.
|
| The Logitech C920 is IMO a nice compromise. It's as high
| quality as you need for most purposes and it doesn't take up
| the desk real estate of a dedicated camera. It's also easier to
| have your eyes closer to the slides you're presenting or the
| video of the person you're speaking with.
| jon-wood wrote:
| Does anyone have tips on persuading the other participants in
| regular video calls to do even the bare minimum of wearing
| headphones? My own setup is pretty good, but I'm stuck in a hell
| of people using built in laptop speakers and microphones, or
| wireless ear buds, despite everyone in the company being issued a
| decent headset.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| I don't see an issue with wireless ear buds, and on an online
| call only one person should be speaking anyway. Zoom rarely
| fail to filter the echo, unless you but the mic so that it
| creates the high pitch sound.
| gomox wrote:
| I grew so frustrated with this that I'm making a website just
| to have a link that I can give to people instead of going on a
| rant.
|
| People just don't realize how unacceptable speakers are. Tools
| should just have a prompt that says "hey, you are ruining
| everyone else's life by using speakers".
| scotu wrote:
| Is using speakers still troublesome if I'm using a good mic,
| with good rejection, close to my mouth? I find wearing
| headphones pretty tiresome so I avoid them. I never got a
| complaint about how I sound after getting the mic.
| gomox wrote:
| Most people don't complain because your software does echo
| cancellation, not because your microphone actually rejects
| the audio from your speakers properly.
|
| This makes your whole system half-duplex (if someone else
| talks, they can't hear you). Have you tried using Zoom's
| "original audio" mode?
|
| Here's an excerpt from an article I'm writing:
|
| ----
|
| Computers, sadly, are way dumber than you. When the
| microphone on your computer captures the sound coming out
| of your computer's own speakers, it can't really tell that
| it's not you talking. It just hears a sound. The obvious
| consequence of this confusion is an echo - you can hear
| yourself. Every single time you've heard your own voice
| repeated back to you on a conference call, it was caused by
| someone else on the call using speakers.
|
| The sound engineers at Zoom, Google, Skype, Jitsi are very
| clever though. They noticed that they could fix that
| problem by writing software to do echo cancelation - clever
| algorithms that detect an echo and then remove it from the
| audio signal. This software is the reason why most times
| when you hear an echo on a conference call in 2020, it
| usually goes away on its own after a few seconds (Note:
| this doesn't prevent people on the call from thinking that
| whatever they did to try to fix it actually worked). Echo
| cancellation is one of many forms of what's called Digital
| Sound Processing, which we'll talk more about in a minute.
|
| ----
|
| What specific microphone/speakers are you using?
| scotu wrote:
| Shure sm58, even being in front of it the sound is very
| attenuated just by being a feet too far from it :)
|
| yes I'm aware that some software does echo cancellation,
| as you say it doesn't need to be full mute while you
| speak, it "just" needs to cancel the signal that would
| cause feedback...
|
| I started using the dedicated mic because I got
| complaints that my audio was pretty quiet, due to the
| fact (I thought) that I 1. keep my laptop farther than
| you usually would, and 2. sometimes I turn to my second
| monitor to refer to some info; mic seems to have fixed
| the issue but I hope echo cancelling does the rest of the
| job without me needing headphones :D
| gomox wrote:
| Well, live-performance grade cardioid microphone on a
| stand in front of your mouth is probably the one thing
| that will work acceptably well with speakers. Glad I
| asked :) But it's really an outlier setup you have there.
|
| But lack of an echo is not proof that the setup works,
| because the problem with echo cancellation is that it is
| too aggressive, not too subtle. There is no echo when you
| use the shitty ambient microphone that is 2cm away from
| your laptops builtin speakers.
|
| But in removing that echo, the software is also removing
| your voice from the call signal, or other people's voices
| from your speakers' signal. The symptoms are more subtle,
| but you and others will miss parts of the call when you
| speak over each other (or in rapid succession). This
| creates a lot of "huh? can you hear me?" or weird
| interruption timings.
|
| Try having someone on the other side of a Zoom call that
| wears a proper headset, then both of you can turn on
| "original audio" mode on Zoom. You can actually speak
| over each other like you would be able to do in person,
| and back and forth is much more natural, especially if
| there is more than 2 people having a discussion.
|
| PS: Keep in mind I do 10-12 hours of calls a day, and a
| lot of them are sales and/or management which requires a
| lot of active careful listening. My standards can be
| slightly unreasonable for a more normal use case (say, if
| you are a developer and do two meetings a day where
| people take turns to talk).
| srtjstjsj wrote:
| Tell people what background noise you are hearing.
| gwillen wrote:
| Let me summarize my take on the 'don't mute' advice in this
| article:
|
| * Is the call 1:1 or extremely small? If so, it's down to the
| preferences of the people in the call. Otherwise, for larger
| calls:
|
| * Are you in a quiet environment? * That was a trick question.
| You are not in a quiet environment. You think you are, because
| your human brain is good at filtering out background noise. Your
| microphone is not. You are not being forced to actually listen to
| what your microphone hears. The rest of us are. Mute your fucking
| microphone!
| gomox wrote:
| Some environments are actually quiet, and even silent if you
| sample from a boom microphone that will pick up barely any
| ambient sounds. Not everyone is an idiot. Forcing people to use
| headsets is, in my experience, more bulletproof than forcing
| people to mute. Our company is considering making it a policy
| (just like "turn on your cameras").
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Forcing people to use headsets protects everyone from
| _feedback_ , not from ambient noise.
| gomox wrote:
| Headsets with boom microphones (specifically) capture
| virtually no ambient noise because the gain on the
| microphone is extremely low (the relative volume of your
| voice picked up 1 inch from your mouth is much higher than
| that of anything else at the same location).
|
| I can vacuum my house while on my bluetooth headset and
| people won't hear it on the other end.
| srtjstjsj wrote:
| Cursing at readers undermines the value of your comment. Please
| don't.
|
| Also, cardiod mics and good software filter out background
| noise.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| 1. Zoom may be great for quality, it's terrible for human rights
| and is beyond deplorable. Please don't use it. Please communicate
| this to everyone who suggests using it.
|
| 2. This hits the nail on the head with the duplex audio problem
| and the only video service that gets it right is.. actually
| Discord who started as audio only originally.
| benrbray wrote:
| > Zoom may be great for quality, it's terrible for human rights
|
| Sorry, as someone who is completely out of the loop, can you
| explain what you mean?
| falcolas wrote:
| There's a number of reports available under the keywords
| "zoom china meeting", but it boils down to:
|
| 1) Zoom has been reported to send video call encryption keys
| to China.
|
| 2) Zoom has sent participant lists of particular video calls
| to China authorities.
|
| 3) Zoom _now_ segregates Chinese from the rest of the world,
| so that the keys and participant lists can be disclosed to
| Chinese censors, without impacting the rest of the world.
| randomchars wrote:
| That's horrible, I agree, but... I don't think there's any
| company that doesn't do these. (at least if they want to
| operate in China)
|
| edit: and not just China. What makes you thing Google
| wouldn't do this in the US?
| falcolas wrote:
| Whataboutism. A company behaving poorly doesn't excuse
| another company from behaving poorly.
|
| Horrible - to use your word - is horrible, no matter how
| many people are doing it.
| Jon_Lowtek wrote:
| The sad fact that more and more large corporations are
| willingly helping regimes with surveillance and
| repression is only overshadowed by the fact that even
| people who claim to care still use, support or outright
| defend these companies.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Your bottom line doesn't rise above basic human rights.
| If your profit forecast requires you to make concessions
| on rights to a political party that is currently putting
| an ethnic and religious minority in detention camps, then
| your profit forecast is wrong.
|
| There is no reason sufficient to justify such behavior.
|
| edit:
|
| As to Google in the US, there is no legal framework
| requiring them to obey any administration and in fact
| significant protection if they would like to make fun of
| or openly attack it. There is no comparison here that
| isn't in utter bad faith.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| > Zoom, the videoconferencing technology provider, has
| acknowledged it shut down the account of a group of prominent
| Chinese activists _based in the U.S_. after they held an
| event on the platform honoring the anniversary of the 1989
| Tiananmen Square massacre.
|
| (emphasis added)
|
| https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2020-06-10.
| ..
| bengale wrote:
| We got a team account for https://krisp.ai. It does a fantastic
| job at filtering out background noise. Especially helpful for our
| city based team members who have lots of road noise normally.
| antman wrote:
| Obs studio with RNN noise remover plugin as in the video in the
| following link https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/rnnoise-
| noise-remover... sounds like a good idea.
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(page generated 2020-09-29 23:01 UTC)