Please help me not to deafen my coworkers

September 28, 2014 10:54 AM

I use a very loud buckling-spring keyboard which is apparently even louder over Skype/Google Hangouts/etc., which have recently become a much bigger part of my job. I'd like to find a more directional microphone that will pick up more of my voice and less of my typing.

I don't know anything at all about audio, so I'm a little lost.

I think these are my requirements:

• A standalone microphone, not a headset; I'm not crazy about wearing headphones or earbuds all day and would much prefer to use my computer's speakers if possible
• I'm also not crazy about a lapel mic or anything else that requires me to be physically attached to the computer
• USB (the MacBook Pro's weird combo mic/headphone port seems to make it difficult or impossible to use a 3.5mm microphone without also using headphones or external 3.5mm speakers)
• Since I need to see and use the monitor while I am speaking I need something that will work OK even if it's 18 inches or more away from my mouth and off to one side or another of the monitor (or, I guess, something small enough to fit in front of the monitor without obscuring it)

I don't care at all about portability or use for anything other than video meetings.

I am looking at things like the Snowball mic which seems to have some level of directionality but it's hard to find reviews that aren't full of audio jargon that I neither understand nor care about.

(If I'm taking completely the wrong approach and there is a software solution that would work better to reduce typing noise, I'd love to hear about that as well.)

posted by enn to Technology (11 answers total)

Are you able to use a different keyboard? I am a very loud typer, and the newer Apple keyboards are way better than the old ones for noise.
posted by Madamina at 10:57 AM on September 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: I strongly prefer the feel of a buckling-spring keyboard to anything else, so changing keyboards would be a last resort.
posted by enn at 10:59 AM on September 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

Would this work? (Samson Go mic)
posted by heathrowga at 11:11 AM on September 28, 2014

I don't know about buckling-spring keyboards, but you can buy new mechanical keyboards that are a lot quieter than the older ones are.
posted by devnull at 11:12 AM on September 28, 2014

They're not common but it appears you can find USB shotgun microphones.

Not sure what you mean by the issue with the sound jack on the MacBook - if you change the configuration in the Sound preferences panel to "use audio port for sound input" then it appears that the internal speakers still work. You could use a microphone with a 3.5mm jack and listen on the internal speakers.
posted by BillMcMurdo at 11:13 AM on September 28, 2014

Buckling-spring keyboards are hell on VOIP calls; every keystroke is like a sharply-enunciated /t/, which if you're really unlucky will blank out what other people are saying. Either a really directional headset, or a push-to-talk mic (like some of the ones from Buddy) might help.
posted by scruss at 11:35 AM on September 28, 2014

If you're using a keyboard with Cherry MX Blue switches (or a Model M, etc.), my guess is that you're either going to have to get used to the idea of a headset, try a keyboard with Cherry Brown's or other softer variety, or spend $$$ on a highly directional standalone mic.
posted by rhizome at 11:44 AM on September 28, 2014

This is probably something you've already tried and discarded, but:

Can you segregate your talking and typing such that you can mute the input while typing and unmute to talk?

If so, you could continue using your current mic setup and set up a hardware button to mute/unmute the mic input. I have a dog that barks in the background sometimes, so I typically only unmute when I'm directly speaking.

As far as how to do that, some USB keyboards have mute/unmute buttons, and most Logitech products are remappable via their setpoint utility. Otherwise, some 3rd party software can perform mapping input to function (joy2key for USB gamepads, for example).
posted by bookdragoness at 1:05 PM on September 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

My dude just told me that there's a keyboard that _feels_ like yours, but that is quiet. I hope he'll chime in later with the name.
posted by amtho at 2:11 PM on September 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

If you can be muted while talking, you can use Karabiner to re-map some odd keys to mute/unmute your microphone.

I've got a Filco with CherryMX blues, and it's lovely and noisy. On conference calls, if I have to actually be near the computer, I use a quiet & tiny portable Bluetooth keyboard.
posted by mimi at 5:29 AM on September 29, 2014

I highly doubt you will come to a solution that will quiet a buckling spring (or Cherry blue or even brown) keyboard such that it wouldn't annoy me if I were on the other end of the call. Call centers use good headset mics. Pros do over head shotgun mics supported by compressors, noise gates, and active monitoring.

That said, some thoughts and examples for what I have done in somewhat similar circumstances (needing to minimize sound of children while being able to step away from the computer easily to deal with the kids).

I use a Shure SM58 microphone connected to my computer through a Shure x2u and mounted on aHeil Sound PL-2T boom arm.

The boom arm lets me position the mic up close to my mouth, barely out of view of the camera. It is positioned below my eye level and between my biceps and keyboard. The mic gain on the x2u is set such that I need to have my mouth very close to the mic to be picked up. If I were willing to let the microphone be seen by the webcam, I could get my mouth closer to the mic and eliminate even more background noise by tightening the mic gain further.

I figured a shotgun mic would provide better isolation of my voice. Brief experiments with a video-mic (a shotgun pattern) intended for use on a dSLR (the Rode VideoMic) included more typing noise than the sm58 closer to my mouth. While I don't type much on my clicky keyboard when in video calls, it was not preferred by those I was talking to.

I understand there are mics with better background noise isolation if you can have good mic technique and get right up on top of the mic. I haven't seriously investigated that as it appears to require trial and error for your particular setup.

If I were to set this up again now from scratch, I would likely go with the Audio Technica ATT2100-USB which is a combined basic mic for spoken voice and USB interface in one.

My Sennheiser PC-350 (current equal model is the G4me Zero) does an almost equal job to my pro mic up within a few inches of my mouth.

There are adapters that split the headset jack of the MacBook Pro to a headphone out and mic input. When something is plugged in to the jack though, you won't be able to use the internal speaker. You will have to send the audio out the headset jack or out another audio output.

But I would really suggest you find a quiet keyboard.
posted by fief at 7:57 AM on September 29, 2014 [2 favorites]