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Ask HN: Audio Setup for Online Meetings

by yonisto on 7/8/24, 12:31 PM with 8 comments

I do a lot of video conferencing, mostly with screen sharing. I thought I had a good audio setup until I took a call from my car, and it was so much better. I don't have anything fancy installed in my car (just the basic setup for not so interesting Japanese car). I understand that the acoustics in the car are different from my room, but I still want to improve my audio quality.

Do you have any recommendations?

  • by skydhash on 7/9/24, 4:50 AM

    My personal setup is:

      - Wired headphones
  - Speakers (Creative Pebble) when doing group meeting
  - USB microphone (Fifine). It is directional and does not pick up everything in the room. I put it on a boom arm attached to my desk for quick positioning.
    No Bluetooth, no earbuds with microphone, no internal microphones. Although, when I'm away from my desk, my wired headphones has a mic. But it's a better one than what I've seen on some earbuds.

  • by jerhewet on 7/8/24, 1:59 PM

    I have the same kinds of problems with Microsoft Teams. In my case the audio is often garbled and unintelligible, lots of dropouts due to multiple people speaking at the same time, and even on a good day it sounds like everyone is meeting in the bottom of a garbage bin.

    I've tried various conferencing pucks (EMEET Luna 360 and M0, Jabra 410 and 510, both hard-wired and Bluetooth) and none of them seem to work well with any of my systems (various late model Dell Latitude and Inspiron laptops, mini- and micro-towers) running Windows 7 / 10 / 11.

    I've also tried various models of iPads and iPhones, and the audio is just as bad. Pretty sure it isn't a connection issue either (FiOS with constant 1Gb up and down).

    Would an external DAC help? Headphones or earbuds with a good microphone? A dedicated portable system I can use for video conferencing?

  • by solardev on 7/8/24, 7:32 PM

    What do you mean by the audio setup and quality? Are you mostly talking about how you sound (the microphone) or how other people sound (your speakers)?

    One thing that comes to mind is that some Bluetooth headphones (like Airpods) will default to a much lower quality protocol if you use it as a headset (both mic and listening) vs just listening. Using a standalone mic (whether your laptop's or an external one) will help that.

    It could also be that your car has better noise cancelation in the cabin than you do in your home office. But usually apps like Zoom do that in software anyway. If you need to further enhance that, there are apps like Krisp.ai can do an even better job.

    Otherwise, maybe a speaker upgrade is in order? A $50 soundbar or set of speakers should be a huge upgrade from a laptop's internal speakers.

  • by cpach on 7/8/24, 1:01 PM

    What’s your operating system? That could be useful to know for recommending a suitable solution.

    Also, what software do you use for video conferencing?

  • by ensocode on 7/9/24, 11:40 AM

    Related: What about Linux users? Any recommendations?