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The only thing really terrible is their (lack of) echo cancellation. Otherwise I'm about 90% sure it's just off the shelf OPUS with next to no DSP on top. It's

by qppo 7y ago

The only thing really terrible is their (lack of) echo cancellation. Otherwise I'm about 90% sure it's just off the shelf OPUS with next to no DSP on top. It's not that bad on its own. What is terrible is audio hardware on laptops. MacBooks are alright, but just $50 on a headset will go a long ways to solving your problems. Consumers haven't given a shit about audio fidelity for decades honestly, it's just showing today when you are listening to unprocessed audio streams that haven't been optimized for your laptop or phone's fundamentally inferior transducers. This is a solved problem, for what it's worth. The major audio manufacturers sell products for these use cases. It's not the software at this point, it's actually decent. It's the input and output devices. Thank god for gamers buying these things and driving economies of scale.

justincormack 7y ago
Macs have hardware echo cancellation, and most software appears to enable it.
ken 7y ago
So the solution is "convince all of my (unemployed) friends to spend $50 on something which has more value to me than to them"? Assuming that does solve it, I'd say a solution is known, but I wouldn't call it "solved". That's like a "nobody needs DropBox" type of "solved problem".
- qppo 7y ago
  Well they have value in hearing others and being heard, I'd assume. All my friends have their own mics because we couldn't understand eachother otherwise, and we don't have problems with fidelity. My coworkers are a different story, because consumers rarely listen to integrated microphones before they purchase a device (bluetooth earbuds are absolutely terrible about this, fwiw). Who's at fault, the company for cheaping out, or the consumer for not caring enough to find out if they company cheaped out? The technical problem is solved. The economics problem of getting people to value the solution and marketing problem of educating about it is still open. Regardless, this isn't a problem to be solved by software. It's a consumer electronics problem.

by qppo 7y ago

justincormack 7y ago

Macs have hardware echo cancellation, and most software appears to enable it.

ken 7y ago

So the solution is "convince all of my (unemployed) friends to spend $50 on something which has more value to me than to them"? Assuming that does solve it, I'd say a solution is known, but I wouldn't call it "solved". That's like a "nobody needs DropBox" type of "solved problem".

qppo 7y ago
Well they have value in hearing others and being heard, I'd assume. All my friends have their own mics because we couldn't understand eachother otherwise, and we don't have problems with fidelity. My coworkers are a different story, because consumers rarely listen to integrated microphones before they purchase a device (bluetooth earbuds are absolutely terrible about this, fwiw). Who's at fault, the company for cheaping out, or the consumer for not caring enough to find out if they company cheaped out? The technical problem is solved. The economics problem of getting people to value the solution and marketing problem of educating about it is still open. Regardless, this isn't a problem to be solved by software. It's a consumer electronics problem.