13 ms·

Tips for immersive video calls

198 points by luu 6y ago

falcolas 6y ago
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.
- mcny 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    My understanding is that newer Bluetooth sets can at least get closer to being better. But still not as good as a wired set.
- jeremy151 6y ago
  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.
  - jborichevskiy 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      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.
  - sneak 6y ago
    What model headset do you use?
    - jeremy151 6y ago
      I use a Sennheiser HME 26-II. I like it because the quality is very good (headphones and microphone), it's comfortable to wear for long periods of time, and the second ear cup can be flipped back off the ear. Sennheiser makes a number of models designed for day-long wear, the models made for air traffic controllers are in my opinion also good in this regard.
- tjansen 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    Agreed. I use the Jabra dongle and it's great, even switching machines via USB hub
- BuildTheRobots 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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 6y ago
    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.
    - BuildTheRobots 6y ago
      I've been using a wireless corsair headset on the PC with it's own USB dongle. Latency, quality, range and comfort are all good enough for my needs. I've used long headphone cables (as the other reply suggested) but I usually end up getting twisted in them late at night or send drinks flying. I said for years that wireless was an unnecessary silliness, but I wouldn't dream of going back now. Bluetooth headsets are impressively awful still. Even when they're really good they still fail in surreal and unexpected ways (ignoring all the problems I have pairing them to my laptop). Listening to an audiobook on the beach would regularly have problems talking from the phone in my pocket to the headset if I was laying down on my back or leaning on a wall. I've also recently moved near a railway line and whilst I don't get disturbed by the trains, 8 seconds before they go past I get a blip in my headphones which is screamingly annoying. There are still a stunning amount of upsides for me personally; I'm not sure I'd go back to cheap in-ear wired headphones readily at all.
- toast0 6y ago
  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.
- gomox 6y ago
  That's because the actual silent killer of conference calls is people that use speakers.
BossingAround 6y ago
> 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 6y ago
  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.
  - stingraycharles 6y ago
    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.
  - pen2l 6y ago
    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.
tjansen 6y ago
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 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.
- Wistar 6y ago
  Thank you! I just ordered the P7200. Had I not seen your post, I'd have not been aware of the device.
- tootie 6y ago
  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.
  - tjansen 6y ago
    Yes, I would only recommend it when you are in a quiet room.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  What's the difference between a USB speakerphone and just using the microphone and speakers in your computer?
  - cj 6y ago
    Not the OP, but in my case my laptop is docked (laptop shut) when working with 2 external monitors attached.
  - FooHentai 6y ago
    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.
vorpalhex 6y ago
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 6y ago
  > 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 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      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?
      - vorpalhex 6y ago
        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.
kazinator 6y ago
> You can now leave yourself unmuted! Never in in any group call, no matter what your microphone configuration is.
- danilocesar 6y ago
  +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!
bengale 6y ago
We got a team account for https://krisp.ai 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.
avivo 6y ago
There are also now tools like Krisp which use ML to remove background noise. https://krisp.ai/ 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 6y ago
  We have been using it for a few months at work and we love it!
- remexre 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    Is this working for OSX?
    - remexre 6y ago
      Had to track down a friend with a Mac, but Mumble appears to have an RNNoise option there.
- bentcorner 6y ago
  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-setup-guide/ 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.
- dreamercz 6y ago
munificent 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      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.
ticmasta 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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 6y ago
  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.
jonpurdy 6y ago
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-teleconferencing-game/ https://jonpurdy.com/2020/03/how-to-improve-your-zoomskype-t...
- ghaff 6y ago
  >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.
danilocesar 6y ago
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).
- zachrose 6y ago
  Along with this, I've taken to making the video chat window very small and putting it at the top edge of my screen underneath my webcam. Reasonably good eye contact and lots of screen space for notes or whatever.
  - dubya 6y ago
    Resizing and moving the Zoom window of videos is one of the most frustrating parts of online meetings.
jon-wood 6y ago
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.
- gomox 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      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?
dreamercz 6y ago
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.html 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.
- ghaff 6y ago
  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.
- pimlottc 6y ago
  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.
- ltratt 6y ago
  I also have a C920: it's fairly infamous for the "Smurf effect", where it tends to make everything look unnaturally blue. Setting the "white_balance_temperature" setting manually improves this situation substantially! Depending on your OS, you might have to first set a "white_balance_temperature_auto" to "off" and then set a "white_balance_temperature" in Kelvin. [In OpenBSD, we recently added this ability, but conflated the two controls into one. YMMV will vary by OS!]
- mjcohen 6y ago
  For my Mac, I find that EpocCam on my iPod Touch (and iPhone) is very good as a webcam, especially in low light. For mounting it, this looks good: SHAWE Phone Holder Bed Gooseneck Mount
sneak 6y ago
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”.
ComputerGuru 6y ago
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.
- FooHentai 6y ago
  While they are a cost effective choice in the hellscape that is call centers, I wouldn't recommend anyone engage in one-ear listening for any significant length of time. Sound heard in two ears is perceived by your brain as louder than that heard in only one ear. A listener using only one ear must raise the volume, and the harm of that over the long term (and even individual event exposures) is well studied. Anecdotally I have several people in my family that used to work in radio, spend extended amounts of time using monitors in only one ear, and now have advancing or profound hearing loss in that ear. Also, where are you pulling your notion of 8Khz capped audio quality from? Skype has historically had some issues with selection of the crappiest audio codec and sample rate that resulted in pushing many calls down to the lowest bar of 8Khz, but info I can find for Teams suggests a sample rate of 16Khz and bit rate of ~50kbps. For Zoom it looks to be 32Kbps ~50kbps. By no means approaching the capabilities of a decent audio output setup, but better than you reference.
antman 6y ago
Obs studio with RNN noise remover plugin as in the video in the following link https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/rnnoise-noise-remover.1034/ https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/rnnoise-noise-remover... sounds like a good idea.
gwillen 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    Forcing people to use headsets protects everyone from feedback, not from ambient noise.
    - gomox 6y ago
      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.
  - romwell 6y ago
    >Our company is considering making it a policy (just like "turn on your cameras"). Sounds like a horrible policy though.
  - gwillen 6y ago
    Ahh, but the key problem which leads me to swear and make generalizations is this: Not everyone is an idiot; but idiots don't know they're idiots. (Also, to be clear, I don't think that people who unknowingly transmit background noise on calls are idiots. Clueless, sure. Inconsiderate, sure, if someone's pointed it out and they're still doing it.)
ponker 6y ago
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.
skratlo 6y ago
So to summarize: $800 dollars for what? "Immersive video call"? And this one made me laugh: > Prefer Zoom to most alternatives
tyingq 6y ago
Some software or process (depends on the OS) to tune your camera matters also. A few adjustments to color, contrast, white balance, etc, can make you look much better. By default, it's not always easy to figure this out.
phailhaus 6y ago
Instead of spending hundreds of dollars on developing an optimal immersive video call setup just for yourself, we need to get effective designers to work on video chat interfaces to solve the basic problems that still plague us. * Why can't I quickly and immediately flag my intent to speak? Once you introduce lag into a conversation (and _every_ video chat conversation includes lag), you can't get away with "let's just be unmuted and hope for the best". * Why can't everyone in a chat see participants in the same order? How can we truly feel like we are speaking in a virtual space together when we do not share the same view? This one is the most frustrating since it has the greatest impact compared to how easy it is to implement. It is hard to overstate the benefit of having a consistent shared experience. * Why can't I tell at a glance whether I'm muted or not? Why do I have to find the mute button every time? Everyone has a keyboard, why are we avoiding it like the plague? * Choosing the correct input/output sources is one of the most common source of issues. And yet, we continue to hide it behind confusing settings. I've only noticed Discord get the memo and let you adjust sources straight from the main screen.
- Scoundreller 6y ago
  > Why can't I tell at a glance whether I'm muted or not? Why do I have to find the mute button every time? Everyone has a keyboard, why are we avoiding it like the plague? Would be nice if they just drew a giant red X when you’re muted. My gripe is multiple screens while presenting. Give me the choice to show whichever screen my mouse is on.
- zestyping 6y ago
  Thank you! It's basic stuff like this that could so easily make a difference. * Why do people have to appear in a random order? * Why can't I tell at a glance who is speaking? * Why can I only see 5 people if someone is sharing their screen? * When someone is sharing their screen, why do I only get to see either their face or the screen, not both? * Why can't I tell whether people are present/engaged when their video is off? * Why can people be moved into breakout rooms only through a tedious and complex procedure, and why can it only be done by the host? * Why can't I emoji-react to what someone is saying? * Why can't I quickly answer a poll or join a team?
peteretep 6y ago
> If there was a $2000 device that eliminated the need for this post to exist, it would be an automatic purchase for my employer and probably every other distributed company. But there isn’t, so here we are. Anyone used a Facebook Portal? How is it? Could it be hacked for this?
firloop 6y ago
Articles like these (I've read a few), while well-intentioned, seem to contribute to self righteous ideas about video calls... As someone who has invested in a video conferencing setup, I don't really think it's fair to expect any friend or colleague to do _any_ effort to make themselves sound good. People often draw the wrong conclusions from posts like this. I've worked with people who've taken offense if anyone's video conferencing gear wasn't up to their bar, and it felt like a meta-topic that was never worth the time.
- bronco21016 6y ago
  I’m a bit of the opposite. I find it slightly offensive that people are not investing in their video conference abilities during times like these. The most notable has been a healthcare provider I’ve been working with. For a multitude of reasons not related to COVID we’ve been relying on telehealth. The sessions are predominately about the conversation and it’s downright frustrating that the provider can’t even be bothered to use the earbuds with mic that come with an iPhone. Our audio is constantly stepping over each other. I’m also looking up the provider’s shadowed nose the entire time too. The answer is somewhere in the middle. I don’t expect the provider to spend nearly a grand as this persons blog post advocates. However, some super basic training about audio, camera positioning, and lighting would make a world of difference.
gnicholas 6y ago
> (~$100) Buy open-back headphones, which let you hear your own voice normally and are extremely comfortable. I just use one AirPod at a time, so I hear normally through the other ear.
gnicholas 6y ago
I was on a call with an education technologist, and I noticed she had a very good trick for keeping the flow of communication going while expressing her agreement. Instead of saying "uh-huh" at regular intervals (which can interrupt the flow because of audio lag), she would just give thumbs-up to show her agreement. I've started doing this as well and have found that it precludes a lot of the "oh no — oh, I was just going to say yes I understand" comments that often happen in video calls.
gorgoiler 6y ago
Take a photograph and print it on a nice piece of photo paper. Hand the photo to a friend along with a sharpie. Ask them to write a short message to you on the photo’s surface. Scan the result, then write some code to produce an image of the message in black on a white background. Well done, it’s probably very close! Now repeat the exercise using a blank sheet of white paper instead of a printed photo. This is your call with headphones, vs a call on speakerphone! (Bonus points if you chose a photo of some sharpie writing on a white surface for the first part of this exercise. This is you on speakerphone in a public space filled with people using speakerphones to also make calls.)
llIIllIIllIIl 6y ago
Gave up and use phone exclusively for video calls. I do not need my coworkers’ face on 27” screen to see what he thinks about what i say. Also works extremely well will airpods and video quality is great. Spent exactly $30 to get generic holder for the phone and that’s it
fblp 6y ago
Hey HN - any recommendations on wired earbuds with a good built in mic? I read the dislike for bluetooth earbuds, but i like how light they are.

198 points by luu 6y ago

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.

mcny 6y ago
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 6y ago
  My understanding is that newer Bluetooth sets can at least get closer to being better. But still not as good as a wired set.
jeremy151 6y ago
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.
- jborichevskiy 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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.
- sneak 6y ago
  What model headset do you use?
  - jeremy151 6y ago
    I use a Sennheiser HME 26-II. I like it because the quality is very good (headphones and microphone), it's comfortable to wear for long periods of time, and the second ear cup can be flipped back off the ear. Sennheiser makes a number of models designed for day-long wear, the models made for air traffic controllers are in my opinion also good in this regard.
tjansen 6y ago
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 6y ago
  Agreed. I use the Jabra dongle and it's great, even switching machines via USB hub
BuildTheRobots 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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 6y ago
  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.
  - BuildTheRobots 6y ago
    I've been using a wireless corsair headset on the PC with it's own USB dongle. Latency, quality, range and comfort are all good enough for my needs. I've used long headphone cables (as the other reply suggested) but I usually end up getting twisted in them late at night or send drinks flying. I said for years that wireless was an unnecessary silliness, but I wouldn't dream of going back now. Bluetooth headsets are impressively awful still. Even when they're really good they still fail in surreal and unexpected ways (ignoring all the problems I have pairing them to my laptop). Listening to an audiobook on the beach would regularly have problems talking from the phone in my pocket to the headset if I was laying down on my back or leaning on a wall. I've also recently moved near a railway line and whilst I don't get disturbed by the trains, 8 seconds before they go past I get a blip in my headphones which is screamingly annoying. There are still a stunning amount of upsides for me personally; I'm not sure I'd go back to cheap in-ear wired headphones readily at all.
toast0 6y ago
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.
gomox 6y ago
That's because the actual silent killer of conference calls is people that use speakers.

BossingAround 6y ago

> 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 6y ago
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.
- stingraycharles 6y ago
  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.
- pen2l 6y ago
  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.

tjansen 6y ago

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 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.

Wistar 6y ago
Thank you! I just ordered the P7200. Had I not seen your post, I'd have not been aware of the device.
tootie 6y ago
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.
- tjansen 6y ago
  Yes, I would only recommend it when you are in a quiet room.
chrisseaton 6y ago
What's the difference between a USB speakerphone and just using the microphone and speakers in your computer?
- cj 6y ago
  Not the OP, but in my case my laptop is docked (laptop shut) when working with 2 external monitors attached.
- FooHentai 6y ago
  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.

vorpalhex 6y ago

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 6y ago
> 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 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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?
    - vorpalhex 6y ago
      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.

kazinator 6y ago

> You can now leave yourself unmuted! Never in in any group call, no matter what your microphone configuration is.

danilocesar 6y ago
+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!

bengale 6y ago

We got a team account for https://krisp.ai 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.

avivo 6y ago

There are also now tools like Krisp which use ML to remove background noise. https://krisp.ai/ 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 6y ago
We have been using it for a few months at work and we love it!
remexre 6y ago
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 6y ago
  Is this working for OSX?
  - remexre 6y ago
    Had to track down a friend with a Mac, but Mumble appears to have an RNNoise option there.
bentcorner 6y ago
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-setup-guide/ 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.
dreamercz 6y ago

munificent 6y ago

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 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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.

ticmasta 6y ago

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 6y ago
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 6y ago
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.

jonpurdy 6y ago

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-teleconferencing-game/ https://jonpurdy.com/2020/03/how-to-improve-your-zoomskype-t...

ghaff 6y ago
>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.

danilocesar 6y ago

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).

zachrose 6y ago
Along with this, I've taken to making the video chat window very small and putting it at the top edge of my screen underneath my webcam. Reasonably good eye contact and lots of screen space for notes or whatever.
- dubya 6y ago
  Resizing and moving the Zoom window of videos is one of the most frustrating parts of online meetings.

jon-wood 6y ago

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.

gomox 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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?

dreamercz 6y ago

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.html 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.

ghaff 6y ago
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.
pimlottc 6y ago
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.
ltratt 6y ago
I also have a C920: it's fairly infamous for the "Smurf effect", where it tends to make everything look unnaturally blue. Setting the "white_balance_temperature" setting manually improves this situation substantially! Depending on your OS, you might have to first set a "white_balance_temperature_auto" to "off" and then set a "white_balance_temperature" in Kelvin. [In OpenBSD, we recently added this ability, but conflated the two controls into one. YMMV will vary by OS!]
mjcohen 6y ago
For my Mac, I find that EpocCam on my iPod Touch (and iPhone) is very good as a webcam, especially in low light. For mounting it, this looks good: SHAWE Phone Holder Bed Gooseneck Mount

sneak 6y ago

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”.

ComputerGuru 6y ago

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.

FooHentai 6y ago
While they are a cost effective choice in the hellscape that is call centers, I wouldn't recommend anyone engage in one-ear listening for any significant length of time. Sound heard in two ears is perceived by your brain as louder than that heard in only one ear. A listener using only one ear must raise the volume, and the harm of that over the long term (and even individual event exposures) is well studied. Anecdotally I have several people in my family that used to work in radio, spend extended amounts of time using monitors in only one ear, and now have advancing or profound hearing loss in that ear. Also, where are you pulling your notion of 8Khz capped audio quality from? Skype has historically had some issues with selection of the crappiest audio codec and sample rate that resulted in pushing many calls down to the lowest bar of 8Khz, but info I can find for Teams suggests a sample rate of 16Khz and bit rate of ~50kbps. For Zoom it looks to be 32Kbps ~50kbps. By no means approaching the capabilities of a decent audio output setup, but better than you reference.

antman 6y ago

Obs studio with RNN noise remover plugin as in the video in the following link https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/rnnoise-noise-remover.1034/ https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/rnnoise-noise-remover... sounds like a good idea.

gwillen 6y ago

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 6y ago
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 6y ago
  Forcing people to use headsets protects everyone from feedback, not from ambient noise.
  - gomox 6y ago
    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.
- romwell 6y ago
  >Our company is considering making it a policy (just like "turn on your cameras"). Sounds like a horrible policy though.
- gwillen 6y ago
  Ahh, but the key problem which leads me to swear and make generalizations is this: Not everyone is an idiot; but idiots don't know they're idiots. (Also, to be clear, I don't think that people who unknowingly transmit background noise on calls are idiots. Clueless, sure. Inconsiderate, sure, if someone's pointed it out and they're still doing it.)

ponker 6y ago

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.

skratlo 6y ago

So to summarize: $800 dollars for what? "Immersive video call"? And this one made me laugh: > Prefer Zoom to most alternatives

tyingq 6y ago

Some software or process (depends on the OS) to tune your camera matters also. A few adjustments to color, contrast, white balance, etc, can make you look much better. By default, it's not always easy to figure this out.

phailhaus 6y ago

Instead of spending hundreds of dollars on developing an optimal immersive video call setup just for yourself, we need to get effective designers to work on video chat interfaces to solve the basic problems that still plague us. * Why can't I quickly and immediately flag my intent to speak? Once you introduce lag into a conversation (and _every_ video chat conversation includes lag), you can't get away with "let's just be unmuted and hope for the best". * Why can't everyone in a chat see participants in the same order? How can we truly feel like we are speaking in a virtual space together when we do not share the same view? This one is the most frustrating since it has the greatest impact compared to how easy it is to implement. It is hard to overstate the benefit of having a consistent shared experience. * Why can't I tell at a glance whether I'm muted or not? Why do I have to find the mute button every time? Everyone has a keyboard, why are we avoiding it like the plague? * Choosing the correct input/output sources is one of the most common source of issues. And yet, we continue to hide it behind confusing settings. I've only noticed Discord get the memo and let you adjust sources straight from the main screen.

Scoundreller 6y ago
> Why can't I tell at a glance whether I'm muted or not? Why do I have to find the mute button every time? Everyone has a keyboard, why are we avoiding it like the plague? Would be nice if they just drew a giant red X when you’re muted. My gripe is multiple screens while presenting. Give me the choice to show whichever screen my mouse is on.
zestyping 6y ago
Thank you! It's basic stuff like this that could so easily make a difference. * Why do people have to appear in a random order? * Why can't I tell at a glance who is speaking? * Why can I only see 5 people if someone is sharing their screen? * When someone is sharing their screen, why do I only get to see either their face or the screen, not both? * Why can't I tell whether people are present/engaged when their video is off? * Why can people be moved into breakout rooms only through a tedious and complex procedure, and why can it only be done by the host? * Why can't I emoji-react to what someone is saying? * Why can't I quickly answer a poll or join a team?

peteretep 6y ago

> If there was a $2000 device that eliminated the need for this post to exist, it would be an automatic purchase for my employer and probably every other distributed company. But there isn’t, so here we are. Anyone used a Facebook Portal? How is it? Could it be hacked for this?

firloop 6y ago

Articles like these (I've read a few), while well-intentioned, seem to contribute to self righteous ideas about video calls... As someone who has invested in a video conferencing setup, I don't really think it's fair to expect any friend or colleague to do _any_ effort to make themselves sound good. People often draw the wrong conclusions from posts like this. I've worked with people who've taken offense if anyone's video conferencing gear wasn't up to their bar, and it felt like a meta-topic that was never worth the time.

bronco21016 6y ago
I’m a bit of the opposite. I find it slightly offensive that people are not investing in their video conference abilities during times like these. The most notable has been a healthcare provider I’ve been working with. For a multitude of reasons not related to COVID we’ve been relying on telehealth. The sessions are predominately about the conversation and it’s downright frustrating that the provider can’t even be bothered to use the earbuds with mic that come with an iPhone. Our audio is constantly stepping over each other. I’m also looking up the provider’s shadowed nose the entire time too. The answer is somewhere in the middle. I don’t expect the provider to spend nearly a grand as this persons blog post advocates. However, some super basic training about audio, camera positioning, and lighting would make a world of difference.

gnicholas 6y ago

> (~$100) Buy open-back headphones, which let you hear your own voice normally and are extremely comfortable. I just use one AirPod at a time, so I hear normally through the other ear.

gnicholas 6y ago

I was on a call with an education technologist, and I noticed she had a very good trick for keeping the flow of communication going while expressing her agreement. Instead of saying "uh-huh" at regular intervals (which can interrupt the flow because of audio lag), she would just give thumbs-up to show her agreement. I've started doing this as well and have found that it precludes a lot of the "oh no — oh, I was just going to say yes I understand" comments that often happen in video calls.

gorgoiler 6y ago

Take a photograph and print it on a nice piece of photo paper. Hand the photo to a friend along with a sharpie. Ask them to write a short message to you on the photo’s surface. Scan the result, then write some code to produce an image of the message in black on a white background. Well done, it’s probably very close! Now repeat the exercise using a blank sheet of white paper instead of a printed photo. This is your call with headphones, vs a call on speakerphone! (Bonus points if you chose a photo of some sharpie writing on a white surface for the first part of this exercise. This is you on speakerphone in a public space filled with people using speakerphones to also make calls.)

llIIllIIllIIl 6y ago

Gave up and use phone exclusively for video calls. I do not need my coworkers’ face on 27” screen to see what he thinks about what i say. Also works extremely well will airpods and video quality is great. Spent exactly $30 to get generic holder for the phone and that’s it

fblp 6y ago

Hey HN - any recommendations on wired earbuds with a good built in mic? I read the dislike for bluetooth earbuds, but i like how light they are.