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I bought an expensive microphone just for work, and then people complained that it was taking up all their bandwidth, they asked me to go back to using the phon

I bought an expensive microphone just for work, and then people complained that it was taking up all their bandwidth, they asked me to go back to using the phone. No simple answers.

jagger27 5y ago
That doesn’t make any sense at all. Wouldn’t that entirely be up to the codec used to encode? Why would shitty audio encoded with the same codec use substantially more bandwidth than cleaner audio? If anything I’d expect noise to be harder to encode.
- rufus_foreman 5y ago
  I'm just telling you what happened. How would they know I was using the expensive microphone?
  - e40 5y ago
    You can test this with zoom, as it will tell you the bitrate.
- tomcooks 5y ago
  Maybe zoom detects the frequencies used by your mic and chooses the best performing codec
lmilcin 5y ago
Your video takes way, way more bandwidth than audio ever could. You should not believe everything people complain about. Also, you don't need expensive microphone. You need decent one set up correctly. Most microphones are actually pretty decent in that they can record your voice pretty well provided they are set up properly and that is where usually problems are. You need to have correct geometry so that they can do their job of picking your voice and rejecting noise and you need to ensure correct software audio settings because mismanaging these can cause voice to be distorted or sprinkled with clicks and cracks.
- ghaff 5y ago
  Yeah, in fact, when I'm recording a podcast and we're having any sort of bandwidth issues, I'll usually have us turn off our video. But I want people to use good mics. (Though the difference once you get to decent is very diminishing.)
  - lmilcin 5y ago
    I would add mics have nothing to do with bandwidth. It is the client / OS settings that decide how much bandwidth is going to be used. Actually a microphone with good noise rejection may help depending on how exactly the audio is being compressed. Less noise will usually cause either less bandwidth used for the same quality or better quality for the same bandwidth.
- rufus_foreman 5y ago
  >> Your video takes way, way more bandwidth than audio ever could. Then how did they know?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - na85 5y ago
    Perhaps they were mistaken.
    - rufus_foreman 5y ago
      OK, I've been using the phone for audio, if I switch back to the mike, what is your prediction? I'll try it out on Monday.
      - derekja 5y ago
        I have a fancy microphone, but when I’m away from home in a low bandwidth situation I often phone in audio to zoom because it lags less. Lagging video and non-lagging audio seems to bother people less than both lagging.
ashtonkem 5y ago
The people complaining have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about.
- jrockway 5y ago
  I have an expensive microphone and picked "use original audio" in Zoom, which says that it takes more bandwidth and compute resources for the receivers. Of course, you could just not click that if people complained. I haven't heard anyone complain. Rather, everyone else also bought expensive microphones and enabled original audio, and the results are excellent. (Unsolicited tip: some sort of noise gate is really nice so that when you unmute, it doesn't raise the noise floor for the call. I ended up using Krisp, which seems to work quite well. Yeah, it's a subscription service for something your audio interface could theoretically do, and they market it as AI but it's not really AI and that's kind of scummy, but it doesn't take up any space on my desk, and it's not that expensive, so whatever. Sometimes it works too well -- people will apologize for their dog barking, or a fire truck driving by, and it's just met with confusion because that all got filtered out.)
- rufus_foreman 5y ago
  How did they know? I didn't tell them, "I'm about to switch to the microphone", I switched to the microphone and they told me to stop and they claimed it was using all their bandwidth and to go back to using the phone instead of the microphone. I'll take the downvotes, that's fine, but how did the people complaining know I had switched to the microphone and what were they complaining about?
  - darkerside 5y ago
    How did they even know you had switched to a microphone if you didn't tell them? How did they know to blame it?
    - rufus_foreman 5y ago
      That's what I'm asking too, how did they know? I get no answer.
mcstafford 5y ago
> people complained that [my microphone] was taking up all their bandwidth That's not how I expect your choice of mic to affect anyone else's experience. It would surprise me if additional network load is part of what happens.
spoonjim 5y ago
This makes as much sense as astrology.

I bought an expensive microphone just for work, and then people complained that it was taking up all their bandwidth, they asked me to go back to using the phone. No simple answers.

jagger27 5y ago

That doesn’t make any sense at all. Wouldn’t that entirely be up to the codec used to encode? Why would shitty audio encoded with the same codec use substantially more bandwidth than cleaner audio? If anything I’d expect noise to be harder to encode.

rufus_foreman 5y ago
I'm just telling you what happened. How would they know I was using the expensive microphone?
- e40 5y ago
  You can test this with zoom, as it will tell you the bitrate.
tomcooks 5y ago
Maybe zoom detects the frequencies used by your mic and chooses the best performing codec

lmilcin 5y ago

Your video takes way, way more bandwidth than audio ever could. You should not believe everything people complain about. Also, you don't need expensive microphone. You need decent one set up correctly. Most microphones are actually pretty decent in that they can record your voice pretty well provided they are set up properly and that is where usually problems are. You need to have correct geometry so that they can do their job of picking your voice and rejecting noise and you need to ensure correct software audio settings because mismanaging these can cause voice to be distorted or sprinkled with clicks and cracks.

ghaff 5y ago
Yeah, in fact, when I'm recording a podcast and we're having any sort of bandwidth issues, I'll usually have us turn off our video. But I want people to use good mics. (Though the difference once you get to decent is very diminishing.)
- lmilcin 5y ago
  I would add mics have nothing to do with bandwidth. It is the client / OS settings that decide how much bandwidth is going to be used. Actually a microphone with good noise rejection may help depending on how exactly the audio is being compressed. Less noise will usually cause either less bandwidth used for the same quality or better quality for the same bandwidth.
rufus_foreman 5y ago
>> Your video takes way, way more bandwidth than audio ever could. Then how did they know?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- na85 5y ago
  Perhaps they were mistaken.
  - rufus_foreman 5y ago
    OK, I've been using the phone for audio, if I switch back to the mike, what is your prediction? I'll try it out on Monday.
    - derekja 5y ago
      I have a fancy microphone, but when I’m away from home in a low bandwidth situation I often phone in audio to zoom because it lags less. Lagging video and non-lagging audio seems to bother people less than both lagging.

ashtonkem 5y ago

The people complaining have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about.

jrockway 5y ago
I have an expensive microphone and picked "use original audio" in Zoom, which says that it takes more bandwidth and compute resources for the receivers. Of course, you could just not click that if people complained. I haven't heard anyone complain. Rather, everyone else also bought expensive microphones and enabled original audio, and the results are excellent. (Unsolicited tip: some sort of noise gate is really nice so that when you unmute, it doesn't raise the noise floor for the call. I ended up using Krisp, which seems to work quite well. Yeah, it's a subscription service for something your audio interface could theoretically do, and they market it as AI but it's not really AI and that's kind of scummy, but it doesn't take up any space on my desk, and it's not that expensive, so whatever. Sometimes it works too well -- people will apologize for their dog barking, or a fire truck driving by, and it's just met with confusion because that all got filtered out.)
rufus_foreman 5y ago
How did they know? I didn't tell them, "I'm about to switch to the microphone", I switched to the microphone and they told me to stop and they claimed it was using all their bandwidth and to go back to using the phone instead of the microphone. I'll take the downvotes, that's fine, but how did the people complaining know I had switched to the microphone and what were they complaining about?
- darkerside 5y ago
  How did they even know you had switched to a microphone if you didn't tell them? How did they know to blame it?
  - rufus_foreman 5y ago
    That's what I'm asking too, how did they know? I get no answer.

mcstafford 5y ago

> people complained that [my microphone] was taking up all their bandwidth That's not how I expect your choice of mic to affect anyone else's experience. It would surprise me if additional network load is part of what happens.

spoonjim 5y ago

This makes as much sense as astrology.