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The audio comparison is disingenuous because the levels are not normalized in any way. Once you normalize the levels the difference between Macbook and Shure, w

by zokier 5y ago

The audio comparison is disingenuous because the levels are not normalized in any way. Once you normalize the levels the difference between Macbook and Shure, while noticeable, is not really something I'd call "radical".

navane 5y ago
I disagree. The Shure sounded like he was speaking, or whispering in my ear, depending on the output volume. This makes sense, as this was recorded from a distance of 10cm from his face. This made me wonder, apearantly I (I would say we, but you did not) can hear the distance something is recorded at, separately from the volume. How cool are our ears.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  Agreed (with @navane). The Shure recording, as presented, is definitely louder than the other two. However, when I reduce it and play it back-to-back with the laptop mic, the Shure is pretty radically better. (I'm using a mid-range set of headphones.) What's surprising to me is how good the laptop mic is, despite the hurdles working against it.
rectang 5y ago
I agree that level matching is important when the goal is to make accurate subjective quality judgments. This is very well understood in the audio industry. Rather than microphone quality, the differences between the samples are primarily attributable to microphone position and technique: specifically, being 10 cm from the mic produces something people like better than being 60 cm away. The main issue with the MacBook mic is that it's inconvenient to get close to it. The advice to get a boom to make it easier to bring an outboard mic into optimal position without strain is excellent and highly practical, IMO. The one big quality outlier is the Airpod Max sample, which exhibits compression artifacts and rolled off high end (and low end, but that matters less). It is substantially worse than all the other options. (It probably has worse latency, too.) The iPad Pro sample isn't great either, probably because the mic is off-axis when speaking into it from a natural position. Again, the degradation is primarily a result of suboptimal microphone position and technique rather than component quality.

by zokier 5y ago

navane 5y ago

I disagree. The Shure sounded like he was speaking, or whispering in my ear, depending on the output volume. This makes sense, as this was recorded from a distance of 10cm from his face. This made me wonder, apearantly I (I would say we, but you did not) can hear the distance something is recorded at, separately from the volume. How cool are our ears.

sokoloff 5y ago
Agreed (with @navane). The Shure recording, as presented, is definitely louder than the other two. However, when I reduce it and play it back-to-back with the laptop mic, the Shure is pretty radically better. (I'm using a mid-range set of headphones.) What's surprising to me is how good the laptop mic is, despite the hurdles working against it.

rectang 5y ago

I agree that level matching is important when the goal is to make accurate subjective quality judgments. This is very well understood in the audio industry. Rather than microphone quality, the differences between the samples are primarily attributable to microphone position and technique: specifically, being 10 cm from the mic produces something people like better than being 60 cm away. The main issue with the MacBook mic is that it's inconvenient to get close to it. The advice to get a boom to make it easier to bring an outboard mic into optimal position without strain is excellent and highly practical, IMO. The one big quality outlier is the Airpod Max sample, which exhibits compression artifacts and rolled off high end (and low end, but that matters less). It is substantially worse than all the other options. (It probably has worse latency, too.) The iPad Pro sample isn't great either, probably because the mic is off-axis when speaking into it from a natural position. Again, the degradation is primarily a result of suboptimal microphone position and technique rather than component quality.