Audio for ms teams, zoom etc.

[staticV3]

My mic is also a shotgun and its about 40 cm away below the left screen pointing up to me. Works great in a very small (but filled with book shelves) room.

Shotgun mics are designed firmly for free field conditions, and so using them in a DF-y environment kinda breaks them and results in a boomy, bloated sound.
Though if it works in your room, all power to you!

Here's a video about it: link

 

[artburda]

What's the distance between the mic and your head? My mic is also a shotgun and its about 40 cm away below the left screen pointing up to me. Works great in a very small (but filled with book shelves) room.

It's about at ten o'clock, 40cm away from my mouth to my left, about at my chin's height pointing at my chin/mouth. The sound quality is really good, the only slight issue is the typing on the keyboard which is still more audible than I would like it to be. And the other issue is with some web application meetings, where I can't blur the background, because the microphone is visible. I could put it lower down pointing upwards, but than it would pick up more from the keyboard. If I didn't have to take notes during the customer calls I could also put it where you have.

 

[mhardy6647]

Most of our videoconferencing is non-work related, but I do still do some consulting which is virtually (and thankfully) almost all remote any more.
My consulting business is a sole proprietor LLC, but the LLC hasn't bought most of the equipment I let I use.

I use an add-on Logitech videocamera with built in mic(s).
For audio, I use Bluetooth to a cheap little BT receiver hooked to one of the many line-level inputs on a dump-find Yamaha RX-V1050 receiver, usually driving a pair of Polk R200 loudspeakers. Some days, the preamp output of the Yamaha is hooked to a single-ended 2A3 amplifier (a variant of Joseph Esmilla's classic "Simple 2A3" design) driving DIY loudspeakers equipped with Altec 515B and JBL 2441 drivers, an EMILAR EH-200-2 treble horn, and B&C DE35 "super" (ish) tweeters. Those are fun days.

 

[drallim]

If you have an nvidia graphics card in your PC you might be able to use their noise cancellation. I haven't used it but apparently it's pretty good at getting rid of keyboard noise since it's marketed at gamers.

NVIDIA RTX Voice: Setup Guide

A quick-start guide to installing and using RTX Voice beta, NVIDIA's background noise removal plugin.

www.nvidia.com

 

[m_g_s_g]

For my home office I use a Samson Q2U mic on its standard tripod connected through USB (it can be connected both through XLR or USB, but for now I use USB). Then I can connect IEMs to the Samson Q2U headphone output or to my computer headphone output.

As IEMs, sometimes I use my Truthear x Crinacle Zero; most of the times the AKG IEMs that came with an old Samsung phone I no longer use. For voice it doesn’t really make a difference.

That way:
- I have a physical / hardware button (Samson Q2U) to mute my mic without having to trust the Zoom/Teams software mute. This was an IMPORTANT factor for me.
- I have defined keyboard shortcuts (and desktop icons) to switch to several outputs (computer audio out to Sonos connect:amp, HDMI TV, computer headphone out, Samson headphone out). Depending on the situation, all of them can come in handy: I mute the mic but can still hear the meeting while I grab a cup of coffee. With much better quality than with Bluetooth headset profile.
- I can benefit from an unidirectional cardioid mic.

I have a UMIK-1, but I never thought about using it for this. Doesn’t it pick up a lot of background noise? As in your dog barking or your Roomba working in another room?

 

[Honken]

For my private setup I use my Truthear Zeros with a Samson Q2U microphone (USB). The Zeros doesn't suffer from any sound leakage and the Q2U doesn't pick up much background clatter, which is good because I mostly use that for gaming where you'll hammer the keyboard a lot whilst communicating. Gaming apps (Mumble and Discord) are pretty good at removing the little background noise that does come through.

For work I use a Mac, so I use the old 3.5mm headset from Apple together with the built in voice isolation feature of MacOS. I find that Voice Isolation does a good job at removing unwanted background noise, especially compared to the typical corpo meeting apps built in features (really, it boggles the mind how far behind corpo apps are in this regard), but perhaps not as well as RNNoise or Krisp. For video, I use a Raspberry Zero with the Raspberry HQ camera as my webcam. Been wanting to try the continuity camera thing Apple released recently but I don't have a new enough spare device for that.

Hardly any fancy hardware in either setup, but it sure sounds and looks better than just about everyone elses setup that I suffer every day. Figure that the voice quality mostly boils down to using effective noise removal on your mic input. On that note, I recently tried AMDs noise removal that they introduced with their 6000 series of GPUs, and it is truly useless.

Edit: @m_g_s_g Haha, what are the odds - same mic and headphones.

 

[HarmonicTHD]

As I am not singing in my meetings the various company provided Jabra and Logitec headsets work just fine.

I have a Rode NT1 just for recording and unless one does broadcasts is probably an overkill for regular conference calls

 

[kemmler3D]

I have something like 10h of zoom calls per week, sometimes more. I managed to snag a NIB Rode NT2-A for $100, run it into my MOTU M2. It works pretty well. I have it on a cheap-ass spring arm attached to my desk, with a cheap-ass shockmount and pop filter. I use the 80hz highpass and cardioid pattern, which cuts down on background noise enough that nobody has complained about it yet.


For my end of the audio, it's my daily driver Focal Elex cans.

I often think it's massive overkill, because it is... but why be an audiophile if you're not going to overdo it a bit?

 

[artburda]

If you have an nvidia graphics card in your PC you might be able to use their noise cancellation. I haven't used it but apparently it's pretty good at getting rid of keyboard noise since it's marketed at gamers.

NVIDIA RTX Voice: Setup Guide

A quick-start guide to installing and using RTX Voice beta, NVIDIA's background noise removal plugin.

www.nvidia.com

No, I have to use a company notebook with an integrated graphics card.

 

[artburda]

I have something like 10h of zoom calls per week, sometimes more. I managed to snag a NIB Rode NT2-A for $100, run it into my MOTU M2. It works pretty well. I have it on a cheap-ass spring arm attached to my desk, with a cheap-ass shockmount and pop filter. I use the 80hz highpass and cardioid pattern, which cuts down on background noise enough that nobody has complained about it yet.


For my end of the audio, it's my daily driver Focal Elex cans.

I often think it's massive overkill, because it is... but why be an audiophile if you're not going to overdo it a bit?

The microphone in the frame is not an issue for you?

 

[Neale]

Key question is whether you have your video conference space to yourself, or you have to share it.

If sharing, then a head set is required and almost any USB headset will do. If you have the space to yourself, as I do, a Jabra 510 works well.

 

[Waxx]

Now i use the Plantronics Blackwire 5220 usb headset supplied with my client (i'm an it consultant), and that is a very comfortable and decent sounding one.

But when i had a bad one in the past, I used my diy bookshelf speakers (Mark Audio Alpair 10.3 fullrange driver in a own design reflex cabinet) and a Senheiser MD21 microphone connected to a Steinberg UR22 MKII interface. The mic is omni, but a dynamic microphone that does not really take the room also with it. It was ment for field reporters back in the days (1950's) when this was sold. It works well for videocalls.

the MD21:

If you use a seperate mic for that, use a dynamic one, and best actually a cardiod, not an omni. the Shure SM58 or 57 is already good enough and much better than most headsets.

 

[artburda]

If you have the space to yourself, as I do, a Jabra 510 works well.

I have the space to myself in my home office. How does the jabra handle keyboard noise?

 

[Maginness]

I mostly work from home and on Zoom a lot. My set up is a Blue mic (Yeti Nano I believe) and then a Topping E30 DAC to Klipsh R-41PM powered speakers and a 10" Klipsh powered sub under my desk.

I don't care for the speakers for music and have a dedicated 2.2 system in the room too. I do like the speakers for Zoom (voices are very clear) and they fit just right under my monitor.

The external DAC makes a subtle difference and I had it laying around. Keep thinking about using REW or DIRAC to tune the set up. And, I have a miniDSP 2x4HD laying around... but that might go into the garage system.

If I have a kiddo in the room with me and watching TV or something I switch over to a set of Airpod Max for noise canceling and audio. Still use the desktop mic as Zoom does a great job filtering out background noise.

 

[kemmler3D]

The microphone in the frame is not an issue for you?

So, when I bought the NT2A actually I figured this would be a dealbreaker and I've have to go back to the built-in Macbook mics. You can only look so goofy at work before it becomes an issue.

In practice, the mic doesn't obscure my face on camera, (it's a bit below my head in the frame) and it even gets blurred out by the "blur background" features, so it doesn't mess up my appearance in video much at all.

I think for super-ideal audio quality, you want to speak close and directly into the mic, but for video calls, speaking in the general direction of the mic is still a step up from built-in laptop mics, so it doesn't get in the way. I'm just SLIGHTLY off-axis for the mic and surprisingly, that's enough to keep visual appearances fine.

 

[artburda]

In practice, the mic doesn't obscure my face on camera, (it's a bit below my head in the frame) and it even gets blurred out by the "blur background" features, so it doesn't mess up my appearance in video much at all.

Yes, when I'm using MS Teams I'm always able to blur out the background or rather use the company background picture and hide the microphone. In these situations I'm fine. But a few times each month I get external meeting invitations (not MS Teams) and often then the background can't be blurred out because I have to use the web browser version of the video call software and don't have all the features. In these situations it looks distracting when a shotgun is pointing at my face XD

 

[Willem]

As a Sennheiser me3 user I think I would prefer talking to someone with excellent audio from a visible mic to lesser audio with the mic out of sight. It is not as we don't know the other person is talking into a microphone.

 

[Neale]

I have the space to myself in my home office. How does the jabra handle keyboard noise?

The Jabra has an omni-directional mic, that seems to be good quality, so it will pick up your keyboard. But there's a mute button right on the unit ...

 

[dorakeg]

You meant for teams and zoom meetings??

I mostly use Logitech USB headset provided by company. If not it's the dell/Jabra speakerphone.

 

[dorakeg]

The Jabra has an omni-directional mic, that seems to be good quality, so it will pick up your keyboard. But there's a mute button right on the unit ...

There should be noise cancellation for the Jabra so keyboard typing noise should not be obvious. During meetings, keyboard noise is inaudible unless someone is slamming on the keyboard...haha