Show HN: Push-to-Talk for Pulseaudio

Linux? Why not jackd, jack-rack and a simple expander/simple compressor LADSPA plug-in?

http://www.penguinproducer.com/Blog/2012/01/ladspa-noise-rem...

I’ve had people use rtx voice on discord and spam me with noise. I think it needs some work but is a great idea.

I'm using Sway, therefore Wayland, no `xset` here. I'm pretty sure I tested something like this first and it did not work, which I why I went to the hassle of creating this.

I used to do big Skype calls in the finance company I worked at several years ago and it was de rigueur to stay on mute until you wanted to talk. Most people actually did it. I always wondered why they didn't just have push to talk as it's way more convenient and less error prone.

I discovered an interesting feature around muting one day as well. People used to conduct calls at their desk in the open office as there was nowhere else to go. It was awful, but worse was if I was in the same call as someone near me as I'd hear them both in my earpiece and across the room. One day it was my boss, sitting right next to me. I noticed that each caller had a mute icon next to them so I pressed his and, lo! It worked. I could no longer hear him in my earpiece. But neither could anyone else. Turns out you could remotely activate any other caller's mute button.

In Zoom, it's just a matter if putting it on mute and holding down Space bar to temporarily unmute. Very handy.

Same. Works wonders.

But I had to configure the shortcut (Setup is i3 + pulseaudio + sxhkd):

    /*sxhkd/.config/sxhkd/sxhkdrc (lines 19-20)*/
    @XF86Audio{RaiseVolume,LowerVolume,Mute,MicMute}
      pulseaudio-ctl {up,down,mute,mute-input}

Push-to-Talk, but works at Pulseaudio level, so it works on all apps at once. It has a single global "walkie-talkie button" that mutes and unmutes the microphone (I use the Windows key).

Very useful for remote work:

- you can type on mechanical keyboards during calls without annoying your co-workers

- if you move away from your computer for a while, the microphone will be muted, so you avoid background noise and embarrassing situations

- if you un-mute the microphone without touching the trigger key, it will remain un-muted. In case you want to have longer conversations. Touching the trigger key will mute it again