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Comment by tgsovlerkhgsel | Hacker News Reader

> but I guess effects (like cancelling echos from participants who use speakers instead of headphones, or reducing noise from crappy mics) also play a role.

I wonder if there is a market for a meeting app that has the best quality of them all, by not trying to poorly work around bad environments, but simply booting people out of meetings until they fix their setup.

Yes, it would suck if you or someone you really need something from get booted, but after a few weeks everyone's setup would likely be fixed so this would no longer be a frequent issue, and in exchange, you wouldn't have 20+ people get driven mad by someone giving a hour-long presentation over Bluetooth audio.

I feel like shitty audio quality is responsible for at least 80% of the 'zoom brain' effect.

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> I wonder if there is a market for a meeting app that has the best quality of them all, by not trying to poorly work around bad environments, but simply booting people out of meetings until they fix their setup.

There are so many situational things involved when making a call that I would estimate the size of this market to be approximately $0/yr.

P.S. I'm sure this comment will come back to bite me 10 years down the line just like that Dropbox comment.

I spend 70% of Zoom meetings with "Original Sound" enabled. I have a good microphone and I want to be as easy to hear as possible.

However, I also have an air conditioner. You can hear it. I try to keep it turned off during meetings, but sometimes it's just too hot. and so Original Sound goes off and the air conditioner goes on.

What else am I supposed to do? Leave the meeting?

Try Krisp. Local ML noise reduction. Cancels out my AC, mechanical keyboard and even my dog, while people say my audio sounds amazing.

Push to talk solutions make a pretty good middle ground.

Have all the background noise you need to have, as long as I only ever have to hear it when you're actively trying to speak. If I still can't hear you over your noise, then you have a bigger problem.

If I have to listen to your noise even when someone else is speaking, then we all have a problem, which PTT nicely solves.

Anyone who spend the 90s / 00s competitive gaming likely already has their preferred PTT key, that they can push while continuing to still be productive in whatever activity they're already engaging in.

Some tweaking may be required, given the different input methods used depending on the job vs the game, but that was true of different games back then too.

One of the advantages of remote work, is to enable people to be flexible about their working environment.

Your solution is to setup a streaming rig in everyone’s house, and force them into a home cubicle? Sounds absolutely painful to me.

I wonder if a motivator would be requiring push-to-talk from those people. Better yet: disallowing any beautification filters.

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