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Comment by Arelius | Hacker News Reader

Ok, one reality I find this does not address is that not all of us have a nice silent space to work in, and most Mic's don't perform well in that space.

In my case, I live in a one room Studio Loft with my wife, who is in meetings all day and is quite a loud speaker. Pretty much any boom/desktop Mic I've tried is also really good at picking her up.

My current workaround is to use a unidirectional headset microphone[1], But would love other ideas, as cable management is a bit cumbersome.

[1]https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07D49N8C4

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Have you tried a supercardioid dynamic mic with a pre-amp (like the sm7 in the post)? These mics have a fairly tight pickup pattern, especially with higher frequencies and with a pre-amp you can adjust the gain so that it really only picks up when you are very nearly touching it. Also, deadening your environment goes a looooonnnng way to cutting down on background pickup noise. rugs, acoustic panels, divider curtains etc.

I haven't, but good tips, bit expensive to just try out, but might give it a try..

The SM7B seems to be listed as Cardoid not Supercardoid?

Grab the SM-58 mentioned above for the same impact. A dynamic cardioid mic is great for isolating just your voice.

For ease, you might want a Shure MV7. It's a good directional cardiod with a built in USB interface.[1]

Get the mic close, disable auto mic level in zoom, and set the gain on the mic to be loud enough only while youre speaking.

[https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/MV7K--shure-mv7-usb-...]

Ok, just picked up the MV7.

It's a bit better than my AT2020. But I find that in order to get my Gain down low enough so that my partner isn't too distracting, I have to be right on the Mic.

Which isn't a very attractive look over video....

You may have already done this, but in case if not.

The pickup pattern is going to be mostly right in front of the mic, with the best rejection from the rear. Keep in mind the mic will also pick up reflections if there is a wall close behind you.

So ideally you’d sit in front of the mic with no wall or a wall at an oblique angle behind you, and your wife across the room directly behind the mic.

Thanks, our setup is pretty close to that, I got it setup with an XLR interface and I was able to tweak it a bit better still.

Turns out we're moving to a new home, so I anticipate this issue will get solved with walls and doors in the future.

Howdy, author of the post here. I do address this issue in an earlier post: https://olivierlacan.com/posts/loud-and-clear/

And generally every single mic recommendation I give in the linked post has a cardioid pickup pattern which is precisely what can help isolate stray noise in places with louder environments. Software like Zoom will do the rest of the work for you depending on how aggressive the noise control settings are. Zoom is surprisingly good at eliminating echo, feedback, and other non-speaker-voice noises from the mic signal.

Stray far and wide from omnidirectional pickup patterns in microphones because they will unfortunately be far too sensitive to environmental noise. This is also true with many noise-canceled mic/earbuds combos which cancel noise for the person wearing it but not for the people receiving the mic audio recorded in the noisy space.

Thanks, I've tried a few USB Cardoid mics already, and it still picks my wife up loud and clear. I haven't yet tried a supercardoid, or to get a mic amp that allows gain adjustment. So might give that a try.

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