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Comment by beanjuice | Hacker News Reader

One of the most Hacker News articles ever written. A bad solution (wearing a choker) to a self-generated problem (using Arch) that costs a lot of money.

In summary: this generates more problems than it solves (unless you're a navy seal).

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One of the most Hacker News comments every written. A dismissive comment about a diy home project because you'd rather be critical of someone else than build something yourself.

This isn’t a Lego ad, no brownie points for just building random things. I mean build them if you want but don’t judge others because they don’t want to?

>no brownie points for just building random things

That's kind of what hackers do though isn't it?

Hackers hack things up. That’s not always about building, unless you have an extremely loose definition of building. Anyways even hackers need critics.

I'd disagree a bit. There's merit in building something as a way to learn. Kind of a core tenant of hacking. Take it apart, put it back together etc. Going farther with your curiosity than typical.

This idea might be useful for skiing. I do course control for kids ski races and you want to hold the skier in the gate when another crashes further down the course. Radio coms have to be very tight and clear. Wind and dealing with the elements and trying to push the mic button with gloves on is a pita. Maybe there's ideas here that could help. Makes me think at the very least.

I think this is a reaction to the tone set by the headline, which seems to ask "why don't people use this far more cumbersome alternative?"

That said, the assessment of pros and cons in the article is less stereotypically oblivious and more nuanced than the above would suggest.

The tl;dr right at the beginning of the article states that these mics don't make a lot of sense.

People only read the headline and get triggered, not even the tl;dr can reach these humans anymore.

The headline is meant to be a joke or /s and of course "the internet" reads everything as literal, this happens more broadly than HN

Hacker News is not a place for "reactions" - it's a place to have thoughtful discussions about interesting and weird things (and startups). Toplevel comment added negative value to Hacker News (as I now have to put up with it being the top comment thread in what was otherwise a mildly interesting comment section) and was an emotional knee-jerk reaction that broke this section of the guidelines:

> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

It would be nice if we could keep this kind of low-effort, Facebook-esque fluff out of Hacker News.

It seems that just having a headline that asks a question is not good enough any more, at least on HN, as most "readers" appear to assume the headline is a tacit endorsement of the subject of the question.

I can guarantee you wouldn't be making that comment if the post title was "Why don't more people code in machine language"?

But because it's a diy project, it somehow makes it laudable, even though it's a terrible idea and a waste of time and money when there are much better alternatives.

To be clear, I think "wasting time" in useless projects is not really a waste of time. But the title of the post implies that more people should waste resources in something awful.

You don't post on HN for just a pat on the back. Nothing wrong with people responding with respectful criticism even if they are wrong so long as they put some thought into it. People can feel a certain way and keep it to themselves or they can express their opinion and someone else can correct them or if they are correct others are corrected by them.

In hindsight, i didn't write into that comment as much merriment and cheer as I originally intended. This article contains many staples about this community which i find incredibly endearing, including focusing on a strange problem and trying to solve it with the most roundabout method.

I would disagree with you though on the 'DIY' nature of the article, it is certainly a creative solution but the author hasn't necessarily built anything.

It definitely reads as a personal project and not one claiming a superior solution (“People can hear me gulp”)

> People can hear me gulp

Some people are into that <_<

Throat mic ASMR is an untapped market.

OP here -- yes this was definitely not a serious recommendation for anyone! I just thought some others might have possibly thought of this before (and now they don't have to do it!)

I thought the tl;dr would cover it:

> tl;dr - Don’t chuck the Sony 1000XMs/AirPods just yet. Throat mics are an improvement over a standalone wired microphone (if that’s what you are using), and have better background noise reduction but in a quiet room your usual bluetooth headset is still way more convenient.

just buy a proper mic or a roaming mic unless the choker look is more your choice, but then I doubt arch supports your webcam so nobody gets to see it...

> just buy a proper mic or a roaming mic unless the choker look is more your choice,

Yeah I have/had a Sony 1000MX2, AirPods, a Corsair VOID (from a gamier time in my life), and a regular plug in headset+mic -- lots of redundancy in my audio setup.

Have to admit that the convenience of a bluetooth headset I can wear and walk around is still the most convenient right now. The throat mic only being wired (for now) is a real bummer.

> I doubt arch supports your webcam so nobody gets to see it...

Arch actually is not at fault 99% of the time! Arch Wiki is quite possibly the greatest distro wiki to ever exist -- I happily run pacman every day and mana falls from the gods and everything works great usually.

Webcam funnily enough has never been a problem :)

> People can hear me gulp

it's already bad enough hearing people slurping/gulping with normal mics, this mic sounds horrible.

On the other hand, it's further away from the lips so maybe there's less mouth sounds.

Mouth noises can be (largely, not completely) trained out:

- Don't rest your tongue on the roof of your mouth

- Don't close your lips between words/sentences

The TLDR says:

> Throat mics are an improvement over a standalone wired microphone

Seems like a claim to me!

Yep, lemme weaken that real quick -- I was thinking a really old kinda shitty one, technically musician grade gear is standalone and wired...

Yeah I was looking over at my SM7b on my desk and considering writing something up, but decided against it. I was pretty sure you weren’t being that literal!

You pulled out a sentence fragment to completely change the meaning, not really a cool thing to do.

> > tl;dr - Don’t chuck the Sony 1000XMs/AirPods just yet. Throat mics are an improvement over a standalone wired microphone (if that’s what you are using), and have better background noise reduction but in a quiet room your usual bluetooth headset is still way more convenient

That seems like the same meaning to me?

Throat mics are absolutely not an improvement over a standalone wired microphone.

They are if you prioritize mobility, and possibly otherwise, if you are talking about something like the plastic microphone with a wobbly mini plug that popped into my mind’s eye.

I can accept a general claim that some throat mic has at least one advantage over an unnamed wired microphone.

I disagree, the article is proclaiming them to be a good solution:

> Throat mics are an improvement over a standalone wired microphone (if that’s what you are using)

I'll go as far to say that the author is making a completely false claim here and does the reader a disservice by not even attempting to back up this claim with a recording.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5_eI9ungGE&t=228s

I'll just go ahead and say it: throat mics sound like shit.

Compare that to a popular dynamic microphone:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9bniJsyb1E&t=57s

The author doesn't seem to know that dynamic microphones only capture sounds directly in front of them, which makes them ideal for environments where there is background noise, especially if the background noise comes from further away.

The other thing about AirPods is that they sound better connected to Apple equipment where they aren't limited by A2DP, and most AirPods owners own other Apple products.

Also, any recent laptop is likely to have multiple built-in microphones with noise cancelling, and if it's a recent Mac the quality is actually incredible.

The product I recommend that has been very flexible for my usage has been the Antlion ModMic Wireless. It has really amazing wireless quality without the need to mess with Bluetooth, as it uses a USB dongle. For PC gaming, I like to pair this with my over-ear Sony headphones, which are wireless headphones, but for my gaming purposes I plug in the wire and use the ModMic for input. Then, on the go, I can remove the microphone (mounted magnetically) and use my headphones as standard Bluetooth headsets.

For my Mac, the solution I like is to use AirPods for the output, but use the Mac built-in microphone as an input (only a good solution if you're typing on an external keyboard, or else people will hear you typing). It sounds a lot better than the AirPods microphone. It's so good that the only practical step up is a dedicated dynamic or condenser microphone.

Your throat mic example is when listening through a radio link, versus a direct connection with the dynamic microphone example.

I'm sure the dynamic mic sounds better than the troat mic, but this is not a fair comparison. Every mic sounds terrible through such a radio link.

Antlion ModMic Wireless looks nice. I'm using the usb version with my wired headset. I'd really like a proper bluetooth dongle to combine wired microphone with wired headset. But that's almost impossible, because transmitting voice over bluetooth means the receiving audio switches to a very crappy codec. A dongle could theoretically present 2 bluetooth devices, one for audio and one for voice, but I'm not sure a phone or computer would play nice with that.

>> Throat mics are an improvement over a standalone wired microphone (if that’s what you are using)

>I'll go as far to say that the author is making a completely false claim

It's an opinion, they are neither true nor false. It's fair to disagree with it though.

Tomatoes are the best vegetable. Opinion. I'm sure I'll get plenty of disagreements and even some reminding me that a tomato is actually a fruit.

At the time of original publishing, the article didn't have any sound clips, so opinion is all we have to go on.

The addition of the sound clip definitely doesn't make me a believer.

I think a cheap Amazon microphone would beat this setup with far less complexity.

> I'll go as far to say that the author is making a completely false claim here and does the reader a disservice by not even attempting to back up this claim with a recording.

Hey you're right that was a pretty wild claim so I softened it -- I had a very specific (shitty, old) microphone in mind when I wrote that, but the article now has an audio sample, and a reworked tl;dr (it will be live in like... <2 mins).

> The author doesn't seem to know that dynamic microphones only capture sounds directly in front of them, which makes them ideal for environments where there is background noise, especially if the background noise comes from further away.

I certainly didn't know that, TIL!

Thanks for that link too, those are some very good mics, and definitely not what I meant to even suggest that a throat mic was better than!

> Antlion ModMic Wireless

https://antlionaudio.com/blogs/news/introducing-modmic-wirel...

Interesting, neve rheard of this before! I used to have a Corsair VOID that worked well, but this going anywhere is pretty nice -- could be used on helmets or other things.

I don't run a mac so can't do the other stuff, but thanks for the suggestions, hopefully someone else can use them. Apple sure does get consumer hardware correct a lot, don't they.

Obviously, nothing can overcome strong background noise, but I suspect most people's home offices aren't so terrifyingly loud that it's a problem.

This video helped me figure out some microphone basics:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sdft3WiLvE

Eh, I've actually been thinking of getting some for my wife and I for cycling, would make hearing each other over the wind and road noise a lot easier.

That's actually a great idea. Coupled with a Bone Conducting headphone it sounds like great gear for biking.

Hey so one thing that my SO mentioned was never wanting to wear one despite being an avid cycling because of the danger of them being caught on something!

If you can find some that are wireless and are crescent (so not fully closed) maybe that would be safer!

Fair comment, but

>a self-generated problem (using Arch)

I would argue this is a good solution to the problem of using Windows or Mac. ;)

That part of my comment was just having some fun along with the author who was also tongue-in-cheek about mentioning Arch. Having spent too much of my life troubleshooting Windows bluetooth issues, I suspect most are in agreement with the author here.

btw, it's an arch problem :P

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