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Comment by alabastervlog | Hacker News Reader

Investing in a decent mic and paying a little attention to lighting is the new "buying a decent suit and having it tailored".

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I "invested" in early 2020 when all of my training moved to Zoom. I've gone through a lot of equipment and frequently am complimented on my sound, camera, and background.

My rank order for investment:

1. Mic - See my mic comment in another thread

2. Lighting - It is hard for good cameras to compensate for poor lighting. Good lighting on the other hand, does compensate and helps laptop webcams perform much better. I currently run a Godox ULC60bi with a huge parabolic diffuser. Probably overkill for many. You can get cheap fluorescent or LED lights with a diffuser. Would avoid a ring light especially if you wear glasses.

3. Camera - I have used Canon M50 and Sony A6500 as webcams. These days, I use an Insta360 Link. It's not quite as good as the cameras (you can add more "background blur" with their software), but it's more convenient. I still get compliments on this.

4. Background - Blur, doors, and bedrooms are what you see 90% of the time. A good background helps you stand out. I have a bookcase with the books ordered in color. Folks always comment about it. There are lots of other common looks, look on Youtube or X (Kevin Shen) for office makeovers.

5. Teleprompter - Not for scripts but for "looking in the eyes" of my students or the person on the other end of the call.

Wow, this is being downvoted. (Please help me understand why as this comment is a summary of interactions that I have when folks ask me about my equipment.)

My guess is because for the median HN reader (an ordinary techie who doesn't talk much on video, and when he/she does, it's mostly to other ordinary techies), your setup appears to be expensive overkill.

4b. Collapsible green screen[0]. Can't recommend this enough if you don't want/have the ability to stage or curate your background (my "office" doubles as a guest room). It's also excellent for presenting and handy for any number of one-off things. When I don't need it I just slide it under the bed, easy.

What teleprompter do you use? How do you use it?

0. https://www.amazon.com/FUDESY-Collapsible-Auto-locking-Green...

A green screen might be another option. I don't know anyone who is using them, so I can't really comment on them.

Here's my setup.

https://x.com/__mharrison__/status/1901829114417602569/photo...

Teleprompter is a GlideGear.

Thanks!

What teleprompter solution do you use?

I linked to a photo elsewhere in this thread.

It is a Glide Gear teleprompter with an Insta360 Link for a camera, custom foam draping, and a Lilliput 8-inch monitor. It is attached to my monitor mount with a swing arm, and some adapted camera gear (inspired by some YT video) that allows me to adjust its vertical and level position of it relatively easily.

I put together a similar setup in 2020/2021, but had to tear it all down. I got too many jokes about being a Twitch streamer, and the teleprompter made me look like one of those dudes who stares directly into your eyeballs at all times as a power move.

Maybe I should have stuck with it and iterated! Sounds like you've dialed it in.

Whatever floats your boat ;)

I'm the creepy instructor who looks at his students rather than talking to you by looking down and to the right...

More seriously, I have dialed it in because I think it gives my clients a better final product. I also just want to have things work rather than spending an inordinate amount of time setting up equipment each time I need to record.

My setup is not as professional as yours, but I bought the "diva light" ring light and put my camera in the middle of it. I swear it makes me look 10 years younger and people say I look like a supermodel on calls which is really funny. The key is to put the camera and screen up high so you're looking upwards, which makes it a flattering angle for jawline.

That's awesome that the ring light works for you.

I wear glasses, and having a ring in the middle of them would drive me crazy when editing videos. Also, staring at a computer screen with lights off to the side is bad enough for me, I don't know how you can look directly into the light. Finally, it isn't compatible with my camera being behind the teleprompter.

Most lighting folks recommend putting one light to the side (say 45 degrees) so that one side of your face is lit and the other has a shadow. Fancier folks have additional fill light to highlight the shaded side and the back of the head (so there is a glow around it).

>Background - Blur, doors, and bedrooms are what you see 90% of the time. A good background helps you stand out. I have a bookcase with the books ordered in color.

True on the first part, but bookshelves as backgrounds are so cliche. Every two bit hack who gives an opinion on TV has a bookshelf as the background. It's a negative signal for me.

Cliche is typically what you want to go for in a professional setting, it is not a negative signal in general.

I think it depends on what you are trying to accomplish. Are you trying to fit in or stand out?

It always shouts "curated inauthentic bookshelf" to me.

Every book and item has been carefully selected to produce a specific image about the person.

I just use a Severance themed overlay :)

I had my real bookshelves behind me for most of my remote career. Mostly because my old sociology professor called attention to what backgrounds people get in media reports tells you a lot about them.

Sadly, we had a second child and we put a cot into the room, so I can't have my books behind me anymore :(

Me, too. You can't really see what's on them due to the bokeh from the DSLR I use as my webcam, but you can tell they're books, at least! What's actually there is my RPG collection, and some other hobby references.

I'm up to level 4 on this scale, with a hacked d5100 as my camera. How much incremental ROI do you feel you got from adding the teleprompter? I'd never considered one.

I use it for looking in the camera. If I don't have the zoom window on my teleprompter, I find myself looking at the zoom window. Probably not a huge deal for folks using just laptops and occasional zoom.

I find it even more useful when recording courses. I use OBS to overlay my face when talking about code. I immediately notice when folks try to do this without a teleprompter. They keep gazing off to the side.

There are yt tutorials about making cheap teleprompters. You could try it out and see if you care for it. I made two, however the value in a real teleprompter is the sturdiness and the mount. It was easier for me to buy one than hack one up that I would be using everyday.

Lighting makes a HUGE difference. Just get an Elgato Key Light Air from Amazon, set it to ~5700K and full brightness and watch the magic happen. It takes a while to get used to having a lightbulb in your face but it's so worth it.

That, and the new Macbook Pro's portrait mode feature on the webcam. It's good enough that most people won't want to bother with setting up a DSLR

For a good visual on how much lighting helps check out youtuber Hannah Poston's "Why do I look so young" where she shows herself with and without her lighting setup: https://youtu.be/S9TTLmTZnf4?si=gJoSCwWK8bg2rerL&t=41

Yup. But the AV setup is cheaper, easier to maintain, and more comfortable.

> more comfortable

Only if you don't try to wear it.

Is a MacBook pro m series mic not good enough usually?

I was wondering the same. I’d love to see a quick head to head, in realistic non studio wfh environment, starting with macbook mic, and then at $50, $100, $300 mic investments.

Anyone got the setup already in front of them at their zoom desk and want to make us a 5 minute comparison video?

They're not even remotely comparable.

Apple has some of the WORST quality microphones - mostly due to the fact that they have zero headset with boom mics.

They’re not talking about headsets but about built-in MacBook mics. Which are definitely pretty good

I just got back from an All Hands meeting in our main office. Most people do it remotely. We had remote people presenting from their M-series macbooks. I was reading this thread prior to the all hands, so I was paying attention to the quality of the voices. Audio was being pumped through the ceiling speakers. They all sounded great and it convinced me that I did not need to throw money at an imagined problem... I of course reserve the right to change my mind as soon as I see a great desktop mic on a sweet deal.

MacBook mics tend to be very good in my experience. Easily puts you in the "hooray I can actually hear you" category.

It's webcams (Logitech shit) and headsets that are the worst.

MacBook mics are fine assuming you sit close enough to your laptop and directly infront of it.

If you have it off to the side and aren’t sitting pretty close it will sound like butthole

Proper positioning is pretty important.

Any tips for good mics? Any good options that are not immediately in front of your face?

You'll want some kind of shotgun mic. The rode videomic2 is a good budget option. It has a standard 3/8" thread you can use with a desk boom.

I've been using one for a few years now and am really happy with it.

Every now and then (once every 1-2 weeks) it drops off of the list of inputs on OSX but unplug and plug it back in usually fixes that.

Sennheiser MKE-600 is next up for me. have a graveyard of other mics that don't sound as well for my voice.

Listen to a bunch of the shotgun mics on youtube and see which your voice might sound the best with.

I’m a fan of Saramonic’s MV2000 (https://saramonicusa.com/sr-mv2000-large-diaphragm-usb-studi...) is an affordable, good quality cardiod mic.

Frequently available for $50 and supports live headphone pass through if that’s your jam.

I bought a Yeti Blue a while back, and several people commented positively on its sound quality. I'm pleased with it, especially given its decent price: it's not a bank-breaker for being such a huge upgrade over the built-in laptop mic.

As a bonus, it has a hardware mute button on it. Now I usually leave my Zoom unmuted, and use the button to toggle whether my coworkers can hear me. It's more convenient than clicking the Zoom button or finding the keyboard shortcut.

The main issue with the Yeti Blue is that it's 15 years old: although microphone tech doesn't evolve as much over the years, it's still behind a bit (e.g. it does 48 kHz/16-bit audio while modern USB mics do 96 kHz/24-bit). It also uses a USB-mini connector which is very annoying.

There are a few modern improvements on it, such as the Yeti X.

hehe, I just posted a sibling comment about the same mic. I've been using it for 5+ years, and I don't think like I'm missing anything. I suppose I need to make sure to keep myself uninformed on the subject so I don't get an upgrade :)

The USB connector is not an issue for me, because the mic is connected to a docking station/computer display.

The sound quality hasn't been an issue yet, and I've used it to record some game assets, etc...

Have you used Yeti X? If so, how does it compare to Blue in practice?

And boy does that mini-uab connector suck. The cable falls out all the time.

Had a yeti nano, pretty good. Still the condenser mics are too sensitive at times.

Basically any mic that's widely recommended for entry-level YouTubers (outside search engine spam, those don't count as real recommendations) will be a giant step up from laptop or headphone mics, enough that most people who just want to sound good on video conferencing probably don't need to spend more. The Blue Yeti is exactly that kind of mic, to the point that it's kind of a cliché.

Shotgun mics popular among low-budget filmmakers (think: people who shoot local commercials, little indie films and shorts, and, when desperate for cash, weddings) would also be a good and fairly cheap way to go, though they may require other hardware to function.

Do those do noise canceling?

Shotgun mics? They're very good at cancelling off-axis noise (that is, anything that's not in a fairly narrow cone the direction they're aimed) but AFAIK it's really challenging to have hardware cancelling of distant noises in the direction of capture, while also capturing a narrow cone like that. So, do they do noise cancelling? Yes, very much so, it's kinda their whole point, but also no, depending on what you mean.

Oh i meant more the noise canceling you need in a call... cat meow, ambulance siren coming from the open window, the sound of you pouring yourself more coffee etc.

The Blue Yeti is a condenser mic, so it picks up a lot of background noise.

Going the dynamic mic route can end up costing a bit more, but worth it in my opinion. Unless you have a very quiet environment and don’t need to type on a keyboard or click a mouse while on calls.

That hasn't been my experience at all, especially when set for cardioid. I use to ask diligently about whether my coworkers could hear me type, or my kids yelling from another room, etc., and they couldn't. It does a surprisingly good job of not picking up the trucks leaving from fire department literally across the street from my house.

I have a feeling this is likely due to noise suppression in the video call platform.

Possibly Jitsi doesn’t do it as well as Zoom or Google Meet, so my experience on Jitsi was a night and day improvement switching from Blue Yeti (cardioid mode) to a dynamic mic.

Fair enough. Zoom seems to be alright at that.

I have one of these, but honestly, I find it hard to convince myself it's better than the built-in mic in my MBP. I've gone back-and-forth in the Zoom audio settings between my Yeti and the MBP mic, tweaking the knob on the Yeti to every setting, and I still prefer the laptop.

I use the Elgato Wave:3, which is more table-level: https://www.elgato.com/us/en/p/wave-3-black

The software is also surprisingly useful, and includes a mixer and real-time-audio effects which are expensive to do outside of the software on macOS.

I use an Elgato Wave XLR $200 so that I can upgrade my microphone separately; I'm not a fan of hybrid/integrated devices. I use it with an Audio-Technica AT2035 $200 and a Elgato Low-Profile Microphone Arm $100.

IK Multimedia iRig Stream Mic USB, it sounds great, has a built in audio interface, pop filter, direct monitoring, mixing, light up mute button, and all for under $100.

Def use the mic with a pair of wired headphones/earbuds to use the live/direct monitoring feature.

My team used to have a lot of issues with people mics being too loud or too quiet without realizing. Getting everyone on that mic and specifically using direct monitoring has solved that issue.

Try a Sennheiser, maybe like a mke-600. Once you see how you can laser focus on your voice, hard to go back.

I've been using this one for the past +5 years, and I'm quite happy with it:

https://www.logitechg.com/en-us/products/streaming-gear/yeti...

It works better if you're really close, but .5-1m away still sounds fantastic (I work from a 3x4m sized room, with some outside noise).

Cons: it's quite big

I work in high end professional audio services for conferences, events, etc in Silicon Valley. The Ferrari of headset microphones in the industry is currently the DPA 6066 - the vocal nuances, timbre, and precision of the 6066 is that of a finely tuned instrument. Note that this is a mic only, you'll need something over or in ear to monitor audio from Zoom, Webex, etc.

Agree that the best mics for speech are headsets that tightly control the position of the mic.

> DPA 6066

These are about $1,000 and look (though looks may be deceiving) shockingly easy to accidentally destroy, to save anyone wondering a Google.

What is the Honda Civic? Relatively cheap, reliable, good enough for daily use for the overwhelming majority of people?

Not that I am qualified beyond the reviews I found, but I picked up a Shure 58 for $100. Supposedly used by many musicians and can be dropped/abused without issue.

See my response to parent comment.

Shure BRH440 ($400) or Countryman H6 if you want the low-profile style ($500)

Samson Q2U

The one built into a Logitech C922 camera. Works best when there is some sound-absorbing material in the room, such as carpet on the floor, tapestry on the wall, sofa somewhere, and so on.

The further away the microphone, the better acoustics and less ambient noise you'll need.

I've been finding the pickup on my bluetooth bone-conduction headphones to be surprisingly good enough. I tried it as I found them convenient & comfortable for calls on my phone. People don't notice the difference when I'm using them rather than the company-provided wired over-ear headset.

Though that might say as much for the company provided mic as it does for the BC ones!

I have a Blue Yeti, an AudioTechnica BPHS1 (headset), a Fifine 688 (cheap Shure SM7B competition), and a Behringer C2 (pencil mic). I have also used "professional equipment" sent from studios for me to record with.

The professional equipment sounds the best, but the audio device alone (sans mic) was $1200.

These days, I use the pencil mic with a Scarlett device. It sounds good enough for my recording needs (I post-process everything regardless). It is out of camera, and pencil mics (or shotgun) are what pros use in camera studios.

If you don't mind having a big mic on camera, the Fifine is a lot of bang for the buck. If you are a brand person, go for the Shure.

A headset is great for minimizing sound when talking with others (say for a podcast interview), but I have yet to find one that is comfortable for using all day (I'm often teaching day-long courses).

I don't think anyone is going to blow 1 month of their salary to sound better on zoom.

Are you referring to the $1200 audio device? Yes, that is expensive. It is meant for professional recording.

The average software salary in the US is about $10k a month. Few spend that much on audio equipment.

Why do you presume that software developers are the only ones doing zoom calls?

You’re on a software developer forum

An international forum, there's more countries than USA.

nobody suggested anything otherwise

also original post only actually recommends $100 - $200 mics, so this entire subthread has been a bumbling series of utter nonsense

You can get a decent 2-in 2-out audio interface for 100€ or less. I can recommend Behringer's UMC series: https://www.thomann.de/at/behringer_u_phoria_umc204hd.htm

I have the Scarlett audio version. It works fine. However, I played around swapping my mics with the $1200 Sound Devices Pre2, and it just sounds amazing. I'm not sure what is going on inside that box. I haven't been able to justify that purchase.

I actually bought a sound card, different model. But to do recording. I don't bother to plug it for zoom calls :D

I use a BPHS1, in my case I found that replacing the ear pads with 3rd party gel pads greatly improved the comfort for long meetings.

I replaced my pads with microfiber ones. The pads don't cause me pain, the top of my head hurts after 4 hours or more.

Pencil mic/ shotgun mic is what you want. Rode Videomic is the most accessible one you will find. They are highly directional (hypercardioid). The reason you sound tinny from your laptop is because a) they are not very directional (beamforming helps but it's not enough) and b) the lack of directionality is made up for by too much autogain thus picking up the room.

The "podcaster mics" will work too but they are designed to be pulled up to your face. If you don't want the mic in camera then you will not get great results with them.

see my thread here. the last posts from me are what I've been using.

Can't edit my original message, but I just wanted to say: thanks for all the suggestions! I'll research all of them.

My background is very tailored. A wall of 80s/90s themed stuff and a large pixelated "loading" bar with magnetic blocks for the progress bar. I get compliments regularly and I am sure it helps me stand out in a sea of screens.

I run an HD obsbot camera and a great mic. I am fully convinced it helps.

Could you share the background?

I'm specifically intrigued by that loading bar with magnetic blocks.

nothing too wild. Found a wall sticker on etsy of a pixled loading bar:

  _____________________
  |                   |
  |___________________|
      L O A D I N G

The sticker is on the wall and looks all pixled, and then I have 7 black, thin foam 5"x6" rectangles that I've glued magnets to the back of, and then on the wall, I have nail heads that the magnets connect to. I can load up the bar, one block per day, or I can just have it as my energy indicator haha.

Ah, I was imagining something way more complex and wilder, with electronics and LEDs and what not :D But that's cool too, if simpler, nice way to track stuff. Thanks for explaining! ;)

Is it not too distracting for a job interview?

A good non-bluetooth headset. Logitech makes some with a wireless dongle. I use a Sennheiser DECT headset. Most DECT headsets have pretty tinny cordless phone type sound but this one has an ultra-wideband mode that sounds pretty nice. Can also walk around the house with 0 connection issues.

Waaay cheaper and easier than a tailored suit.

A mic and lights can be cheaper than a department store suit.

Wouldn't really call it an investment.

An investment of time and effort.

Audio gear is surprisingly complicated for non-experts to research, evaluate and monitor. (Like even making sure your app is using it, and didn't reset to your laptop mic when you accidentally unplugged it for a minute.)

And fixing your lighting can require rearranging your entire office if you have a window behind you. Or investing in expensive blinds, etc.

ugh, true

"investing" is a strong word, when you can get really good microphones for $50-100.

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