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Comment by reegnz | Hacker News Reader

The trick I'm using (at least on laptops, cannot do this on phones AFAICT) is to change the input device to the laptop's own microphone to get my earphones to not use HFP (Hands Free Profile) and instead stay in a better quality codec (AAC, LDAC, AptX, SBC, whatever your devices agree upon).

Sound quality for my calls on both sides improved dramatically! Since I've discovered this, I tell all my colleagues in our zoom meetings to switch microphones and it's immediately better for everyone on the call (not just the user that was using HFP).

This is because if you use the hands free profile, it'll use a codec that encodes your voice in a terribly bad bitrate, and even worse, the sound you hear in the headphones is also using a terribly low bitrate.

They should finally fix HFP (Hands Free Profile) spec as it's literally impacting call quality for billions of people.

Edit: apparently LE audio is a thing, but device support is still terrible.

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I do this same technique, but typically with external mic mounted to my desk. Another benefit beyond higher fidelity audio is that it also reduces the latency for other people to hear your audio by about 100-250ms.

HFP has less latency though, doesn't it? And using the headset mic is probably better if the room is loud or has poor acoustics.

> And using the headset mic is probably better if the room is loud or has poor acoustics.

Not to mention the combination of "microphone in the laptop body + person who doesn't turn off their microphone when they're not speaking + person who seems to never stop typing during a call" tends to be distracting at best.

Bluetooth codecs/profiles do not enforce social norms. And I hope they never will.

EDIT: they also won't get rid of useless meetings where people are not mentally present but do other stuff instead.

> Bluetooth codecs/profiles do not enforce social norms

Guess I gotta correct my assumptions then, I clearly thought they did.

Regardless, microphones built-in the same body people type against will remain a personal pet-peeve for me.

One must follow protocol!

Don't forget "exhaust fan outlet located next to the mic and about to take off"

Sure, but janky $30 wireless gaming headsets have even lower latency, with better audio quality, than Bluetooth handsfree, so it's still sad that anything still uses it.

To be fair, even with no noise, the HFP has such bad encoding that it doesn't mean much if the room is noisy or not.

Also the sound isolation tech should be orthogonal to using HFP.

The problem with this trick is that it's very important for your callers to hear you clearly, and laptop mics usually suck, and pick up fan noise.

Maybe not a problem with Macs, but call quality on most laptops using the built in mic is bad enough that people on the other side will have a bad impression of you.

I have a friend who works in sales and business development. He was fighting with his Bluetooth headset and his laptop all the time. I told him to just get a simple USB podcast microphone. You can get a decent one for next to nothing. Problem solved. Those are designed to make you sound good. And if you do sales, you should want to sound amazing.

I actually told him many salespeople get this completely wrong and sound like an absolute Muppet on their expensive headsets without even realizing it and explained to him that anything Bluetooth is basically never going to sound amazing. There’s a lot of snake oil in the market. I got some nice Sony earbuds recently. Tried it once and I was barely audible apparently. That’s supposedly a high-end option. It’s OK, I got them for music and podcasts and wasn’t expecting much for calls. But it managed to underwhelm me on that front. The weakness is Bluetooth and the standard codecs supported on Mac/Windows. You are basically screwed no matter what BT headset you use. For phones, it depends.

Apple fixes this with AirPods by doing a proprietary codec and probably quite a bit of non-trivial sound processing. None of that is part of the Bluetooth standard, and what little is supported in some newer codecs typically does not work in Windows/Mac. So it will still fall back to that low-bitrate codec that distorts your voice and makes you sound like a Muppet.

If you need to use a phone, getting a USB-C headset can be an alternative. Not that many wired headsets these days, sadly. Even Apple now uses USB-C. And both Android and iOS support most USB-based sound equipment.

I take most calls with my Mac. I configured an aggregate device with the MIDI tool so that my headset doesn’t hijack the microphone. Nice little hack if you have some decent BT headphones. On a Mac, the microphones in the laptop are likely way better than the vast majority of headsets. And that’s before you consider the latency and heavy compression Bluetooth adds to the mix.

> Apple fixes this with AirPods by doing a proprietary codec and probably quite a bit of non-trivial sound processing. None of that is part of the Bluetooth standard

Do you have any sources for that claim?

As far as I understand (and based on what I've seen in some Bluetooth debugging menus at least a few macOS versions back), for HFP they just use regular mSBC.

That's an optional codec for HFP (while SBC is mandated for A2DP), and a step above absolute potato quality G.711/PCM u-law, but still part of the regular Bluetooth HFP specs.

https://medium.marco.zone/apple-implemented-the-biggest-impr...

More modern Airpods use AAC-ELD, which is way way better than mSBC. Still not as good as it could be, but pretty decent and sounds far less muddy.

Basically no support in Windows et al though.

Oh, wow, and this apparently even became available to the AirPods Pro 2 retroactively. Totally missed that, thank you!

Note this was with the AirPods 3, not the pro 3. Every AirPods Pro line should have this.

A cheap lapel microphone is even better, as they are always close to your mouth.

I use AirPods with my MacBook all the time and no one is ever complained. Does Apple have a secret sauce?

Yes, see my comment about their proprietary codec that is exclusive to Apple platforms only. Won't work on Android. Won't work on Linux. Won't work on Windows. Only works with Apple headphones with Apple phones/laptops.

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