Mechanical Keyboard Sounds – A listening Museum

I would recommend checking out Chyrosran22's keyboard reviews for a more fair comparison across different boards. He's reviewed just about every switch type under the sun at this point - https://www.youtube.com/@Chyrosran22/videos

At the end of every review he does a typing test, and for the last few years at least I think the mic has been in more or less the same kind of position and they've been recorded in the same room. You still have to apply a pinch of salt because I don't know if there's been significant differences in audio level normalisation/compression/EQ, but it would give you a more representative idea of what to expect.

> (same room, mic, distance, levels, etc) and the only variable is the keyboard, would be much more interesting

can't agree more with this.

I have the novelkey creams for example, and they sound nothing like in the sound representation.

People forget how much the plate, material of the keyboard etc vary the sound.

i've always hated the sound of clicky switches where the "click" isn't a direct side effect of actuating the switch - things like cherry MX blues or clicky alps, where the "click" is added to simulate the sound of something like an IBM buckling spring. it seems like some kind of vintage keyboard cosplay.

buckling spring boards are still a little annoying but i can forgive them more than most MX-like boards that click just to click - i'm partial to vintage stuff and the timbre isn't quite as grating to me. mx blue-type switches sound cheap and crinkly, like someone is crumpling up one of those crazy-loud Sun Chips bags.

co-workers: please keep those at home! get a nice silenced board for the office :)

>My keyboard demo day at Fry's (2011)

https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=25572.0

yeah silent tactiles are a gap, the tactile section is all loud stuff (pandas, banana split), nothing quiet. boba u4 should be on there, adding next round.

brick and mortar thing is real. microcenter's basically it for physical. novelkeys and kbdfans sell $8 switch tester packs with ~10 switches each, not a store but at least you feel them before committing.

Yes, silence should be the default

How does MX Clears compare?

I couldn't even get the X box to work to close a particular keyboard and then select another. One time it worked but I couldn't tap on any other keyboards and I had to reload the page to be able to select another one.

EDIT: now it's working, don't know why it repeatedly wasn't.

"Completely unusable" is an over-exaggeration. By default, assume good will.

Removing it

Why do they want my email though? Well, I can guess why. But why would some random email be useful for such a site?

Added "Play" button in the sidebar

Thock is a filter if you type in the bar, and adding "Play sample" button, didn't think of it, but a good idea!

Fixed it, the iOS was cutting the audio pack

On the old[0] MyNoise app, there's "Calm Office" which has generators for "Keyboards & Mouse"[1] and "Keyboards"[2].

There's also "Vintage Office" which has "Mechanical Keyboard"[3].

Both have a variety of other ambiences that could fill out "typing room" (especially if you made a multi-generator.)

But yeah, it could do with a bit more variety of "office" and "keyboard" generators.

[0] I dislike the new app's UI/UX, it doesn't support multi-generators, and there's no easy way to download all the generators you have access to. (You also have to pay again for lifetime access but that I'm fine with.)

[1] "thock"

[2] "clatter"

[3] kind of a watery thock?

Tons of ten-hour-long typing sound videos on YouTube.

In general I find noise the unimportant part. I'm not listening to my keyboards (except my midi keyboards, and even then it isn't the physical keyboard it is what the sound engine it connects to does). Keyboard reviews focus on that because sound is something that can be objectively measured in a video. I tell by watching a video if I will like how a keyboard feels in my fingers.

Go for it, and please let me know what she decides

The HHKB was a Niz Purple Hybrid as a Topre stand-in — flagged as a "proxy" in the methodology but the name was still HHKB, which was misleading. Swapped it for a real HHKB Pro Hybrid recording (CC0 sample from grcekh on Freesound).

Unicomp was outright broken, a single file mapped to every key, which is why it sounded very wrong. It now uses the bucklespring recording from the Model M entry, which is actually authentic because Unicomp builds these on the original IBM tooling. Both fixes are live now.

I don't know if I'd go so far as to call it "manchild" territory: hobbies are fine, and if your hobby is DIY mechanical keyboards, more power to you.

Where I start to break out the scepticism is when people start talking about how much more productive they are because of their fancy keyboard, or how important exactly the right keyboard is to productivity.

That's mostly nonsense.

I've got valuable work done in a whole variety of more and less ideal/noisy/comfortable/uncomfortable environments on a 13 inch laptop using its built-in keyboard.

The primary driver that makes you productive or non-productive is your motivation. If you want to get it done you'll get it done. To a very large extent, everything else is incremental. Multiple monitors, fancy keyboard, cool mouse, ergonomic chair, whatever. They're nice, and they do help a bit. But, fundamentally, what really gets things over the line is desire, motivation.

Whereas a lot of this work adjacent stuff is a form of procrastination.

I've gone through a similar experience with musical instruments and studio gear, versus actual music creation. At some point you just have to stop tinkering and start making music, and what I've realised is that the only item I have available to me at almost all times to do that is my laptop, so maybe I should focus on working in the box instead of on acquiring more hardware.

I really hated most keyboards but had realized that some keyboards were better than others: for example in the nineties I had an amazing keyboard on a Mac. Then I worked on IBM Model M a tiny bit (big mainframe terminals).

So I started looking for both a shape and a switch that'd suit me. I obsessed over it.

I even got a few collectible ones: a very rare split Cherry MX-5000 keyboard (comes stock with cherry brown switches but they could be swapped) and then the rare real "industrial" IBM Model M (in olive grey instead of beige color).

Eventually I found out Topre switches on the japanese HHKB keyboars (Happy Hacking Keyboard) and as I've got family in Japan, I had three HHKB Pro JP shipped to me (when family would come to visit).

I don't speak/type japanese but I dig that japanese version as a very narrow spacebar and hence more modifiers and modifiers that are easier to reach with the thumbs.

Been a happy camper since more than 10 years now.

So basically... Maybe I obsessed over it a bit but then I eventually "found" my keyboard and it's the HHKB Pro JP and found my switch: and my switch is Topre and nothing else.

I made (read: assembled) a lot of keyboards and tuned the sound to my liking, sometimes i would record the sound to share it with friends but the recordings always turned out horrible, not at all what I was hearing.

The fast typists who don't know how to use a mechanical keyboard, are the worst, that's true.

fixed it