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Written by Dan Luu on 2024-08-19 at 06:48

Another surprise was that getting a halfway decent pair of speakers that can emit bass (but aren't particularly bass heavy) made a lot of audio sound worse without EQ.

The problem is that a lot of audio sources contain a huge amount of low frequency garbage, which most speakers don't reproduce. If you get speakers that actually reproduce the garbage, that audio actually sounds much worse. I don't remember this being an issue the last time I had speakers with bass, but

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Written by Dan Luu on 2024-08-19 at 07:03

there's a lot more low quality audio now. 15 years ago, I was mostly listening to was music on CDs.

Nowadays, it's YT, podcasts, etc., which tend to have bad audio, even when people have fancy setups.

E.g., I just listened to a podcast that has a full-time pro audio crew, with hosts and guests in the same room, in front of SM7Bs. 1 of 3 people had strong proximity effect; sounds terrible, and that person is way too loud. You're better off with 0 bass when listening.

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Written by Dan Luu on 2024-08-19 at 07:07

Ironically, I bought these speakers on the theory that it would make people easier to understand on calls. I don't think this was prima facie stupid since a $40 pair of speakers/headphones makes it much easier to understand people who have really bad audio setups (for video calls or w/e).

But it turns out that a more expensive pair of speakers, on average, makes speech harder to understand (though, on the rare occasion I listen to good audio, it sounds much better).

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Written by Dan Luu on 2024-08-19 at 07:16

Also, a few random comments about audio quality on calls:

1. With a few exceptions, the best audio I get is from people who do their calls outdoors without wind. Nearly everyone else is in a too-reflective room.

2. The worst audio tends to be people using non-mac laptop mics, then airpods, and then fancy mics in bad rooms without proper setup. The macbook mic is better than all of the above.

BTW, some people I know A/B tested macbook vs. airpods and the macbook won handily.

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Written by psilotum on 2024-08-19 at 15:41

@danluu how can we evaluate our own setup? I occasionally ask coworkers how I sound if I've changed something. Even that is subject to their setup plus network variance.

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Toot

Written by Dan Luu on 2024-08-20 at 00:05

@psilotum For audio issues for calls, I feel like just recording audio locally and playing it back is generally good enough. If you don't have speakers that can emit low bass, just eyeballing a frequency plot should be enough. On Mac, Garage Band is bundled and works well enough for this. I'm sure there's free Windows/*nix software as well, but I haven't used any of it.

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