An interesting (and objective) article about computer headsets:
I ended up getting a Sennheiser SC 160 – it is amazing at blocking out background noise. Kids can be tearing through the office while I’m on a call and it pretty much blocks out all noise except my voice. Even when I type on my super clackety mechanical keyboard only inches way from the mouthpiece, very little of that gets through.
What headset (or other audio equipment) do you use?
I use my Bose QC2 headphones with an Antlion Modmic Business microphone attached to the side. Both connect to a Schiit Audio Fulla 3 USB DAC.
I think the audio quality is pretty good, but I still get self conscious that it’s picking up my breathing. I likely can fine tune this by moving the mic to a better location, but I haven’t yet so I still use mute when I don’t have anything to say. The Modmic also cannot cancel out the fans from 3U of servers sitting next to me if I have the servers on, so mute comes in handy still.
At my old job I had a Jabra headset with an in-line mute button that lit up a nice red LED when mute was enabled. That was super handy and I’d like to have a similar simple mute with an easy to see indicator, as then going on/coming off mute is a very quick action and I could easily stay in a conversation while muting myself if others were speaking.
Sounds like a good setup. Lately I’ve gotten into the practice of putting the mic boom below my mouth so I’m talking over it instead of into it – I think that is what the podcasting experts recommend for MIC placement. Also have a QC2 which I use mostly for music, but never got used to it yet for calls – something about not being to hear myself very well during calls or what is going on around me as I work from home with kids 
I’ll try that mic placement, thanks!
Yeah, with the QC2 on in calls I can’t hear myself very well. I wish there was an easy way to provide some sidetone, maybe I’ll have to dig into pulseaudio and see…
Interesting article on video conferencing:
What really surprised me is now much latency WiFi and Bluetooth can add. This person highly recommends all wired connections. This is consistent with advice I’ve heard, but this is the first time I’ve seen hard numbers.
The article also mentions that Zoom adds 500ms latency – I wonder much latency there is in Jitsi calls?
Here is another article:
After reading the above two articles, I set up my Olympus OM-D as a webcam.
Makes a big difference, even with someone like me who is not very photogenic.
Before with a Logitech webcam:
After with the OM-D:
This capture card is used to interface the OM-D to a computer.
this looks a great change Cliff, well done, I have DSLR here and I am getting ideas to start putting that to good use, I need to buy a 16mm lens though but it could be a good expriment.
