miki123211 6 days ago

Everyday headphones are limited by the fact that people often use Bluetooth, and Bluetooth audio is just terrible tech that hasn't improved by much in the last 10 years, and still can't do more than 16kHZ when doing both input and output at the same time.

I think this isn't a problem if you're using Apple headphones with Apple devices, but anything else falls back to crappy BT quality, usually with some kind of terrible ANC to boot.

FOr me, crappy audio setups and apps trying to do too much audio processing are the primary reason of "Zoom fatigue". I've done a lot of calls over apps that transmit raw, high-quality audio with no processing whatsoever, and the experience is just so much better.

1
blep-arsh 6 days ago

Apple-Apple Bluetooth speech codec is a variation of AAC, I believe. AAC-LD if I remember correctly. But still, having microphones in one's ears is suboptimal. There's a lot of processing required even though the codec is no longer completely awful.

On an unrelated note, I tried doing calls with a stereo mic setup but participants were actually uncomfortable with the ASMR-like effect of the audio.