AAJoe

Well, there's probably no "fix" - the issue is probably power related. However, you may be able to work around it by running EQ APO for your mic and adding mic boost above Window's max. There's two possible outcomes of this: 1) It sounds normal as if you boost it by 20-30+ dB. If this is the case then the problem is something software related on your machine (probably, everything here is a probably). Boost it where you need and never think of it again. 2) It adds a bunch of white noise (static hiss). This is the more likely outcome. It means that your machine is operating "normally" but isn't providing enough power to the mic. If this is the case there are two solutions. If the hiss isn't terrible you can probably use something like RNNoise or Nvidia Broadcast or other real time noise reduction software to remove the hiss and move on with your life. This solution is free, but severe hiss may degrade your mic quality. Option 2 is to buy a USB Sound Card, which will probably solve the issue and is relatively cheap (about 10-15 USD). You can google tutorials on EQ APO and/or RNNoise, but here's a link to the one I wrote for Antlion. Just note that the mic boost (mic gain) is at the end and this is focused on RNNoise install, which is the very slightly more complicated part. https://antlionaudio.com/blogs/news/free-active-noise-suppression-without-rtx-voice

Probably correct, yeah. Don't let the marketing guy talk about engineering terms - I guess the way I understand it or think about it is it's more like the difference between the ground line and mic or headphone line, and that the more that difference is as a percent of the total line the bigger problem it becomes; so for high impedance headphones a small difference is no big deal to the ground, while for low impedance IEMs that same difference is a big percent. Again, not an engineer, just struggling to explain it roughly how it was explained to me when I was asking "Why didn't you use a TRRS cable on the Kimura?"

Well, I can save you a lot of testing: Before I start, I am not an engineer, but I do spend a lot of time speaking with engineers about this kind of stuff. So this is my interpretation of what I am told, it may be inaccurate (slightly or majorly), but I am pretty sure I've got it close enough for government work. To some degree it is absolutely true, as soon as you share a ground between the headphone and the mic (as a TRRS cable does) some sound bleeds between the lines unless they are in "perfect" balance (like, lab environment perfect). Most of the time you don't hear or notice it because there is enough resistance on the lines that the audio is essentially too low to be audible. The longer the ground is shared, the more this issue compounds. The lower the overall resistance of the lines, the more bleed you get. And lastly, the greater the resistance difference between the ground and hot cables the more bleed you get. This is why "crosstalk" or "echo" or "audio bleeding" comes up so much more often when you use something like IEMs with a mic line, as they have long shared cables, low line resistance, and often large differences between grounding and mic/headphones. It is specifically why the Antlion Kimura has separate mic and IEM lines all the way to the end and we just include a Y adapter; to minimize and eliminate the problem. So, there you have it :). Hope it helps! As for removing this effect, really if the issue is the mic line transmitting the noise that offending party probably just needs a noise gate and your problem will essentially be solved for most use cases (unless its SO loud that it can be heard when they are talking, in which case... probably active noise canceling will be better). A replacement cable may help, if the cable has some balance issues, but it's probably just the device's resistance.

Well, to continue shilling the Antlion stuff; we just launched the Kimura in January. Sold out of everything but the Solo atm; but... I mean it sounds like this is what you're looking for: https://antlionaudio.com/collections/kimura Normally I am not quite that "here's a link to our stuff" but this seems to be exactly what you're after :D.

Real time mic monitoring can not be done on a software level, you need a mixer or similar hardware device to do it. Or a headset that has it built in as a feature. At least, as far as I know. I'd be happy if I were wrong

Hey everyone, You know me, I try to be pretty transparent about things! Let's dive into your questions: 1) The patent is regarding the behind-ear split, including its shape, location, etc. Is it a big enough deal to warrant a patent? Well, it's still pending and has been for a while, but we were unable to find anything that did what we do. Pretty much all of these splits occur at the IEM or where the junction between IEM and cable meet. If the patent is rejected, that's ok. We're not staking our futures on it! How do we feel about patents in general? As a company, mixed. We understand why people don't like them (and there are plenty, such as ones related to insulin where at least I am firmly against). However, our patent on the ModMic clasp system has already protected us multiple times from problems. Without it, we may have been in trouble as a variety of knock-offs have appeared and the patent has forced them to use inferior methods to ours. To me (not a company stance, just me) this kind of patent is fine because nobody's going to be severely harmed by it and it helps a small company like us compete. Anyway, this is more of that, the goal is to give us a little wiggle room so we don't get instantly crushed. Amongst the various ModMic knock-offs we've fended off include offerings from Audio Technica (Who even use ModMic to describe their product, wtf), Drop, and even one of our distributors (whom we no longer work with, of course). There's about a dozen out there of various sizes and to my knowledge all avoid our patent (and one we had to settle out of court, which as far as I know is no longer made anyway). Anyway, we're probably a smaller company than you think, so these kinds of protections (if we can get them) are important to our survival. 2) What have we been DOING all this time!? What have we been spending money on!? Haha, ok so the Kimura was originally planned for 2020. I think we all know where this is going. 2020 was absolute insanity for the audio market, especially microphones. All of our effort went towards securing enough units of the existing ModMics to meet demand. Throughout 2020 we had rolling stock shortages on products as we raced to produce enough ModMics while parts shortages and factory shut-downs plagued us at every turn. As a result, Kimura got delayed into 2021. In 2021 we had smoothed out the supply/demand problem and Kimura was well on its way, but slowdowns in production still dogged us, 2021 slipped into 2022. When it DID finally get done we discovered a huge manufacturing defect that wasn't included in the QC test plan. Every single unit went back to be redone. That's why it didn't make the 2022 launch window we had aimed for, but better late than never. It was frankly a nightmare I don't want to ever have to relive (especially since I was that poor canary in the coal mine that found the problem.) SO WHAT ABOUT A NEW MODMIC! Parallel to this a new ModMic Wireless is in the works, as well as more stuff. I can't talk too much about the features yet, but this is more than just a tiny face lift. We've got some big changes in mind and we hope to pull it off. However, I can say it will have USB-C and a dedicated on/off button. That much is certain. Beyond that we've got a solid list of improvements we're working on and we hope to see it available this year or early next... barring another world-changing series of events or surprise "send them all back to the factory" situations! We DO want to be releasing more products, more often, and will be focusing on that in the coming years. But, it is in our DNA to "Do one thing right instead of one thing right and nine things wrong" as some companies do. We hope we got the Kimura right, but if not, as long as there's interest in the product concept we'll keep at it until we get there. As for what's next other than "more ModMic" and "more Kimura" ... it's a secret! But we do have some interesting concepts that I've seen sketches of. Pretty crazy stuff mostly, I hope we'll see at least one of these crazy ideas in 2024-2025.

The best advice I have is to use some kind of active noise filtering and a somewhat aggressive noise gate (which is often part of the filter). RNNoise is free if you don't have a RTX card, but a little tricky to set up. I wrote an article on how to set it up here: https://antlionaudio.com/blogs/news/free-active-noise-suppression-without-rtx-voice. But at the end of the day the mic's job is to pick up sound, so there's only so much filtering and gating is going to do for two mics in the same room.

Yeah you should totally contact them, take it from the Antlion Audio guy we much prefer it when someone contacts us about a problem so we can not only fix it for the customer but add it to a list of potential issues to make sure we fix or keep an eye on.

Hey @ZXSwire3, We see a lot of funky placements through the years. Safety goggles or similar non-prescription glasses, hair bands and hair clips are probably the best as far as ensuring you get the right quality. I've also seen them mounted to monitors, the sides of desks, boom-arms for desktop mics, the back of a gaming char like some kind of angler fish... This guy posted a week or two ago, which looks super neat but would probably drive some people mad... Also, while certainly not the budget option, when I joined Antlion Audio I knew I'd be spending a LOT of time with headphones on and after the first month I upgraded my Polk audio headphones to Audio Technica R70x, which (assuming you like the wing headband design) is super light weight. It made a huge difference in my comfort, personally speaking. I've tested a lot of headphones since then (in fact I think I just passed my 6th year here last week!) and I always come back to the R70 for the comfort factor.

Heya, spotted this at random. Jump into our Discord: Discord.gg/AntlionAudio and tag @ staff - I'd be happy to trouble shoot this. Please have a recording of the noise/inteference at the ready. Also let me know whatever model ModMic you have. You can also email our customer service this info, which can be found at https://antlionaudio.com/pages/support.

Yep, you should be worried and send that in for warranty replacement asap. It will only get worse over time until the unit fails entirely and needs to be rewired. Since the 770 is fixed cable there's nothing you can do to fix it from home that doesn't involve soldering.

For $100... bias as I may be, ModMic Uni + USB Sound Card + Superlux 668 or 681. Unless you need console gaming, then you replace (or add) a Y adapter. Something like that is just going to work a lot better overall.

For @msvelev and @artuc and anyone else: We've got a whole Discord with me (personally) able to help diagnose these kinds of problems. Though the answer is likely that the static is EMI and can be fixed either with filters or a USB adapter. What's PROBABLY happening is the noise suppression and AGC are fighting eachother, causing the mic to briefly get very loud (and thus produce an EMI burst) before settling back down and removing the noise. Just a guess though, I'll be able to accurately trouble shoot it with a recording and a quick chat. Feel free to tag me @AntlionJoe or just @staff for everyone in our Discord for any assistance: https://discord.gg/ZqDGNFg

First, to answer the ModMic specific question: No you can't use them with IEMs (sadly) - Just too heavy Now... I want to bring up an important learning point that is... mostly pedantic. It's not because I am an audio snob, but rather I want to make sure you have the right adjectives to describe what you are after: Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) is not connected to noise isolation. The short versions of what they are is: SNR is the measure of electrical noise in the headphones vs. the noise that is supposed to be there in the recording. Basically, what does the headphone sound like if you play NOTHING and crank the volume up (This is an oversimplification for any MORE pedantic audio nerds out there). Noise isolation is how well the headphones block out noise from the real world, such as my wife telling me to do the dishes. If I can not hear her, she has not asked. Next: Accuracy ... is... elusive. The common misconception is that if you had a "Flat" sound signature, the graph of the sound of the headphones would also be flat. This would be true if you are a robot. I assume, however, you are not a robot. Without diving into the science that I don't entirely understand, the basics are the shape of your ear changes they way things sound, so if you want to hear "as if you are a real person and not a robot" you may want headphones that are more akin to the Harmon curve. Or maybe not, it is hotly debated and I am not a scientist, but the point is flat or "reference" is nowhere near as simple as it first seems - and the real bummer here is... no gaming headset is going to deliver anything even close to what people tend to look for as reference or flat. Not that I know of anyway. Also, I really, REALLY question the durability of headsets. This is not some "Antlion Audio" shill speech. I worked in games for 13 years before I joined Antlion and I'd burn through a headset every 1.5 years or so. When I joined Antlion 4 years ago I picked up a pair of R70x. They're still basically in perfect shape. (Prob time to replace my earpads). So yeah, I paid 3x what a headset would cost, but they're more comfortable, better sounding, and are about to pass the breakeven point on price. So, if I had to pick from the headsets you listed I'd consider the Cloud Flights and move on with my life. I don't think you're going to get a reference sound (which is very hard to do in wireless anyway). I don't know how long they'll last. It'll be cheap though! And again, I am the wrong person to ask about IEMs so anyone else may be able to chime in and help more with any reference grade IEMs that are wireless.

That's a lot of requirements on not a lot of budget, also thanks for the mention of our ModMics @Lord Vile The short version is you can either do some of the things you want at that budget / requirements. First, lets talk about sweat and using them outside at 100 deg f weather... You're gonna sweat, over ear headphones are going to make it worse. Simply put, you either have to use on-ear headphones or open back headphones, neither of which are going to provide good noise isolation. So that's decision number one, which is more important? You could also, as you say, go into wireless IEMs, but good wireless IEMs are expensive and you may not like how they feel or sound. It'd certainly suggest trying them, but if you're at all like me you're going to dislike how IEMs sound (Wired or unwired). IEMs with good mics basically don't exist as far as I know as well. The ModMic advantage (Shameless plug but Lord already brought it up) is you can attach our high quality mics to basically any pair of headphones and detach it when you don't need it (E.g. when you are outside). One model is wireless, so if you want to go full wireless you can, however, it's going to break your budget. Also, while the battery is excellent (12 hours), it's not replaceable, so it isn't going to last you 10 years. 3-6 would be my guess, depending on use. In short, you've got some decisions to make on what is most important here: Noise isolation or ear-heat. Wireless or budget. IEM (and crappy mics) or headphones. Some example combos Wireless: Sennheiser BT350 + ModMic Wireless = ~$240. Over budget. Decent noise isolation and sound quality, plus aptX Low Latency on both devices. Not going to be great in hot weather though. Open Back Wired: Philips SHP9500 + ModMic Uni = ~$130. Awesome combo from audio quality standpoint. Should be much better in hot weather than your past experiences (I don't know if wearing headphones in that heat is ever going to be described as comfortable). No noise isolation. Wired.