Question: Microphones

[lootfree]

Hello, I have a question about microphones.

 

So I notice the microphones in phones are way better on what ever PC headphones you have.
What I mean. If you gone find some old phone like 3310 Nokia and just make a normal phone call you gone see the phone microphone is way more clear. Do you remember old Skype voice conversation or Ventrilo. The background noise was like a science until you find correct settings to reduce.

Did phones have built in background noise filter? Or they are just better?

[ToboRobot]

I think modern phone systems have compression on the digital audio and it sounds like crap compared to old phone systems.

Not just the cell phone but the phone network.

[podkall]

Because lot of cheap and mid-range PC headhpones simply cheap out on the microphone

[Heats with Nvidia]

One factor is that the microphone in the phone is close to your mouth and everybody knows how to hold it.

[lootfree]

It is a factor? or maybe phone microphone working on lower frequencies and for that reason is clear?

[HenrySalayne]

On 8/13/2023 at 12:27 PM, lootfree said:

Hello, I have a question about microphones.

 

So I notice the microphones in phones are way better on what ever PC headphones you have.
What I mean. If you gone find some old phone like 3310 Nokia and just make a normal phone call you gone see the phone microphone is way more clear. Do you remember old Skype voice conversation or Ventrilo. The background noise was like a science until you find correct settings to reduce.

Did phones have built in background noise filter? Or they are just better?

You are just using the wrong headset.

All jokes aside, phones use MEMS microphones. They are fully integrated systems and they are generally equipped with an ADC.

Headsets use some low-quality microphones with some low-quality cables with some low-quality ADC. What do you expect? There are decent microphones on the market. And most of the headsets lately tested on ShortCircuit seem to have acceptable microphones as well.

[VoidX]

On 8/13/2023 at 12:27 PM, lootfree said:

Did phones have built in background noise filter?

We'll, technically, you can say so. The codec used for all digital phone calls before VoLTE is AMR, which has such a low bitrate that it filters out anything but the fundamental speech component as a side effect. Back then, most codecs worked by simply allocating a different bit depth to each frequency, with this specific codec allocating basically zero to all but the most important bands. These microphones still have huge distortions caused by noise, but you can only hear it as basically AM.