Mechanical Keyboard Sounds – A listening Museum

143 points - last Wednesday at 3:45 PM

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Comments

al_borland today at 3:18 AM
I read the note at the bottom about the recordings coming from the community, but I think that variation limits the value significantly.

The Cherry Blue vs Cherry Blue (Full Travel) for example. I would expect the full travel to be louder, the normal sound plus the bottom out, but it seems quieter and more generic. The Cherry Browns were the same way.

Having recordings where there is a lot of control around the recording (same room, mic, distance, levels, etc) and the only variable is the keyboard, would be much more interesting. As it stands, I don’t feel like it’s giving me a true representation that I can use. I’m sure some are, but if I haven’t used a particular keyboard before, I can’t be a good judge of if the sound is accurate or not.

SparkyMcUnicorn today at 3:17 AM
On every keyboard I get, I swap the switches out for silent tactiles[0][1] that I've selected through trial and error. Quiet is really nice (my mouse clicks are louder), but the way they feel is fantastic.

I wish there was a brick and mortar that let you try out a good range of these switches. Places like microcenter have the popular standard choices, but there's so many other switches out there that are just worlds different.

[0] standard preference: https://a.co/d/03j6Boy0

[1] low profile preference: https://a.co/d/06yVB6jg

joelkoen today at 3:00 AM
Looks like a cool website, but after I test a few different keyboards it prompts me to subscribe. After pressing 'maybe later', it comes back again and again, only letting me test three different keyboards before bugging me again. Completely unusable.
phantomathkg today at 2:50 AM
The UX of the website is kind of horrible. After a few clicks it prompted to subscribe. I understand it takes time to build the thing up, but the disruption is huge.
negura today at 9:23 AM
i've wasted 2 weeks of my adult life on diy mechanical keyboards.. i did build one in the end. unless you're in desperate need of a recreational hobby, i'd not advise anyone to get into it. i'm convinced the whole thing is manchild territory
nowami today at 7:40 AM
Love this. Small suggestion for mobile UX: either hide the system keyboard, or allow the user to hear the currently selected typewriter sounds for their system keyboard taps. Not sure this is intended behaviour, but typing on mobile gives a generic click unless I use the poky on-page keyboard and thus lose the muscle memory needed to type quickly or accurately.

Also navigating back in mobile browser should close the active keyboard as on a small screen it looks like you are on a new page so it's surprising when back throws you out of the site.

utopcell today at 5:04 AM
Someone should add a grid of mics and speakers inside a keyboard to record impulse responses for different kinds of keys. In this way, one can first do noise cancellation for the currently used keys, and then apply an IR to make the keyboard sound like another one.
psidebot today at 4:11 AM
I wish you could play it without typing. I can't hear it over my Cherry MX browns.
tripdout today at 2:37 AM
As someone who doesn't pay much attention to the world of mechanical keyboards, very happy that I can use "thock" as a filter.

EDIT: A quick Google shows it's a pretty popular term, so I guess that's how I even know about it, the only other mechanical keyboard term in my vocabulary being "Cherry MX Blue clicky switches" for the ones on my AliExpress mechanical keyboard that prevent me from using the keyboard around other people. Unfortunately it also makes it difficult to hear the keyboard sounds without clicking on the letters instead :(

marius_ today at 11:02 AM
As a software developer, I absolutely despise loud keyboard sounds that I didn’t produce myself. In an office setting, fast typists with loud mechanical keyboards are the absolute worst (thank God for AirPods)!
chromadon today at 7:40 AM
My wife has been showing a little bit of interest in a “proper” keyboard for working from home.

I’m going to show her this and see if she likes any of them.

golem14 today at 3:39 AM
Hmmm. Someone tell the mynoise people. Having a sound ambience of a typing room might be awesome ? Or not ?

The Selectric sounds pretty nice. I should really modify one of mine to be used as a terminal one day.

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m463 today at 2:45 AM
I always bought the non-clicky keyboards...
ilovefrog today at 2:07 AM
i like the sound when im pressing the buttons but i can't stand listening to them in a recording its horrible
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nsxwolf today at 3:14 AM
HHKB sounds nothing like mine. Weird to type on it and hear a totally different sound.

Model M sounds reasonably close, Unicomp Classic sounds very wrong.

langarus today at 4:44 AM
Really nice stuff. But the mobile ux is horrendous.