Time in the new work-from-home reality rolls on. Long days of being on conference calls is the new norm, it seems. Next week, I have two half-day meetings with Ville de Gatineau and the week after that is virtual Tech Trek. I will be “plugged in” for about 5 hours per day there.
Esri Canada doesn’t expect to have people return to offices until September 1st at the earliest.
Today’s company update conference call
Me being me, I am always wondering if there is some way to make things better. The new monitor has been amazing. I’ve experimented with using the older Logitech webcam to see if changing angles, etc. is an improvement, but that wasn’t as successful. The webcam built into the MacBook is just so much better.
Yesterday, I upgraded my conference call audio.
I have a Logitech H390 USB headset that Esri Canada provided. It works. I’m trying to come up with any other way of describing it, but failing. I was on a call a couple of weeks ago with Harold and when kicking off the call, we were talking about conferencing and the provided headsets. He made the case that he had stopped using the headset because the built-in microphone on his Mac was better. Since then, I’ve tried that from time to time, but I kept coming back to the headset. But it did start me thinking about audio quality and comfort (no headset is better).
Back in the day, I was very interested in music recording. I bought a few different pieces of technology in support of that. They have been in storage most of the time since we moved to Calgary as my interests have moved on, but they have proven useful from time to time. For example, Tammy has my Samson G-Track USB microphone on her teaching desk downstairs right now. It’s audio fidelity was much better than the built-in microphone in her MacBook Air. Back in 2009, I bought an Apogee Duet audio interface. It was a bit of a “splurge”, being a $500 audio interface. It was a high-end interface, using FireWire to connect. Combined with a pair of KRK studio monitors, the sound was fantastic. I could connect my guitar for recording. Eventually, I got an Audio-Technica AT2020 microphone, that connected into the computer using the Duet. I didn’t end up using the microphone very much, but I had it.
Knowing that I had these, I was pondering what it would take to set up the AT2020 as a microphone for my conference calls. I suspected that it might be possible, but there was a major problem: back in 2009, FireWire was the connector for high-end media, but it is basically gone from the market now. My old 2012 MacBook Pro had a FireWire connector, and the 2013 Mac Mini in the kitchen does too, but not my 2017 MacBook Pro. I did a little research, and apparently there was a path to connecting the Duet to my Mac:
- Connect the Duet to a FireWire 400 to FireWire 800 cable (I had one of these)
- Connect the FireWire 800 cable to a Thunderbolt 2 adapter
- Connect the Thunderbolt 2 adapter to a Thunderbolt 3 adapter
- Connect the Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) to the MacBook
I was leery of daisy chaining all of this together. But in the end I decided to give it a shot. I took some of the 💵 dad sent for my birthday and bought a desktop microphone stand and the two missing adapters. When I hooked everything up for the first time, initially it didn’t work. 😖 But then I realized I needed to connect the USB-C to a port that provided more power. When I did that, the Duet came to life and the VU meter started moving.
Later on, I did a little test where I recorded short clips of audio using the various microphones:
- The (old) new microphone
- The headset
- The built-in audio from my MacBook Pro
- The microphone in the external webcam I was trying out.
I think the results speak for themselves.
