If you enjoy using AI, consider upgrading your microphone

• Good microphone quality is crucial for accurate AI speech recognition in apps like ChatGPT.

• Microphone proximity and polar pattern affect audio quality and recognition accuracy.

• Consider using conference microphones or clip-on lapel microphones for better voice recording with AI assistants.

I’ve been playing around with apps like ChatGPT’s advanced voice modes, and while the technology is incredibly impressive, I find the software misunderstands me. Most of the time it does fine, but when I plug in one of my good microphones it definitely gets better. So if you like using the voice feature of an AI assistant, consider using a better microphone than the one built into your computer or headset.

Your AI needs to hear you

If you’ve ever listened to someone through a phone or laptop microphone, you know that person doesn’t sound great. Even if our brains are tuned by evolution to distinguish speech, it is easy to mishear what someone is saying through a low-quality microphone. So honestly, I’m amazed at how accurate things are when you use an app like ChatGPT to talk to software.

Now if you listen to someone using a good podcast or vocal microphone, you can hear every detail of what he or she is saying. For example, there is no “m” before an “n”. While there are great algorithms working in the background to cancel noise and compensate for the relatively poor quality of these small microphones, there is no substitute for a quality microphone in the first place.

It’s not just the new wave of AI chatbots that matters. I’ve pointed out in the past that a good quality microphone can make all the difference when you’re trying to write using dictation software. The same principle applies.

Choose a microphone that suits your direction

Many people underestimate how close a microphone needs to be to your mouth to get a good, clean audio signal out of it. If you’ve ever had to record your voice, you know that in most cases you have to hold the microphone fairly close to your mouth. If that doesn’t work, you should use a microphone that is better suited to picking up distant voices.

What plays a crucial role here is the ‘polar pattern’ of the microphone, which is simply the pattern of its sensitivity to sound. For my YouTube channelI use a special shotgun microphone attachment for my external recorder, but that’s not really practical for a desktop setup, although it is excellent for recording my voice from outside the video frame and only picks up sound within a narrow “beam”. It is an example of a hypercardioid microphone. At the other end of the spectrum, an omnidirectional microphone picks up sound all around, so it’s good for picking up ambient noise, but not optimized for someone who always speaks from the same position.

I think one good cardioid podcast condenser microphone is likely to improve voice recognition performance for most people in most situations.

Consider wearing a clip-on microphone

While it’s cool to make fun of all those AI gadgets that are actually a microphone pinthey are on to something with the microphone position. If you use an inexpensive wired lapel microphone (also called a lavolier), it should significantly improve your vocal recording. If you really want to get fancy, you can use a clip-on Bluetooth lapel microphone, which gives you the clarity of a headset without the inconvenience of wearing one. Personally I use the Rode Wireless GO II for all my wireless microphone applications, but that’s probably a bit too expensive to justify specifically for AI.

Conference microphones can be a good idea

While I haven’t tried this specifically for AI chatbots, I can’t help but notice that omnidirectional conference microphones and speakerphones could be a great solution for this. After all, they are designed to allow a group of people sitting around a conference table to talk from any distance and from any direction in the room. This is no different than the microphone arrays you find in smart speakers. It would actually be pretty great if existing smart speakers could work with apps like ChatGPT, and that could happen in the future.

This only really makes sense if you’re going to talk to your synthetic friends as you walk around the room, but I can imagine many cases where that’s exactly what you want to do, ruling out a wireless clip-on microphone or Bluetooth. headset, a conference microphone can be a good choice.