Friday, April 17, 2020

Bluetooth Headphones Microphone Comparison

I have a few Bluetooth Headphones with microphones, designed to listen to music, take calls and some have active noise cancellation.  Two have the microphone on the earcup; one, the Jabra, has the microphone on a boom. But how good are they at picking up your voice for a call, video meeting,  voice chat, or to use for voiceover recording on a video?  I thought I'd try and find out.  Will any of these work well enough for voice that I can skip getting a dedicated voiceover microphone? 

AKG N60NC

Jabra Evolve 75 NC

AKG Y50BT


As a test, I recorded reading the same passage on each one, connected via Bluetooth to my Macbook using Audacity.  Each recording was normalized to match sound levels, and inserted into this Youtube video. The sound was left 'dry' - no further processing done beyond normalizing levels.

I tested the AKG Y50BT, Jabra 75 NC, and  AKG N60NC headphones - here are the results:


You can hear for yourself, the Jabra has the best sound of the three; it's designed as an office communication headset, so we'd expect it to work the best, and it does.

Just a tech note on these long socially isolated days . . .

Will England

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