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.
At the end of every review he does a typing test, and for the last few years at least I think the mic has been in more or less the same kind of position and they've been recorded in the same room. You still have to apply a pinch of salt because I don't know if there's been significant differences in audio level normalisation/compression/EQ, but it would give you a more representative idea of what to expect.
can't agree more with this.
I have the novelkey creams for example, and they sound nothing like in the sound representation.
People forget how much the plate, material of the keyboard etc vary the sound.
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
brick and mortar thing is real. microcenter's basically it for physical. novelkeys and kbdfans sell $8 switch tester packs with ~10 switches each, not a store but at least you feel them before committing.
EDIT: now it's working, don't know why it repeatedly wasn't.
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.
Where I start to break out the scepticism is when people start talking about how much more productive they are because of their fancy keyboard, or how important exactly the right keyboard is to productivity.
That's mostly nonsense.
I've got valuable work done in a whole variety of more and less ideal/noisy/comfortable/uncomfortable environments on a 13 inch laptop using its built-in keyboard.
The primary driver that makes you productive or non-productive is your motivation. If you want to get it done you'll get it done. To a very large extent, everything else is incremental. Multiple monitors, fancy keyboard, cool mouse, ergonomic chair, whatever. They're nice, and they do help a bit. But, fundamentally, what really gets things over the line is desire, motivation.
Whereas a lot of this work adjacent stuff is a form of procrastination.
I've gone through a similar experience with musical instruments and studio gear, versus actual music creation. At some point you just have to stop tinkering and start making music, and what I've realised is that the only item I have available to me at almost all times to do that is my laptop, so maybe I should focus on working in the box instead of on acquiring more hardware.
So I started looking for both a shape and a switch that'd suit me. I obsessed over it.
I even got a few collectible ones: a very rare split Cherry MX-5000 keyboard (comes stock with cherry brown switches but they could be swapped) and then the rare real "industrial" IBM Model M (in olive grey instead of beige color).
Eventually I found out Topre switches on the japanese HHKB keyboars (Happy Hacking Keyboard) and as I've got family in Japan, I had three HHKB Pro JP shipped to me (when family would come to visit).
I don't speak/type japanese but I dig that japanese version as a very narrow spacebar and hence more modifiers and modifiers that are easier to reach with the thumbs.
Been a happy camper since more than 10 years now.
So basically... Maybe I obsessed over it a bit but then I eventually "found" my keyboard and it's the HHKB Pro JP and found my switch: and my switch is Topre and nothing else.
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 :(
I’m going to show her this and see if she likes any of them.
The Selectric sounds pretty nice. I should really modify one of mine to be used as a terminal one day.
There's also "Vintage Office" which has "Mechanical Keyboard"[3].
Both have a variety of other ambiences that could fill out "typing room" (especially if you made a multi-generator.)
But yeah, it could do with a bit more variety of "office" and "keyboard" generators.
[0] I dislike the new app's UI/UX, it doesn't support multi-generators, and there's no easy way to download all the generators you have access to. (You also have to pay again for lifetime access but that I'm fine with.)
[1] "thock"
[2] "clatter"
[3] kind of a watery thock?
Model M sounds reasonably close, Unicomp Classic sounds very wrong.
Unicomp was outright broken, a single file mapped to every key, which is why it sounded very wrong. It now uses the bucklespring recording from the Model M entry, which is actually authentic because Unicomp builds these on the original IBM tooling. Both fixes are live now.