Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by vosper 2776 days ago
As requested:

This call typically has decent audio quality, and as it's a stand-up / status call people tend to speak one at a time. No-one today had much in the way of background noise, so I'm not sure there was a lot of opportunity for the app to show off.

That said, I switched the Krisp speaker mode on and off repeatedly while each person who was talking.

1. When just one person was talking Krisp didn't seem to ever make the sound worse, which I guess is a start.

2. When there was a conversation going back and forth, or when one person started talking right after someone else finished, the voices got mangled or muted and I couldn't understand them. I had to turn Krisp off.

3. When there was some background echo (like in a large room) or some minor distortion I thought it maybe sounded a bit clearer with Krisp running, but it didn't really make much difference. I could understand the speaker either way.

With the audio problems I mentioned at (2) and no real gain from using Krisp I doubt I would use it regularly, though if I run into a call with bad background noise I might try it again.

I also tried the Krisp microphone, and at one point I had to repeat myself, which doesn't usually happen. But I have no way of knowing whether that was due to me speaking unclearly, or audio issues at the listeners end, or something else. So I don't really have an opinion about the microphone, but as I am in a quiet place anyway I wouldn't probably use it.

It would be nice if there was a single channel evaluation mode for the speaker. If I could hear in my right ear the normal audio was, and in the left what the Krisp-processed sound, then I would have a better chance of evaluating the performance. I guess if you have a lot of continuous background noise that mode would be redundant, and it should be an obvious improvement switching back and forth.

2 comments

Such feedback from users is priceless. Thanks for it. Krisp is still in beta and we keep experimenting with different DNN models. For example we have a DNN model which maximally preserves multiple voices while removing noise. It's not shipped yet.

Re #2, one thing we noticed is that Conferencing apps themselves will distort the voice when multiple voices are overlapping. Especially when there is also noise. There is not much Krisp can do here since the stream it receives is already distorted. Unfortunately for krisp speaker we don't control the audio stream. Imagine how many times the stream gets signal processed before krisp speaker gets it (noise cancellation in the headset, noise cancellation in RTC, codec, etc).

Re Krisp microphone, the DNN model used here is more effective since what Krisp receives is "less processed/distorted stream".

Please stay tuned, our release cycle is around 2 weeks. More quality and UX features are under way.

"Windows support is coming soon. Please leave your email."

And nowhere to "leave my email".

Intercom button on the right.
>When there was a conversation going back and forth, or when one person started talking right after someone else finished, the voices got mangled or muted and I couldn't understand them. I had to turn Krisp off.<

This may have nothing to do with Krisp as an app. All phones/communications device have the ability for either half or full duplex audio. Half duplex means only one caller can be heard. If someone were to speak, the audio would cut out as you experienced. Full duplex allows for conversations to happen all at once.

So this all could just be a symptom of the feature of the device or service you're using. I would try your test on different devices and/or services.