[Sound Test] Can you guess which switch?

Ace · 02 Mar 2015, 22:47

Let me explain. So I did I sound test of an interesting keyboard I recently acquired. And by acquired, I mean I found in my father's closet. Considering what type of switches it has, I was actually quite impressed by the sound and feel.
I thought I'd test the community's sound-based knowledge. The challenge is simple: merely try to identify the switches this keyboard uses. I think you'll be thoroughly surprised. And if not, well, then it just goes to show how naive and new I really am to this community

The first sample is me typing at a normal pace. Not to slow, nor too fast. Yes, that hollow echo sort of sound is there on every surface.
https://soundcloud.com/abubakr-akram/quiet-recording

This one is a bit more aggressive, the way I might type when responding to a particularly ignorant YouTube comment.
https://soundcloud.com/abubakr-akram/loud-reording

I do apologize in advance for the poor quality. Despite having an excellent microphone, I was unable to find a quieter place to record. Please do excuse; you may have to turn the volume up.

Daniel Beardsmore · 02 Mar 2015, 22:58

Whatever it is, it seems to be very quiet, but I don't have a reference recording to verify sound levels using a known switch. The sound comes across as a bit sharp and precise for scissor, and I doubt that you'd find scissor that interesting.

One of the most fascinating short-throw switches is [wiki]Alps ultra low profile[/wiki] which is faintly clicky from my very fleeting experience with it (I should have bought that notebook as, despite its bulk, it's an extremely rare switch). Off the top of my head, that's the only switch I can think of that would fit that sound profile that isn't scissor, working on the basis that the switch really is as quiet as it sounds.

It's also possible that you've got something like an Apple Adjustable.

Muirium · 02 Mar 2015, 23:00

Yeah, I was thinking Apple Adjustable… before Soundcloud pounded my ears with music the moment the recording finished. ARGH!

ramnes · 02 Mar 2015, 23:12

Sounds like silenced Topre to me, or rubber dome keyboard.

Edit: I just actually read the first lines of the post, so I guess it's not silenced Topre. My bet on a random rubber dome keyboard, something like an old NEC or so.

Findecanor · 02 Mar 2015, 23:15

AEKII with Ivory Alps?

klikkyklik · 04 Mar 2015, 01:47

Ah! I like this game!

Black Space Invaders?

ramnes · 06 Mar 2015, 08:35

The answer, the answer!

002 · 06 Mar 2015, 08:46

klikkyklik wrote: ↑Black Space Invaders?

If it's these I will eat my hat

Black space invader sound is very sharp and clicky. Whatever it is, the stabs are pretty quiet (assuming you're actually hitting space). I'm guessing a chiclet dome keyboard or maybe an old NMB dome with slider board.

Stabilized · 06 Mar 2015, 09:04

Like other people have said your recordings are a bit quiet!

I am not sure if this is even mechanical, sounds to me like it is a laptop keyboard with scissor switches; perhaps a IBM thinkpad keyboard?

Would be a cool game to play with some more keyboards though!

andrewjoy · 06 Mar 2015, 10:42

I am with Stabilized on this one, some sort of older IBM thinkpad before they became shit

Ace · 06 Mar 2015, 10:44

As far as laptops go I wouldn't say they became shit.

Eugene · 06 Mar 2015, 11:16

Findecanor wrote: ↑AEKII with Ivory Alps?

Nah, can't be. You'd be able to hear the hollow sound of the leaf spring.

andrewjoy · 06 Mar 2015, 11:25

AbuBakr Akram wrote: ↑As far as laptops go I wouldn't say they became shit.

the laptops themselves no

the shitty chicklet mac ripoff keys they use now

yes

Muirium · 06 Mar 2015, 11:28

Yeah, Apple really led the way on chiclet's return. It makes sense in laptops where thinness is higher prized than function these days, but it's the polar opposite ethos to mechanical keyboards.

andrewjoy · 06 Mar 2015, 11:33

have you seen how thin an X61 is

.

Mac checklist are not that bad especially when new ( i do feel the ones on my 06 macbook are nicer than the ones on 09 MBP). The lenovo ones tho , uhhhhhhhh. And that shitty trackpad that is trying to be a mac style trackpad but fails big time.

Muirium · 06 Mar 2015, 11:36

Yeah, I can sympathise. I tried using my Magic Trackpad on Windows 7 for a few days. Ugh! Really helps to have the OS support multitouch as a fundamental metaphor, rather than bolt it on in drivers.

andrewjoy · 06 Mar 2015, 11:39

and that right there is why i prefer the older trackpad with separate buttons

like on a real macbook like this one

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... _table.jpg

that being said it does work well in OS X i must say. Even that mac one is not too bad in windows its that lenovo one, its travel is just too far and it feels like its going to break every time you press it.

Muirium · 06 Mar 2015, 11:46

This is what I was using for donkeys years before my Retina with the modern trackpad:

The 12" PowerBook had a great wee keyboard, for a laptop. One of its two advantages over the new one, the other being the ease of keeping the buggers clean! But that trackpad… hmm. I still get the old fella out from time to time today, and the trackpad and dim old display are the two things that really bother me. I can accept the orders of magnitude less speed but that trackpad's just too damn small by a longshot. The button clicks well enough, but takes up so much precious room.

The photo isn't mine. You can tell as mine's Apple ISO UK ("anorexic ass enter") and the trackpad button has a dent in it from a fight with a textbook!

andrewjoy · 06 Mar 2015, 11:49

They are nice them powerbooks used one once. Never had the pleasure of owning one.

Muirium · 06 Mar 2015, 11:54

They were spectacular in 2003 when they came out, and made me buy one. My first Mac. But, as usual, Motorola / IBM left them stranded with the same bloody CPUs until 2006 when they were reborn as the MacBook Pro.

Thank goodness for ARM. No other competing ISA ever gave Intel a moment's trouble!

Bramster · 06 Mar 2015, 11:55

If you are interested in such game here is something our MKT dept created a while back:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2-Ia6xsdmQ

(correct answers will follow after some guesses ofcourse

)

andrewjoy · 06 Mar 2015, 12:30

Muirium wrote: ↑
Thank goodness for ARM. No other competing ISA ever gave Intel a moment's trouble!

don't forget about MIPS and SPARC but are technically superior to i386 and its bastardised children. its all about raw POWER!!!! with them, its the Jeramy Clarkson of architectures. Don't intel use a RISC core now wrapped in the old instruction set ? Dunno about AMD i think they are still using discrete logic out of germanium transistors.

Muirium · 06 Mar 2015, 12:56

The architectures were fine. The whole point of competing with x86 was to be a superior, cleaner design. But design is only half the story. Intel out-fabbed Motorola/Freescale and IBM during the PowerPC days so hard it wasn't even funny.

Apple had a fight on its hands even getting Moto and IBM singing from the same hymnsheet. Despite joining an alliance with them, IBM was adamantly opposed to Motorola's vector instructions, which OS X was built against for the G4. Much nagging was required to get them back in line for the G5. And after that, IBM had no interest whatsoever in making a mobile version. Even back in 2003-2005 half of Macs sold were laptops! Ugh.

In hindsight, PowerPC was a longshot that had a few chances (thanks to Intel's frequent stumbles) but consistently failed to get its collective shit together. Apple's near death in the late 90s took a lot of Motorola and IBM's attention away. So progress was slow a few years later when the PowerBooks and iMacs really needed it. By the time Steve announced the Intel transition, Intel was so far ahead that a PowerPC software emulator was less of a shit sandwich than sticking around on <2 GHz G4 forever.

Didn't hurt that Intel's Core series was the most forward looking move they've made in processors for generations. Pity they didn't keep drilling those watts down harder, or we'd be on Intel iPhones and everything else today! Intel had the world in 2006 and got sloppy again. They're still a few years ahead of the competition in their fabs, but things are starting to look interesting again for a competitor. Just not Power! Never Power…

Ace · 08 Mar 2015, 07:22

Thought I’d close up this thread. We had many good guesses, some that hit pretty close to home. In actuality, however, the board was a Dell L30U D11 (Slim Standard Black USB Keyboard). Yes; this was a standard rubber dome, membrane keyboard. No special key caps or anything.
Then why, you ask, did I post this? Because when I found this NIB (well, new-in-plastic wrap, anyway

) board in my father’s closet, I decided to give it a couple of taps. I was searching for an ultra-quiet keyboard to use on open-mic MCSG [where people can tell how far behind them you are by the speed of your taps (it can really get quite crazy) and clicks]. I’d found my top pick for that; the Stealth (until I find something quieter I’m calling it that) was extremely silent. In fact, I doubt that anything except maybe chiclets would be quieter (I was considering getting the Razer DeathStalker before I found this). I had to literally set up my mic so that is was hovering half an inch above the board during the recording (I’ll take a picture of that if anyone’s interested as to how I positioned it). In addition to that, it feels remarkably well. Perhaps it’s been too long since I’ve used Topres and have just forgotten how amazing they feel, but I’d even go as far as to call this board the poor man’s Topre. while you do get that feeling of applying force and then having the key give in, it’s not too strong. I feel like it would be a Topre with a steeper decline and a sharper rise. Honestly, it does feel awesome for a rubber dome.

ramnes · 08 Mar 2015, 11:53

Muirium · 08 Mar 2015, 13:16

ramnes wrote: ↑My bet on a random rubber dome keyboard, something like an old NEC or so.

Congratulations!

Next time, challenge us with something good we actually know. There's a hojillion random rubberdomes out there. And while some can be nice when new, almost all of them turn to mush with enough use. There's a reason we're into mechs!

Daniel Beardsmore · 08 Mar 2015, 13:56

Interesting. The L30U is the "L" version of the KB1421. Sadly, with all the Dells that pass through our office, I've never seen one with the SK-8175 (Silitek) or L30U versions of this keyboard — every PC of that generation came with the KB1421, while this time around we're seeing both Primax and Silitek keyboards (I still have to post the photos of the former).

The KB1421 is pretty loud — some rattle, but a lot of thock. It's one of the loudest rubberdomes that I've encountered. To get a KB1421 to sound as quiet as that video—assuming the recording is actually accurate¹—would be an interesting feat. I've only knowingly used one L keyboard (the L100, from the previous generation of Dell OptiPlex keyboards) and it's not unusually quiet.

¹ You should always include control recordings — keyboards people will recognise and can use to identify the sound levels and characteristics of your recording equipment; for my recent recordings, it just happens that I included the L100 as a control/comparison, but not the KB1421.

Does the L30U have any indication on it of who makes it? The box may have said (it seems to be important in Korea to know the OEM, as the OEM is usually given as part of a block of Korean text) but the L100 doesn't otherwise hold a single clue, nor does the KB1421 (of which we no longer have any in boxes).

Ace · 11 Mar 2015, 07:05

Daniel Beardsmore wrote: ↑—assuming the recording is actually accurate¹—

Nah..........the recording's not accurate.

Daniel Beardsmore wrote: ↑¹ You should always include control recordings — keyboards people will recognise and can use to identify the sound levels and characteristics of your recording equipment; for my recent recordings, it just happens that I included the L100 as a control/comparison, but not the KB1421.

Thanks for the tip. The next time I do this, I'll make sure to include a control recording. Do you think a normal Model M will suffice as a sample?

stratokaster · 11 Mar 2015, 08:22

I was going to say it sounded just like my old IBM rubber dome keyboard before I saw the answer. Not surprised, there are some very decent rubber domes out there. I also have a Silitek-made HP keyboard which is similar to Silitek-made Dell QuietKey, it's almost completely silent and actually rather pleasant to type on.

Daniel Beardsmore · 11 Mar 2015, 23:10

AbuBakr Akram wrote: ↑Do you think a normal Model M will suffice as a sample?

Should do. Your mike setup looks fine — maybe that keyboard really is incredibly quiet. Makes you wonder why the replacement model is so much louder — it's that lack of consistency that makes rubber domes so bad.