# Choosing and placing your microphone

The one change that beats every setting in the app — a close microphone, pointed the right way, away from the fan.

If a word keeps coming out wrong, the microphone is the first thing to look at — not the cleanup
style, not the model, not any switch in Settings. Your microphone and where you put it matter more
than anything you can change inside Blabb.

## What kind of microphone

Blabb records at 16 kHz in mono. That is the rate speech recognition works at, and it is a long way
below what a studio microphone is built to deliver. A decent headset sitting near your mouth will
beat an expensive microphone sitting across the desk, every time. You do not need to spend money on
this.

| Type | Good at | Bad at |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Headset with a boom arm | Staying the same distance from your mouth however you move; rejecting the room | Nothing much, for dictation — this is the one to buy |
| Laptop's built-in array | Being there already; fine in a quiet room | Distance. It sits an arm's length away and picks up the fan, the keyboard and the room |
| USB desktop microphone | Sound quality, if you sit still in a treated room | Distance and posture. Lean back and your voice drops away |
| Earbuds with an inline mic | Being in your pocket | Sitting at chest height, catching clothing rustle and the room |

The pattern behind the table: closeness wins. A microphone a few centimetres from your mouth hears
mostly you. A microphone across the desk hears you and the room in something much closer to equal
measure, and the speech model has to separate the two.

## Distance and angle

Aim for roughly a thumb's width to a hand's width from the corner of your mouth — about 3 to 8 cm
for a boom mic. Closer than that and every breath is an event. Further and the room creeps in.

Set it beside your mouth rather than in front of it, so your breath passes across the microphone
instead of straight into it. Pointing it at your lips is what produces the thump on every "p" and
"b" — those bursts of air (plosives) overload the input for a moment and can swallow the word
around them. Moving the microphone 2 cm off to one side usually fixes it completely.

If your headset has a foam cover, keep it on. It is not decoration; it is doing the same job.

> [!TIP]
> Whatever you settle on, keep it consistent. Recognition is most reliable when your distance and
> angle are the same from one dictation to the next, so a boom arm that holds its position is worth
> more than a slightly better capsule you have to keep repositioning.

## What to keep away from it

Three things sit right next to most laptop microphones and all of them get transcribed:

- **The cooling fan.** It ramps up while Blabb is running, which is exactly when you are speaking.
  A laptop on a hard desk with the vents clear runs cooler and quieter than one on a cushion.
- **The keyboard.** A built-in array is centimetres from the keys. If you type while you dictate,
  it hears both.
- **The desk itself.** Knocks and taps travel through it into a desk-stand microphone. Blabb
  filters out the very lowest rumble before it adjusts the level, but a sharp knock is not rumble.

Moving to a headset makes all three go away at once, which is why it is the first recommendation
rather than the last.

## USB, 3.5 mm or Bluetooth

Wired USB and wired 3.5 mm both work. Prefer them.

Bluetooth headsets work too, but many switch to a lower-quality mode the moment the microphone is
opened — the same drop in quality you hear on a call. It is usually still good enough, but if a
Bluetooth headset is giving you poor results and a cheap wired one does better, that is why.

Whichever you use, tell Blabb about it: **Settings → Voice input → Microphone**. Blabb does not
guess at your best device, it uses the one you picked. If that device is unplugged or goes inactive,
it falls back to the Windows default.

## Next

- [Setting your microphone level in Windows](/docs/accuracy/windows-microphone-levels/) — once the
  microphone is in the right place, get the level right.
- [Your room and background noise](/docs/accuracy/your-room/) — what to do about echo, fans and the
  person at the next desk.
- [Voice input settings](/docs/configuration/voice-input/) — choosing the device, and what
  Automatic gain control does.