The house
About MicManners
MicManners is a small editorial desk devoted to one conviction: most microphones that "sound bad" are well-mannered instruments trapped in ill-mannered settings. We publish software fixes — device selection, gain staging, EQ, noise handling — written plainly enough to follow at five minutes to a meeting, and honestly enough to tell you when software is not the answer.
Who writes this
Everything here is written and maintained by The MicManners Desk — a team byline, used deliberately. We do not invent friendly author personas with stock-photo faces and imaginary credentials; the fashion for them is one of the internet's small dishonesties and we decline to participate. The desk's qualifications are the method below, applied in public, checkable by anyone.
The method
Docs-based claims, dated in print
When a page states a price, a plan limit or a tool's capability, the claim comes from the vendor's own published pages, and the page prints the date we verified it. When we could not fully re-verify something, we say so on the page rather than rounding up to certainty. Prices change; our dates tell you exactly how stale we might be.
No fabricated testing
We do not publish benchmark charts we did not run or "lab scores" born in a spreadsheet. Our guidance is craft knowledge — standard audio practice, vendor documentation, and reasoning we show our work for — labeled as exactly that. The referee we appeal to throughout is the one you own: a thirty-second recording of your own voice.
Software only, by policy
We never recommend hardware — no microphone round-ups, no headset picks, no "budget USB mic" lists. When a problem is physics or a failing part, our pages say that sentence and end. The boundary keeps our incentives legible: nothing here is written to move boxes.
Disclosed money, independent picks
The site earns from clearly marked affiliate links to Krisp, our noise-suppression recommendation — every such link is routed through /go/, tagged as sponsored, and disclosed beside its button. Much of what we recommend (Equalizer APO, Audacity, your own OS settings) is free and pays us nothing, which is precisely why we recommend it first. The full arrangement is in the house rules.
What to read first
New to the house? The full software chain is the complete ceremony in seven steps. In a hurry with a specific complaint, the symptom checker will have you on the correct page in two minutes. For entertainment with a moral, the column is called Politely Louder.
Contact
Corrections are a courtesy and we take them seriously — if a fact on any page has drifted from its source, write to [email protected] and it will be re-verified and re-dated. Reader questions may be answered in the column, politely and anonymously.