How much of a difference will a well-constructed keyboard make to switch feel?

[RominRonin]

How much of a difference will a well-constructed keyboard, with a metal switch plate, PCB and a solid, weighty case, make to the feel of a linear switch?

I tried Gateron yellows in a hand-wired board for a few months and quite enjoyed them at first, but after a while I found them to be too light, especially when resting my hands on the board.

A while ago I tried a Steelseries TKL board in a store that had Kailh reds and I really enjoyed the feel. They were scratchy, but I quite liked that as it provided a little more resistance than my yellows.

Then I tried Cherry MX silent reds at a recent meetup and I *loved* them; so much so that I'm thinking of buying some for a board. The thing is though, the silent reds felt heavier than my Gateron yellows, and so did those Kailh reds, despite the lighter springs.

So that go me wondering: If I buy silent reds (or indeed Kailh reds) because of how they felt in a well constructed board with a PCB and a metal plate, and put them in a hand-wired board with a wooden/acrylic switch plate, how much of the feel can I expect to retain?

Or must I copy the construction to get the same feel?

[davkol]

I'm not an engineer, but I do have some basic education in physics… and a certain amount of skepticism.

First, how heavy are the keys? See manufacturing tolerances for switches. There's a quite large range. The simplest, most straightforward answer.

But still, they may feel lighter or heavier under various circumstances. You feel that with your hands, and so it depends how your hands are sensitive or how much force you use at the moment, which varies depending on temperature, what you were doing previously etc.

Furthermore, your overall perception is affected by other senses too. That's where psychoacoustics and various other biases come into play. Try a "deaf" test of different switches, or the other way around: use a buzzer even with quiet switches.

Keycaps can't really change the force requirements of keys: it's negligible, whether a keycap weighs 1g, or 2g, when the whole switch takes 60cN ± tolerance. However, they can change acoustics a lot. More or less space to amplify switch sound, thicker walls to block some frequencies etc. The brain then takes it into account.

The overall keyboard construction has the same effect, and if it's flimsy, it may flex, creak, you name it. You could take another step to room acoustics… but really, are we talking about a musical instrument, or a typing device? I think the latter.

[Tactile]

A stiffer plate/construction doesn't necessarily mean a nicer feel. To use Topre as an example: almost everyone who has tried both agree that the Realforce keyboard, with the Topre switches mounted to a steel plate, feels great to type on but doesn't feel as "fun" as a HHKB with the switches mounted directly to the plastic top of the case. The HHKB is less stiff but that small bit of springiness adds a difficult to quantify "organic" feel which most people like better.

IOW: When you get what you ask for, in this case, it might not be what you want.

[ideus]

The case geometry and weight contribute with most of the sound and overall typing feeling. In my experience. The geometry adds resonance and timber to the sound, thicker walls and weight make bass to increase and reduce the high pitch of some switches. A hollow case in a light material like most plastics makes the pitch higher. It is a bit hard to define common guidance on these factors, but in general is what I have experience. The plates also contributes to reduce the sound in general, an acrylic one will make a nice sound dampener.

[davkol]

The case geometry and weight contribute with most of the sound and overall typing feeling. In my experience. The geometry adds resonance and timber to the sound, thicker walls and weight make bass to increase and reduce the high pitch of some switches. A hollow case in a light material like most plastics makes the pitch higher. It is a bit hard to define common guidance on these factors, but in general is what I have experience. The plates also contributes to reduce the sound in general, an acrylic one will make a nice sound dampener.

(a) you're banging the hell out of your keyboard, pls stahp O_o
(b) your keyboards are garbage, if they reverberate on a simple keystroke (50-100 cN mostly absorbed by the switch itself) X_X

My bare PCB lying on a piece of foam sounds better than that, i.e., it doesn't sound at all.

Please, explain how a case underneath the switch can improve switch sound by anything but interference or simply being louder.

[ideus]

The case geometry and weight contribute with most of the sound and overall typing feeling. In my experience. The geometry adds resonance and timber to the sound, thicker walls and weight make bass to increase and reduce the high pitch of some switches. A hollow case in a light material like most plastics makes the pitch higher. It is a bit hard to define common guidance on these factors, but in general is what I have experience. The plates also contributes to reduce the sound in general, an acrylic one will make a nice sound dampener.

(a) you're banging the hell out of your keyboard, pls stahp O_o
(b) your keyboards are garbage, if they reverberate on a simple keystroke (50-100 cN mostly absorbed by the switch itself) X_X

My bare PCB lying on a piece of foam sounds better than that, i.e., it doesn't sound at all.

Please, explain how a case underneath the switch can improve switch sound by anything but interference or simply being louder.

You can check some videos at YT that show how the same switch sounds entirely different just by being mounted on a heavier case.

[davkol]

You can check some videos at YT that show how the same switch sounds entirely different just by being mounted on a heavier case.

Or because it was recorded with a different microphone placed differently. In other words, that means hardly anything, if the recordings aren't controlled for all variables other than the specific case.

Anyway, If I tape a brick to a keyboard, it won't sound any different, when typing… cracking skulls is a different story, but I wouldn't bother with the keyboard, if I could use the brick right away.

Yeah, a hollow case might reverberate. Like I said, that means it's ****, unless there there are more important factors at play (such as: it must survive being run over with a bulldozer).

[ideus]

You can check some videos at YT that show how the same switch sounds entirely different just by being mounted on a heavier case.

Or because it was recorded with a different microphone placed differently. In other words, that means hardly anything, if the recordings aren't controlled for all variables other than the specific case.

Anyway, If I tape a brick to a keyboard, it won't sound any different, when typing… cracking skulls is a different story, but I wouldn't bother with the keyboard, if I could use the brick right away.

Yeah, a hollow case might reverberate. Like I said, that means it's ****, unless there there are more important factors at play (such as: it must survive being run over with a bulldozer).

Well, you are totally entitled to have your opinion. Typing feeling is a multi-factorial keyboard's outcome, what I said is that the case is a very important factor, of course not the only one.

[davkol]

People enjoy their acoustic guitars, so why not acoustic keyboards? It wouldn't surprise me, considering the popularity of bizarre toy-like pseudo-keycaps.

But if you buy into that sort of irrational thing as a goal, why not explain it with some precision? You know, without the fancy-schmancy subjectivist circlejerking. Because this community has its own share of snake oil already.

And to expand on this. I suspected I preferred the sound of certain PBT keycaps the other day, and so I went ahead and swapped ABS and PBT OEM caps between certain two keyboards, asked someone to move them around for me in a blind test, recorded a comparison with a good mic and looked at the results in Audacity… and you know what? I realized the difference was completely negligible.

Less blind faith.