The Data Drop · #049

The Listening
Museum.

36 mechanical keyboards and switches, curated and sound-mapped. From IBM Model M (1985) to Topre to thocky modern customs. Click any card, type on your real keyboard, hear it as if it were on your desk.

Methodology

A note before you flame us.

Every audio sample on this page comes from the open-source mechanical keyboard community. None of these were recorded by us. We are the curator, not the field recordist.

As ThereminGoat has argued, sound tests are inherently limited: microphone, room, host board, keycap set, codec, and your speakers all color the result. You are never hearing "the keyboard",you are hearing one recording of one build, played through one chain. Treat this as a listening museum, not a buying guide.

Some entries share recordings or are paired on purpose. "Alt build" entries are a separate field recording of the same switch in a different host board and mic chain,listen to these side-by-side with the standard entry to hear how much of a "switch sound" is actually plate, case, mic, and room. Don\'t read loudness differences between paired entries as meaningful: that\'s recording variance, not typing pressure. The Unicomp Classic uses the same bucklespring recording as the IBM Model M because Unicomp still builds these on the original IBM tooling.

All audio is sourced from Mechvibes (community library, MIT app), Bucklespring (GPL-2.0, IBM Model M), grcekh on Freesound (CC0, HHKB Pro Hybrid), keyboardsounds (GPL-3.0), Monkeytype (GPL-3.0), keyBeats (MIT), daktilo (MIT), wayclick, and keebsound. If you are an audio author and want attribution corrected or your sample removed, email akash@sheets.works.

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