i like the sound when im pressing the buttons but i can't stand listening to them in a recording its horrible

As someone who doesn't pay much attention to the world of mechanical keyboards, very happy that I can use "thock" as a filter.

EDIT: A quick Google shows it's a pretty popular term, so I guess that's how I even know about it, the only other mechanical keyboard term in my vocabulary being "Cherry MX Blue clicky switches" for the ones on my AliExpress mechanical keyboard that prevent me from using the keyboard around other people. Unfortunately it also makes it difficult to hear the keyboard sounds without clicking on the letters instead :(

I always bought the non-clicky keyboards...

The UX of the website is kind of horrible. After a few clicks it prompted to subscribe. I understand it takes time to build the thing up, but the disruption is huge.

Looks like a cool website, but after I test a few different keyboards it prompts me to subscribe. After pressing 'maybe later', it comes back again and again, only letting me test three different keyboards before bugging me again. Completely unusable.

HHKB sounds nothing like mine. Weird to type on it and hear a totally different sound.

Model M sounds reasonably close, Unicomp Classic sounds very wrong.

On every keyboard I get, I swap the switches out for silent tactiles[0][1] that I've selected through trial and error. Quiet is really nice (my mouse clicks are louder), but the way they feel is fantastic.

I wish there was a brick and mortar that let you try out a good range of these switches. Places like microcenter have the popular standard choices, but there's so many other switches out there that are just worlds different.

[0] standard preference: https://a.co/d/03j6Boy0

[1] low profile preference: https://a.co/d/06yVB6jg

I read the note at the bottom about the recordings coming from the community, but I think that variation limits the value significantly.

The Cherry Blue vs Cherry Blue (Full Travel) for example. I would expect the full travel to be louder, the normal sound plus the bottom out, but it seems quieter and more generic. The Cherry Browns were the same way.

Having recordings where there is a lot of control around the recording (same room, mic, distance, levels, etc) and the only variable is the keyboard, would be much more interesting. As it stands, I don’t feel like it’s giving me a true representation that I can use. I’m sure some are, but if I haven’t used a particular keyboard before, I can’t be a good judge of if the sound is accurate or not.