Keyboard Sound is Basically Impossible to Get Right…

As someone who has had the chance to be an active participant in the mechanical keyboard community for just shy of a decade, I've had the opportunity to see it change substantially over the years. Back in my earliest days, GMK keycap groupbuys would come around once or twice per month, artisan keycaps from the go-to makers were only $10-30 each, and switches were limited to small handful of varities from less than a dozen manufacturers. I'm sure I don't even have to describe just how alien these ideas would be in today's community! However, one of the more subtle shifts I've seen not get discussed is in the key motivation that drives people to seek out their first keyboards.

Whereas back in 2016 people sought out mechanical keyboards for a unique, less strenuous typing experience that primarily felt better, it seems as if people in 2025 are primarily drawn to the hobby to find keyboards that sound good first and foremost. I have to imagine that this shift in priorities for builds is due in some large part to the sheer amount of audiovisual content that can be found on YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, and elsewhere and their intense focus on typing tests across all of those platforms. And yet, keyboards have not radically changed in design across all of these years.

Despite all of the new keycap profiles, plate materials, and fancy housings used in switches to try and achieve specific sound profiles, there's no reliable, predictable way to tell how they will sound in a final keyboard build – and I'm not sure many people realize this. Trying to build your keyboard to hit a specific sound profile that you hear in a typing test online is virtually impossible, and yet most beginners don't even realize why this is the case. So, let's walk through why trying to target a specific sound in a keyboard build is a lot harder than everyone seems to think it is.

Before we get super deep into a discussion involving every single part inside and outside of your keyboards and how everything slightly affects its sound, we should at least start with most people consider one of the 'easier' parts of a keyboard to discuss the sound of – the switches. As I'm sure you've already seen a fair amount of videos about keyboards by the time you're reading this article, you're bound to have encountered discussions about how "thocky" Cherry MX Black switches are or how "clacky" Kinetic Labs Huskies are. As seems reasonable, people have then used the characteristics of these switches – such as Cherry's nylon housings or the Husky's long stem poles – and extrapolated those terms to all switches which bear those features. Suddenly all nylon-housing Cherry switches are 'thocky' and every long pole linear switch sounds 'clacky'… that is until you go to another part of the community. Suddenly you'll see people over there intermixing or even altogether switching these terms from the content creator or group you started out with, with some people calling some long pole switches thocky or others that have nylon housings clacky, and maybe even some new words like 'creamy', 'poppy', 'squishy', and so on. If it feels a bit confusing at this point, it's not because you're doing anything wrong.

Despite each of these words being used to define the sound of a specific switch or set of switches, they don't even have definitions – they're subjective onomatopoeias that are relative at best and unique to each person at worst. The reality of switch sound is that it is entirely subjective from person to person and easily influenced by every single factor besides just the ones you're focusing on. Whereas people may look only to the stem length or housing material to try and determine how a switch will sound, its type, manufacturer, housing structures, and even spring weight and threading all can radically change how a switch sounds – and that's before you lubed, filmed, or modified them too! In reality the only way to truly know how a set of switches will sound is to try them out for yourself in a keyboard build. However, you shouldn't get too comfortable with that idea as what you choose will also alter how your switches sound…

I'm sure at least a few of you scoffed at that last statement since it's "just a set of plastic keycaps and a metal keyboard case" and that your selection of which ones surely can't make that much of a difference. Unfortunately, your choices in these two features alone can make a matching set of switches sound so entirely different that you wouldn't be able to even guess that they were the same in the first place. (I've even been fooled myself at meetups before!)

While I'm sure people could guess that aluminum keyboard cases sound different than plastic ones, the internal structures and shapes of your keyboard can and very much will change how switches sound in them. Hollow cases with large open volumes like some cheaper keyboards echo the sound of switches differently than more compact, solid ones like Geonworks' Frogs which don't allow switches to vibrate or rattle around nearly as much. Tack on the varying types of plates that can be purchased for these cases as well – using aluminum, brass, or even carbon fiber – and these too all transmit the sound of the switches placed in them differently. Every single combination of plate and keyboard will ultimately move the sound of switches from them to your ears differently, and that's with all else equal. If that wasn't enough, people also use foam and tape on their PCBs to further modify the sounds of their board, with an ultimate goal of preventing or even encouraging specific tones of switches to come through in the final build.

All of these same thoughts can be applied to keycaps too. Tall profile keycaps with profiles like MT3 and SA that are made of ABS can and will allow switch sound to reverberate differently than shorter, flatter profiles like DSA that are made for PBT-based keycaps. The difference is so noticeable in fact that keyboards with SA profile caps used to be known as sounding much more deep and booming in sound than others even back in the day when fewer people cared about a keyboard's sound. I hate to break it to you too that not even all of these factors in addition to the switches are a complete list of things that can change a keyboard's sound – everything around your board matters too.

If you've fallen for the trap of trying to build a keyboard that perfectly matches one that you enjoyed the sound of online, I'm sure you've probably been not nearly as thrilled with how the board sounded in person. Going back to compare to that video there's just something missing from your board – an extra tone, some depth, or maybe even sharper, plasticky tones present now that weren't in the video at all. If they're exactly the same keyboards then how is that even possible?

Did you happen to catch what material the content creator's desk was made out of? Did they have a similar sized room to yours that either does or doesn't have matching carpet? What about the height of their ceilings? Since sound bounces off of everything around a keyboard before hitting your ears, all of these things change how a keyboard will sound and I've even seen this work in strange ways myself. My keyboard I'm writing this very article with uses silent tactiles that sound quieter in the short ceiling, hardwood floored room of my new writing office than the taller, carpeted square room of my previous apartment! And that is to say that all of those things play an impact assuming the content creator didn't edit their typing test. In total there's really just no way to control for and predict all of the factors that will influence how a keyboard sounds when it comes altogether.

While I'm sure you were hoping for a prescriptive answer as to how to navigate around these issues, at the end of this article I unfortunately don't have one for you. Trying to control for, guess, and even plan around every single one of these factors before you have a keyboard in the room you want to use it in is just not possible when simply changing the number of deskmats you use can radically alter the final sound. The only thing you can do to tune the sound of your keyboard is to experiment in person. You won't always get the perfect sound that you were hoping for fresh out of the box, but to not quite nail something the first time is both completely human and reasonable in a complex, multifaceted system like a mechanical keyboard. It's okay to not quite get things right the first time, and exploring to try and find your dream keyboard sound will only make you more knowledgeable at the end of it all. Speaking of which, you can also increase your keyboard knowledge without having to test anything out at all by reading some of my other guides here on Kinetic Labs such as 'Tools To Mod Your Mechanical Keyboard Switches' or 'You're Not Trying Enough Keyboard Switches'.