Mechanical keyboard fans should check out the 'Listening Museum' which offers samples of classic models

If you're keen on keyboards, there's a website you need to check out which is a museum of mechanical keyboards, complete with samples of the sound they make.

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Tom's Hardware reports that the so-called 'Listening Museum' - the work of The Data Drop (from the staff at sheets.works) - boasts an array of 36 different classic mechanical keyboards stretching back over the last four decades of the history of these peripherals.

Head to the site and you can select the type of keyboard you want to use from the bank of various options, which include the IBM Model M (from way back in 1985), up to more contemporary offerings such as various Cherry MX switches.

If you really want to head back in time, there's a vintage typewriter from 1874 that's been sampled.

Once your keyboard has been chosen, simply type - or click the keys on the virtual keyboard to the right - to hear the device in action.

You also get an explanation of why these keys sound the way they do.

Tom's notes that they're not convinced about the replication of the sound of the Cherry MX Blue, but as the creators of the website make clear, these sounds are representative, and not meant to act as any kind of pre-buying advice.

The samples are picked up from the "open-source mechanical keyboard community" and as such, the recordings are all made differently - and "microphone, room, host board, keycap set, codec, and your speakers all color the result".

In other words, take some seasoning with what you're hearing, and even among the same keyboard model, you can hear variations in the sound with, say, a much older version (near the end of its viable quota of key presses) versus a brand-new peripheral.