How to control audio volume in conference rooms?
- On November 20, 2016
Can you hear people that are sitting far away from the microphone?
Have you ever joined a conference call where some of the participants were sitting in a conference room? Were you able to understand every word that these people were saying? Probably not. Usually you can clearly hear the people sitting close to the microphone but you can hardly hear all others.
Every company has two types of solutions for this problem: hardware based solution and software based solution.
Hardware-based solution
Install multiple microphones around the room. This way all the participants will have at least one microphone close to them. The major disadvantage of this solution is its cost – both one- time & maintenance. Therefore, in most work places, hardware based solution is only being used for the executive conference rooms while in all other conference rooms, standard IP phones are being used.
Software-based solution
Install software with Automatic Gain Control (AGC) mechanism. The AGC mechanism adjusts the volume of the audio coming out of the conference room to a comfortable level regardless the distance between the different participants and the microphone. AGC will reduce the volume of strong signal and raise the volume of weaker signal. The AGC must be sophisticated enough, for example, to identify voice and not to raise the volume of ambient noise.
PBXMate – a popular software solution
Many companies have chosen the PBXMate as their software solution. The PBXMate is a software product that is designed to improve & monitor audio quality in VoIP. It seamlessly integrates with most commercial VoIP networks by using the standard SIP protocol. It filters the audio coming from multiple conference rooms and using its sophisticated AGC algorithm resolves the audio level problem and increases the effectiveness of important business calls.