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Selecting the right conferencing solution for different room environments

By Fiona Mclean-Banks, Polycom Business Development Manager, Zycko South Africa

22 January 2010

Conference phones have come a long way since their first introduction to the market, and the inherent simplicity in the design of the latest models means that the complexities of the technology are largely disguised. When selecting a conferencing solution it is important to understand the scope of solutions available and the functionality they offer, in order to choose the one best suited to your business environment.

The most critical element of business telephony is, quite obviously, intelligibility. While the human brain is astonishingly proficient at interpreting blurred sounds and compensating for missing words, these interruptions do cause communication to be less efficient, and increase the chance of human error. Thus, improving the accuracy of the physical stage – i.e., ‘what we hear’ - is vital.

There are five aspects of speech audio that work together to create or thwart a clear conversation: bandwidth; reverberation; amplitude; interactivity and noise. A good conference system balances and fine-tunes these aspects automatically, providing a high quality communication experience.

New technologies in the new generation of conference phones

The new generation of conference phones achieves this balance through four important developments: switching off unwanted pickup (from microphones that are not being used); pointing the microphones at the talkers (directional microphones); interaction (full-duplex technology allows users to speak at the same time without cutting each other off); and versatile interconnection capabilities (enabling external recording and speaker systems, external lapel or podium microphones, extended microphones, etc).

New technology has meant that conferencing models are optimised to meet the price and performance goals of different room environments and different user interface requirements. Each conferencing environment has different acoustical challenges, so it is important to choose an appropriately designed solution.

The small office, home office or very small conference room

This is typically a small room that seats up to four participants. It may be cluttered, with a low or normal height ceiling. This scenario can deliver some of the best voice conferencing experience, with chairs and other items cutting down possible echo. The small size forces talkers to remain close to microphones and places them closer to the loudspeaker.

An ideal solution would be a conference phone with five to seven feet of microphone coverage that incorporates the new generation technologies as mentioned earlier.

The standard conference room

The conventional conference room or large office seats up to ten participants. The larger size of the room means that there are acoustic challenges that need to be met – air vents, more participants, more room echo, and noise. However, typically these rooms do have carpeting, an acoustic eight-foot ceiling, furniture, drapes and wall hangings – that all assist in keeping echo under control.

Smaller rooms in this range are suited to a conference phone with 10 feet of microphone coverage. Medium and larger rooms would require a unit that includes the ability to attach expansion microphones (EX) to fully cover the area.

At a room of 20 x 30 feet or larger, there is an inflection point – while conference phones used in the above scenarios could also be used here, models that perform independent echo cancellation and gain management for each microphone, including expansion microphones, would deliver a more powerful conferencing experience. This is because bigger rooms require solutions with advanced algorithms to counter more noise, more echo and more interruptions in conversation.

In larger rooms, it is also important to understand the behaviour of the participants. If talkers will be located near microphones the solution mentioned above - with added on expansion microphones - would work well. But if primary talkers are spread throughout the room or tend to move around, one should consider the next step in conferencing solutions: the installed audio conferencing system.

The board room

A large or very large conference room – running 25 x 45 feet or larger, is often not designed with acoustics in mind, with large open spaces, hard surfaces and multiple panes of glass. These rooms often also include chairs along the side of the room, and a work table or two in the corners – this means sound needs to be carried to all parts of the room, and not just around the main conference table, making a tabletop system insufficient.  In these very large rooms, an installed audio system is the best solution. Installed audio systems partition the pieces of a traditional unit into separate elements so that they can be placed strategically to maximize the conferencing experience. It accommodates as many microphones as are required, to give each speaker the clarity and performance they and listeners require. These systems can be fine-tuned to overcome the unique challenges of the room acoustics and also look neater – as they work with a much wider variety of microphones, and longer cables that are better concealed.
Because these rooms usually facilitate C-level executive meetings, installing an audio system is worth the investment.

The ‘offsite’

This is a large room with multiple long tables arranged in an ‘L’ or ‘U’ shape, commonly found in hotels and conference centres. The room is big, but does not have much echo due to padded sliding room partitions, acoustic ceiling, and carpeted floor. Usually noise levels in this environment are also relatively low. However, with these longer ‘L’ or ‘U’ shaped designs, the challenge is to provide good sound pickup for everyone at the table, as well as enough volume for everyone to hear the conversation.

What is required in this scenario is a highly advanced conference phone that offers a powerful internal loudspeaker and an output speaker port capable of driving a full room-size distributed loudspeaker system, including the speaker systems often found in these types of rooms. It should be able to use all features while maintaining an excellent full-duplex connection over a standard phone line.

Conclusion

With so many options available, choosing a conference phone might seem daunting. But with an idea of the various solutions available, coupled with a specific conferencing scenario in mind, it is now possible to choose the perfect system for your business environment.

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