All, what sort of mics and speakers do you use for videoconferences?
We currently use two Jabra 710 mic/speakers, but this isn't ideal at all. The sound is often robotic. Besides that, users find it hard to set up.
Recommendations are appreciated! #fossmendations
@Gina If you're for quality, any headphones with protracted mic are the best.
For a room setup I personally find the distance people are sitting from the mic to have the primary impact on quality.
@kravietz General room design and dressing is hugely undrerated.
People put vidoeconf (or voice conf) setups into bare-walled rooms with hard tables and large glass windows ... and expect there *not* to be a tremendous amount of reverb, echo, feedback, and cross-feed.
And that's before you get to micing & c.
@dredmorbius @Gina That's a valid point, didn't realize that it matters so much!
@kravietz Even just a few wall dressings / window treatments can make a huge difference.
The problem of having mics literally _sitting on a table_, where every interaction (bags, papers, books being put on them, pencil/pen tapping, someone typing on their laptop, any mechanical motion, etc.) will be conducted directly to the mic, is a big one. Mounts help.
Close-micing of individual speakers.
Muting inactive participants.
Adjusting levels of all remote locations / feeds so that one doesn't dominate others / some aren't too soft.
There's a lot we / our brains do automatically when people share our space that audio tech handles very poorly.
Unfortunately, remote conferencing will always be a mediated approximation of in-person meetings. This doesn't mean they're not useful, but it makes them more challenging.
@dredmorbius @Gina It's definitely worth the price if it saves me 3 h per day of commute
https://meet.jit.si/ does the job for me
@kravietz @saper @dredmorbius I don't mean the software, I mean the hardware. We already use our own Jitsi server.
@Gina @kravietz @dredmorbius eh, right, ... , ehm, *headbang* *focus*
@kravietz @dredmorbius @Gina I am definitely not an AV pro but I learned to avoid conference rooms with multiple people on one side and preferred teams to connect from their desktops with headsets. Everyone is on equal footing, backchannel surface is smaller and one can look things up and be productive in between. Some systems have issues serving more than 4-5 participants this way. I miss #Marratech which became Hangouts. It was excellent.