GoToMeeting audio hardware for a busy office

GoToMeeting audio hardware for a busy office -

There is a great buzz in our Cubicle, and I can often hear 3 or 4 conversations around me. The energy is great and it is a large, collaborative environment, but it does not come without its side down.

We love GoToMeeting and use it several times a day for XenApp development, but with the background noise in the office, it can be difficult to hear my encounter on other calls. It had to be a solution; I was convinced. So I spent a few months for the best audio hardware searched and analyzed various types of headphones, microphones and audio interfaces and learned a few things. It turned out to be quite a long way with some missteps. Now I'm getting for me great sound and the others hear me

Here is my were targets .:

1. Other people can listen in a conference clear to me and will not go through other conversations around me distracted.
2. I can the people on the call hear clearly even at high background noise.
3. I can hear what I say, I can say so, if I murmured.
4. The equipment is comfortable for long sessions.
5. I without distracting to listen to music with the same equipment those around me.

headset

Over the years, I have to go on marketing cheap and nasty or expensive with a lot of money on different headsets and found trying either. I did not want to jeopardize or waste money, so I was pleased to find an article on gaming headsets "own", which really helped. I had a nice pair of Bose QC25 noise canceling headphones, so I added Attach 4.0 uni-directional microphone, as follows a Antlion ModMic:

The ModMic consists of a magnetic clasp that can be folded or removed the headphones on sticks, and the boom upward. A large piece of industrial engineering! At £ 40 it may seem quite expensive and there are cheaper lapel or headsets available. I have two apart no problem for one year in operation and have had from when I managed to destroy the 3.5mm plug (although it was easy, a new solder at the end); mind you I'm an idiot and break every year a 3.5 mm plug or so, usually on planes.

sidetone / foldback

My next problem was that with highly insulating headphones, I found it hard to speak, if I could not hear me, so I wanted a good foldback get to sound. I am more aware of this than most people might, as I have done live sound mixing for bands on hundreds of occasions over the years. Musicians love to hear what they play or sing clearly; it is an important part to produce a good performance.

Therefore, we go to great lengths people good mixtures for their in-ear monitors (headphones) or foldback to obtain keys. In the telephony world, this is known as sidetone and according to Wikipedia, it was used in the telephony since the 19th century. With digital audio, we learn still, and I am not the only one frustrated by the absence of sidetone:

Is there a way to sidetone on when an audio headset on a Mac? Google venues makes me crazy with sealed-ear headphones

- Joel Spolsky (@spolsky) March 28, 2013

Software sidetone

One way to support sidetone would for software the user's voice back to play it. However, be heard, be problematic with more than a few milliseconds latency; it can be really off-putting.

I tried LineIn on a Mac that do not work too well, probably because the recording and reproduction never achieved quite rate as often as you receive samples and build a distracting echo.

It is possible to use software sidetone under the 10ms end-to-end range with pro-audio hardware with VST driver and obtain a professional digital audio workstation package as Ableton Live. This is expensive and difficult to integrate with software under Windows as GoToMeeting, used the standard Windows audio stack. Even a few milliseconds delay is due to comb filtering perceptible with the sound of their own voice when compared to what you hear via bone conduction.

hardware sidetone

I have installed a Sound Blaster Live PCI card from around 01 and it has a sophisticated mixer hardware. but I was the driver unable to get to the last versions of Windows running and solutions with PCI cards are not very mobile. Unfortunately, when I evaluated a few recent consumer audio interfaces and found lacking the function on many of the latest USB and PCI express audio interfaces.

So, I thought I try a little external mixer. use headsets usually unbalanced 5 volt bias microphones with 3.5mm plug. I had not find a good off the shelf solution to those external mixer, which are typically used to link balanced XLR connectors with 48-volt phantom power, although there are some schematics available if you want to build your own hardware. If you try that, please let me know how you get on. , Antlion have an XLR modmic announced that I am keen to try, if it is available

Finally, I found a recommendation for the Behringer UA302 and ordered a:

This is a great value (I paid £ 35). The 3.5mm headphone jack right above works quite well with the ModMic, and I can even roll the bass a little on my voice from the tape to deal properly with the proximity effect of a microphone in front of my mouth (the voices sound boomy to making tends). It is fast to my voice sidetone independent of the teleconference adjust general volume. For music, I can reflect the Modmic out of the way and the audio quality (and volume!) From the UA302 is pretty good. The sound quality is not as amazing as my hi-fi amplifier at home, but I would rate it 8/10.

Impressions

I am very happy with this property and the sound quality I'm always with GoToMeeting. the QC25 is a great sounding pair of headphones and the noise reduction and comfort is remarkable. In Pro-Audio or HiFi conditions the QC25 is not the best thing to in an ideal environment, but in a noisy office, the noise suppression is by far the most important key determinant of the quality of sound. I can also run conferences and music at a low level and to protect my hearing.

sidetone really helps me speak clearly. Many people do not like it, I got the sound of her own voice, and once I get immediate feedback on my uttering what is important to me, because I tend to mumble. People mute in our meetings frequently and will try and contribute to the meeting without enable or disable that can harm the flow of the meeting circuit. With the hardware mute switch blocks the sidetone I know immediately if I switched me mute the microphone, since I can not hear what I say, so deal with it very quickly.

For quieter environments

I usually find gadgets disappointing; but this rig has worked so well, I have a different (with Beyerdynamic DT770 Pro Headphones) for use at home. In this case, I went for the undirected version of modmic to figure out it was quiet at home so the more even frequency response of an omnidirectional capsule as the unidirectional version would be problematic.

I regret that since omnidirectional modmic pick up some of the sound coming out of the open back of DT770s and the unidirectional version would have it better. It is well possible without sidetone in a quiet environment to manage, but I large sidetone'm addicted now.

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