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Ask HN: What service do you use for audio conference calls?

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31–40 of 45 posts

Re: Ask HN: What service do you use for audio conference calls?

#31
post #15

To be the boring voice here... Skype for Business. The calls themselves are fine, but the applications are garbage. I'd advise against the platform. Haven't tried MS Teams yet.

Skype 4 Biz works great for us. We are on Office 365. We do internal conference calls on it and also give the conference number out for clients externally.

Being able to set up a con call from the Outlook mobile app is an awesome feature too. Quality has been fine.

We are in AU by the way.

Re: Ask HN: What service do you use for audio conference calls?

#32
I love Blue Jeans Networks! www.bluejeans.com A very feature rich video/audio conference platform with Screen Sharing. Dolby audio with noise cancellation...

* Use your existing Polycom/Cisco VC Gear (even h323!) * Get a dial in number or toll free # * Use the web without a plugin! (WebRTC) * Mac/Windows/Linux/iOS/Android...

Try a free trial.. It blows WebEx/Zoom/Fuze/GoToMeeting/Skype out of the water with quality...

Re: Ask HN: What service do you use for audio conference calls?

#33
post #4

Uberconference.com, although admittedly I've seen Zoom frequently and I'm starting to see Google Meet in my org (ask but ubercobference support video). For audio, it federally depends on where people are calling from (India tends to eliminate a few potions), if it's internal, and the number (100+ changes things)

Jumping on the bandwagon here. We use Uberconference and absolutely love it. Audio is crystal clear and haven't had any issues with it.

Re: Ask HN: What service do you use for audio conference calls?

#34
post #4

Uberconference.com, although admittedly I've seen Zoom frequently and I'm starting to see Google Meet in my org (ask but ubercobference support video). For audio, it federally depends on where people are calling from (India tends to eliminate a few potions), if it's internal, and the number (100+ changes things)

Yeah I think I'm going to switch to Google. Tried the ol' webex and it was garbage.

Re: Ask HN: What service do you use for audio conference calls?

#35
post #4

Uberconference.com, although admittedly I've seen Zoom frequently and I'm starting to see Google Meet in my org (ask but ubercobference support video). For audio, it federally depends on where people are calling from (India tends to eliminate a few potions), if it's internal, and the number (100+ changes things)

I also really like uberconfrence. I use their other product DialPad, as well. That's where you have a dedicated phone number and can make calls to anywhere.

Re: Ask HN: What service do you use for audio conference calls?

#37

I work on a cross platform team, i.e. Linux, macOS and sometimes WIndows. Zoom did us well, but then Slack calls appeared and its almost entirely replaced our usage. It works well, no complaints.

How did you make zoom.us work on Linux? It always seems to make try and download an .exe file. Zoom is one of the ever-decreasing uses for my emergency mac .

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/204206269-Linux-In...

I haven't used the Linux client, but many others at my company use it.

Re: Ask HN: What service do you use for audio conference calls?

#38

Google Hangouts has always worked well for me and it's free. I'm curious why the paid alternatives are better.

But does it work well ? If so, you're in the minority. I cannot tell you how many times I've had to kill Chrome because Hangouts caused it to crash, or how many times core functionality in Hangouts straight up didn't work, or how many times I've been interrupted in a group call by somebody else's Hangouts doing the same ("Wait for Joe...he's gotta restart Hangouts"). And on top of all of that, Hangouts does not work…

Agreed on all points here:

* Doesn't work on Firefox (for a better part of a year now for me, which appears to be an intentional won't fix)

* Frequently causes Chrome to hang or crash

* Pretty noticeable resource hog when it does work

* Audio/video quality is absolutely garbage, frequently breaks up or stutters, and has poor frame rate and high latency

* Seems to do a poor job isolating voice from sound (a handful of people will pretty much cause nonstop background noise, it tries to be clever by muting you when it detects mostly background sound, but it just results in people talking without realizing they're muted)

* Pretty feature poor compared to competitors (master presenter, remote control, shared whiteboard, phone dial-in, phone dial-out)

* Tied pretty heavily to a Google account, which is incredibly annoying in a professional environment where people are hesitant to join with their personal account, plus some extra confusion when it auto-joins with the account signed into Chrome which is further aggravated by the poor multi-account management story that might still use your personal account when you have a business account.

Source: used to be a consultant and used every possible conferencing software under the sun; currently using hangouts enterprise for work

Re: Ask HN: What service do you use for audio conference calls?

#39
post #3

https://appear.in/

To echo what others have said, it's great if everyone's internet connection is rock solid. It seems that their calls are setup as fully connected graph between participants, and it has happened more than once that I can hear some people that other participants can't and vice-versa. I usually try to cap it at 3 participants, or it can get messy.

Re: Ask HN: What service do you use for audio conference calls?

#40

chime.aws

terrible Linux support. Its hard to understand how a company whose products are built on a Linux platform and who use dogfood this product for all their internal needs, doesn't have good Linux support.

The app is mediocre at best on all platforms, but the service works well.
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