A theory of Zoom fatigue • Hacker News Board

Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue

#71

Post by Cthulhu_ » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 8:07 AM UTC

jpalomaki wrote: post #64

ken wrote: post #33

I’m surprised this didn’t mention the elephant in the room: the audio quality is terrible. I simply can’t hear half of what is said, even at full volume in a quiet room. Either I ask for repetition all the time (and walk over whatever the next person said), or I assume it from context and let it go. Even when I can pick up all the sounds, it’s so different from hearing voice in person that I have to concentrate just…

The problem is most likely caused by the other party not using a headset. Even the cheap ones result in much better sound quality than the laptop microphone. Another factor can be lack of bandwidth. Audio quality in Zoom itself is superb according to my experience. Webex is applying some heavy compression. Teams is closer to Zoom, but not as good. And I would say the root cause is people not knowing how bad they soun…

You'd think / hope that nowadays builtin microphones would be better; I mean place them next to the webcam, add some wadding / filtering in front (like the round disk things in professional settings), have two of them, and do some clever AI things to filter out anything that isn't speech. And enforce push-to-talk with a clear visual indication of who wants to speak (ATM in Zoom, Skype it's too subtle).

Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue

#72

Post by lwhsiao » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 8:07 AM UTC

osdiab wrote: post #70

djsumdog wrote: post #6

I don't know about those theories. I suspect something else. Do you remember landlines, and how responsive they were? You would say things back and fourth and the conversation just worked, even on three-way and conference calls? There was very little noticeable lag! Even in the early cellphone days, I'd often prefer using my landline. There was less lag. Cellphones felt like speakerphones where it tries to do that ca…

Anyone have suggestions for the lowest latency VoIP providers?

Mumble and the like are quite low latency if you have a well positioned server. Even though it's designed for gaming, it makes for great group chat.

Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue

#73

Post by tuyiown » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 8:11 AM UTC

jpalomaki wrote: post #64

ken wrote: post #33

I’m surprised this didn’t mention the elephant in the room: the audio quality is terrible. I simply can’t hear half of what is said, even at full volume in a quiet room. Either I ask for repetition all the time (and walk over whatever the next person said), or I assume it from context and let it go. Even when I can pick up all the sounds, it’s so different from hearing voice in person that I have to concentrate just…

The problem is most likely caused by the other party not using a headset. Even the cheap ones result in much better sound quality than the laptop microphone. Another factor can be lack of bandwidth. Audio quality in Zoom itself is superb according to my experience. Webex is applying some heavy compression. Teams is closer to Zoom, but not as good. And I would say the root cause is people not knowing how bad they soun…

> not using a headset

I thought that for a long time. And then, a colleague and I have a MBP 16, and poof, looks like descent quality speaker and microphone on a properly integrated sound stack does wonders even on standard software.

Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue

#74

Post by sgt » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 8:12 AM UTC

Thinking a lot of Zoom meetings are just too long. I recommend max 30 minutes for a meeting, almost regardless what it is about. It's enough to come up with some action points that can be worked on in the meantime, then followed up with a new meeting e.g. in the afternoon.

Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue

#75

Post by aurbano » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 8:14 AM UTC

Just a little anecdote that’s relevant here. Around 10 years ago my girlfriend didn’t have wifi home yet (low tech family), so we spoke at night over landline, as those calls were free. And it definitely did feel like what some people here are saying: you could hear everything with no delay or cuts at all, the whole call just felt like she was there next to me.

They eventually setup wifi in their home, so we switched to VoIp calls, mainly so we wouldn’t block our families’ landlines for a couple hours every day. And the quality was so much worse...

The delay sometimes would be so bad that we had this technique where one would slowly count down from 3 and then say “Now”! Then when the other heard Now they’d say Now too, and the first person could essentially count the seconds. This way we could “slow down” our conversation to accomodate for the multi-second delay, which (thinking back) was like our own protocol for dealing with signal delay!

Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue

#76

Post by vosper » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 8:29 AM UTC

lostdog wrote: post #18

Lots of normal things about human interaction are broken in Zoom meetings. * You can't have a normal conversation with that much delay. Every time you talk you're probably interrupting someone, and that starts to wear on you. * You can't have any side chats with your neighbors before and after the meeting, making everyone seem less like a person. * You can't tell who's looking at you, so you always feel like you have…

> if the layout is fixed, sound isn't coming from anywhere in particular, so you need to search around for who's talking.

I’ve wondered about this - why aren’t individual speakers (people) each placed somewhere different on the stereo plane? Is it because the video is in front of us and having people sound like there coming from the sides could be distracting, by drawing our attention away from the screen?

It must have been tried - why doesn’t it work?

Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue

#77

Post by voldacar » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 8:30 AM UTC

osdiab wrote: post #70

djsumdog wrote: post #6

I don't know about those theories. I suspect something else. Do you remember landlines, and how responsive they were? You would say things back and fourth and the conversation just worked, even on three-way and conference calls? There was very little noticeable lag! Even in the early cellphone days, I'd often prefer using my landline. There was less lag. Cellphones felt like speakerphones where it tries to do that ca…

Anyone have suggestions for the lowest latency VoIP providers?

set up a mumble server. latency is <20ms, which is far better than discord and the like

Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue

#78

Post by saurik » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 8:30 AM UTC

hunter2_ wrote: post #19

saurik wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Landlines were so fast and so "direct" in their latency (where distance correlates very directly with time, due to a lack of "hops") that local phone calls were faster than the speed of sound across a table, and for a bit after they came out--before people generally got used to seemingly random latency--local calls felt "intimate", like as if you were talking to someone in bed with their head right next to you; I als…

There's no compelling reason we couldn't have IP audio links (with an easy calling interface) that have no such compression artifacts. I would actually call it more of a noise gate issue perhaps trying to save bandwidth by maximizing the compressibility of quiet parts as if they're total silence, signal off. That kills the intimacy IMO. We've had it for so long now with digital cell phone calls, even HD calling, cert…

The process of waiting to create the first packet to send (even with no compression) will always be slower than a system where you just send the audio instantly as an analog signal. Even the process of waiting for a single "sample" of audio (for a tiny tiny packet) is technically slower (but of course no one does that: they tend to group together at least 2ms of audio into a packet). The only way you can go faster than a classic land line (assuming there were no signal repeaters: like, this is one of those landlines where as you get further away the signal also gets quieter) is if you can go a shorter distance or use materials with less resistance--maybe "lower relative permittivity"? I don't know exactly what measurement you use here as I don't remember enough physics--to build the wiring or (probably your best bet) switches.

Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue

#79

Post by zjs » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 8:32 AM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #40

lostdog wrote: post #18

Lots of normal things about human interaction are broken in Zoom meetings. * You can't have a normal conversation with that much delay. Every time you talk you're probably interrupting someone, and that starts to wear on you. * You can't have any side chats with your neighbors before and after the meeting, making everyone seem less like a person. * You can't tell who's looking at you, so you always feel like you have…

So why the fixation on a video call? I'm probably just an old curmudgeon, but to me the benefits do not out weigh the oddities being discussed. Everyone wearing their pieces of flair with their "personalized" backgrounds are tiresome. I can see the benefits of a screen share/presentation, but I really don't need to see the other people involved. I don't care about tone of voice. I get sarcasm. For the people that don…

In part due to the latency noted elsewhere in the comments, I find myself interrupting people more when I'm remote. With video on, the visual cue of someone getting ready to start talking makes that easier to avoid.

Secondarily, I have a much better time assessing whether other attendees are following a conversation. If I'm feeling lost, but everyone else looks like they're following along, maybe it's just me — and I'll sit tight and try to catch up. If others look bewildered, I'll start asking questions.

Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue

#80

Post by porker » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 8:33 AM UTC

hunter2_ wrote: post #19

saurik wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Landlines were so fast and so "direct" in their latency (where distance correlates very directly with time, due to a lack of "hops") that local phone calls were faster than the speed of sound across a table, and for a bit after they came out--before people generally got used to seemingly random latency--local calls felt "intimate", like as if you were talking to someone in bed with their head right next to you; I als…

There's no compelling reason we couldn't have IP audio links (with an easy calling interface) that have no such compression artifacts. I would actually call it more of a noise gate issue perhaps trying to save bandwidth by maximizing the compressibility of quiet parts as if they're total silence, signal off. That kills the intimacy IMO. We've had it for so long now with digital cell phone calls, even HD calling, cert…

Is noise gating why you can't talk over each other? I am terrible at doing this (I think of it as synthesis - 2 excited ppl grabbing the idea, running with it, then the other interrupts and takes over) and while I acknowledge it's a bad behaviour, why do video calls or most digital audio ones not let it happen? I get there's delay so they can't exactly blend the two audio streams together, but what is this crazy limitation that only one person can talk at a time?