You'd think by now folks would have invested in headsets or microphones.
Ask HN: Are people oblivious to their audio quality in meetings?
1–10 of 23 posts
Re: Ask HN: Are people oblivious to their audio quality in meetings?
#2I don't really enjoy having anything attached to my head.
Re: Ask HN: Are people oblivious to their audio quality in meetings?
#3Yes. They are largely oblivious. I'm hard of hearing. The echo and distortion from most phones on hands-free, makes many people/environments completely incomprehensible to me. "I'm sorry I can't understand you. Are you on speakerphone?" Yes. They're on speakerphone. That they sound like they're shouting from the bottom of a well is a surprise to most when I tell them.
Re: Ask HN: Are people oblivious to their audio quality in meetings?
#4It’s not like pro audio where you’re going to have somebody listening to make sure the signal going out is good.
Re: Ask HN: Are people oblivious to their audio quality in meetings?
#5[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Are people oblivious to their audio quality in meetings?
#6We strongly encourage that all of our remote employees use the same IP phone and headset models to help minimize this kind of problem. We pay for it all and try really hard to make sure everyone has it set up in the same way.
The kind of work we do is very complex and having people get distracted with random audio problems is just too much to deal with.
For those enthusiasts among us... I also think if you are fiddling with microphone preamps and phantom power before your daily standup, that you might have some unnecessary distractions going on in your office.
Re: Ask HN: Are people oblivious to their audio quality in meetings?
#7I mean, you usually don't hear your own audio, so you're oblivious by default.
With video quality, you usually see a preview of what was captured locally, so at least you'll see terrible lighting or other really obvious image quality problems, but you won't see the results after encoding and decoding and you may not have a good understanding of the latency and jitter of your video sending either.
Re: Ask HN: Are people oblivious to their audio quality in meetings?
#8Yes. They are largely oblivious. I'm hard of hearing. The echo and distortion from most phones on hands-free, makes many people/environments completely incomprehensible to me. "I'm sorry I can't understand you. Are you on speakerphone?" Yes. They're on speakerphone. That they sound like they're shouting from the bottom of a well is a surprise to most when I tell them.
I'm not hard of hearing, yet I have the same issues.
Re: Ask HN: Are people oblivious to their audio quality in meetings?
#9We strongly encourage that all of our remote employees use the same IP phone and headset models to help minimize this kind of problem. We pay for it all and try really hard to make sure everyone has it set up in the same way. The kind of work we do is very complex and having people get distracted with random audio problems is just too much to deal with. For those enthusiasts among us... I also think if you are fiddli…
What headset models do you use?
Re: Ask HN: Are people oblivious to their audio quality in meetings?
#10We strongly encourage that all of our remote employees use the same IP phone and headset models to help minimize this kind of problem. We pay for it all and try really hard to make sure everyone has it set up in the same way. The kind of work we do is very complex and having people get distracted with random audio problems is just too much to deal with. For those enthusiasts among us... I also think if you are fiddli…
What headset models do you use?
Plantronics CS-series I believe.