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Google Meet rolls out multi-device adaptive audio merging

workspaceupdates.googleblog.com

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Re: Google Meet rolls out multi-device adaptive audio merging

#41

Post by djtango »

benterix wrote: post #34
pachico wrote: post #26

GitLab offers a nice course about transitioning to remote work. One of the items in their guidelines about online meeting is not having hybrid meetings. This is, all those attending must attend from their own device rather than the meeting room one (see Jabra) precisely for the reasons this feature tries to address.

Rules are meant to be broken. I've participated in many meetings where, for one reason or another, some participants couldn't join in person. Making it easier - for them and for us - is a technical challenge, and not something to be decided by an arbitrary rule.

Remote is extreme and is still not the norm. It is easier to baseline on things optimised for remote then relax than try to shoehorn in person into remote which is then doomed to fail.

I worked for a company that was headquartered in London and had satellite offices in Spain and Germany. After we all went remote during the pandemic the EU offices said they felt so much more engaged with the rest of the company because they were no longer disadvantaged by default for not being in HQ and in person bad habits were penalizing them

Re: Google Meet rolls out multi-device adaptive audio merging

#42

Post by whstl »

contrarian1234 wrote: post #33
nevir wrote: post #5

Meet, to me, is the perfect balance of functionality and simplicity (as an end user). And features like this only make that more apparent. Zoom and Teams always frustrate me, even though they're what I use far more often. It's too bad that video conferencing is largely a game of who has the most boxes checked - IT admins and A/V folk are the ones that need to be convinced, and Meet just doesn't ...meet... their needs

Meet requires a Google account to attend a video call while Zoom does not. So if your hosting a meeting with strangers, using Meet is not user friendly. At least personally I refuse to make a Google account bc it requires giving Google my phone number... But I know that's a bit of technoludditism in the current zeitgeist

Is this new? I have definitely joined Meets calls from my personal laptop and I don't have a personal Google account. This includes my last job interview, and, well, I got the job.

Perhaps it's meeting specific, or organization specific?

Re: Google Meet rolls out multi-device adaptive audio merging

#43

Post by loosescrews »

contrarian1234 wrote: post #33
nevir wrote: post #5

Meet, to me, is the perfect balance of functionality and simplicity (as an end user). And features like this only make that more apparent. Zoom and Teams always frustrate me, even though they're what I use far more often. It's too bad that video conferencing is largely a game of who has the most boxes checked - IT admins and A/V folk are the ones that need to be convinced, and Meet just doesn't ...meet... their needs

Meet requires a Google account to attend a video call while Zoom does not. So if your hosting a meeting with strangers, using Meet is not user friendly. At least personally I refuse to make a Google account bc it requires giving Google my phone number... But I know that's a bit of technoludditism in the current zeitgeist

This is only true for meetings created with free gmail accounts. If use Google Workspace this limitation does not apply.

Re: Google Meet rolls out multi-device adaptive audio merging

#45

Post by alkonaut »

nevir wrote: post #5

Meet, to me, is the perfect balance of functionality and simplicity (as an end user). And features like this only make that more apparent. Zoom and Teams always frustrate me, even though they're what I use far more often. It's too bad that video conferencing is largely a game of who has the most boxes checked - IT admins and A/V folk are the ones that need to be convinced, and Meet just doesn't ...meet... their needs

It very rarely matters which product is "better" in any objective sense. If you are team that work with Teams, your meetings will be on teams. Teams could be much worse than Zoom or Meet, you wouldn't move your group from Teams for one meeting anyway.

Re: Google Meet rolls out multi-device adaptive audio merging

#46

Post by samcheng »

buro9 wrote: post #40
nevir wrote: post #5

Meet, to me, is the perfect balance of functionality and simplicity (as an end user). And features like this only make that more apparent. Zoom and Teams always frustrate me, even though they're what I use far more often. It's too bad that video conferencing is largely a game of who has the most boxes checked - IT admins and A/V folk are the ones that need to be convinced, and Meet just doesn't ...meet... their needs

If Meet did "autorecord" combined with "autoshare recording with recipients" (specifically including Google Group recipients)... then it would be perfect. As it is, we're gradually shifting more things to Zoom where that's either part basic functionality, or part easy to automate as things like Zapier are well integrated into the API. We only use Meet for team meetings now, and we did use Gong.io to solve the above..…

Hmm. We natively record and transcribe many meetings via Meet. Maybe it’s a function of the plan we’re on?

I wouldn’t want “autorecord” though - it’s better for culture and rapport to not feel like every conversation is “on the record.”

Re: Google Meet rolls out multi-device adaptive audio merging

#47

Post by CitrusFruits »

stavros wrote: post #10
nevir wrote: post #5

Meet, to me, is the perfect balance of functionality and simplicity (as an end user). And features like this only make that more apparent. Zoom and Teams always frustrate me, even though they're what I use far more often. It's too bad that video conferencing is largely a game of who has the most boxes checked - IT admins and A/V folk are the ones that need to be convinced, and Meet just doesn't ...meet... their needs

Meet frustrates me immensely because I can't just fullscreen someone sharing an HD screen onto my HD screen and get 1:1 pixels with an overlay of faces (like Zoom does). Instead, I have to either not be able to read small text, or awkwardly pan in the recently-added "zoom" view.

Yeah I feel like with a couple UI tweaks or options Meet would be the best by far. It's just so much more convenient and accessible than the others.

Re: Google Meet rolls out multi-device adaptive audio merging

#48

Post by stavros »

CitrusFruits wrote: post #47
stavros wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meet frustrates me immensely because I can't just fullscreen someone sharing an HD screen onto my HD screen and get 1:1 pixels with an overlay of faces (like Zoom does). Instead, I have to either not be able to read small text, or awkwardly pan in the recently-added "zoom" view.

Yeah I feel like with a couple UI tweaks or options Meet would be the best by far. It's just so much more convenient and accessible than the others.

I definitely agree, needs no installation, things just work, quality is good, has nice features like push-to-talk, etc.

It's great, there are just some tiny UX niggles that could be solved very easily but haven't been, yet.

Re: Google Meet rolls out multi-device adaptive audio merging

#50

Post by pquki4 »

My company has conference rooms that have specialized hardware for Microsoft Teams meetings. The audio really sucks -- everyone must project their voice for people joining online to hear. If someone speaks in a low voice, nothing can be heard on Teams even though it is clear enough for people in the room. I don't understand how we haven't solved this problem yet.

The functionality here seems interesting, but I assume only works well if everyone or almost everyone brings a laptop. It probably won't work well for those situations where only one or two people take their laptops to an in-person meeting.

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