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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

#251

Post by mayneack »

stackskipton wrote: post #53
benterix wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As far as Teams vs. Meet, it seems like Teams is great when you are working with people that have climbed it's learning curve. Can you give one example?

I can give several. Most of them are not Meet specific but how Meets integrates with rest of Google Products. This is actually overall massive problem with Google Workspaces in general IMO. 1) You can call someone in Teams. Sure, Google Chat has "Start Meeting now" but it's very passive. I know some will see this as negative but ringing has massive advantages around UX. 2) Chat, Teams will persist chat after meeting…

Google meet has 4 now

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

#252

Post by mepiethree »

azangru wrote: post #244
hugocbp wrote: post #243

Amazing! I don't trust Google with barely anything these days anymore (except Gmail just because it has been so long, and Maps), but Google Meet is the one thing that I prefer Google's solution over anyone else's. Meet is just so much better than Zoom, Teams, FaceTime, WhatsApp Video, etc. I'm so glad they are tackling this specific issue. Pretty amazing feat if it works well.

> Meet is just so much better than Zoom, Teams, FaceTime, WhatsApp Video, etc. So much better? Does Meet have instruments for whiteboarding or on-screen annotation?

Yes it does. Whiteboarding requires a free add-on (e.g. FigJam, Miro) but you can add that in-call

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

#253

Post by wazoox »

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.

In Firefox, click on the small "Picture in picture" button, then click on the "full-screen" corner button to make any of the videos full-screen. OK you don't have the faces overlay, but you'll have a nice full-screen version of the presentation.

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

#254

Post by rangestransform »

nomel wrote: post #177
YZF wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't aware audio hardware on laptops can emit ultrasound. Aren't those filtered to be below 22KHz?

Most adults can’t hear > 18kHz. Related, there are devices you can buy to repel teenagers: https://www.today.com/news/controversial-mosquito-sonic-devi...

These are everywhere in Japan as anti loitering devices

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

#255

Post by literallycancer »

rangestransform wrote: post #254
nomel wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most adults can’t hear > 18kHz. Related, there are devices you can buy to repel teenagers: https://www.today.com/news/controversial-mosquito-sonic-devi...

These are everywhere in Japan as anti loitering devices

Courtesy of anti social boomers. If I ever meet the person who approved the installation of this kind of system I swear I'll punch them in the face.

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

#256

Post by eythian »

deathanatos wrote: post #188
echelon wrote: post #6

Meet and Google Docs are perfect Google products. I'm disapponted when people send me Zoom meetings or want to meet on Slack. Google Meet is a 10x better experience.

The killer Slack feature is the ability to draw on the other end's screen. I really wish I had that sometimes in (small) Google Meet meetings, simply to avoid the "it's on your left. Your other left. Okay down 3 items. That was four items. Go up one. No, now you've gone up 2 items…" Or mid-prod outage trying to get some engineer to type a command to run for you, and they can't dictate from speech to terminal, because…

Zoom has this also. It's pretty handy once in a while.

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

#257

Post by warble »

lomase wrote: post #219
warble wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is much simpler than what you're suggesting. Careful microphone level management can handle this. No need for audio sync. I know they use the word "sync" but that's a very broad term.

You need sync to mitigate phase issues because the mics are in different positions on the room.

No, probably not there are no phase issues if you just don't transmit the signal. The hard part would be to determine who's in the room, and then who's talking and then mixing appropriately to eliminate feedback and optimize speaker sound quality. None of which requires signal phase accurate synchronicity.

If they're actually able to "sync" (again a poorly defined term) given the problems associated with network latency and different hardware it would border on magic.

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

#258

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

IsTom wrote: post #247
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a large room, perfect syncing is actually impossible since different listeners will be far enough from each other speakers to cause, at best, comb filtering, and at worst, audible delays.

I assume that if speakers are not set too loud then either you're close and the algorithm works or you're far and sound is quiet enough that it's not an issue.

If the speakers are not set too loud, you don't need the algorithm at all.

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

#259

Post by fredstar »

The_Colonel wrote: post #208
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.

It's optimizing for the lowest common denominator. When a majority of the team is present in office, it's silly to downgrade the experience for everyone.

You are right, but sometimes hybrid is just a reality. For us it would be an absolute game changer when you do not have to rush to find an empty meeting room or phone booith.

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

#260

Post by svnt »

jpc0 wrote: post #242
boffinAudio wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that this is amazing - but what I don't like about it, is the fact that a 3rd party is doing this, when it should really be a built-in feature of the operating system - or at least, be implemented as close to the device as possible . From what I can glean from this breathless press release, this functionality requires a fair bit of cloud ... anathema to audio professionals, but maybe not so, the professional…

How would you do this on the os? I would honestly try to sync audio output based on a shared time reference, something along the lines of what AES67/Ravenna/Dante does but you can be a little more lax and use ntp or system time since you don't need to be sample accurate. For the microphones that would be a little harder but you should be aware it's not that tough since a few high end manufacturers have phased microph…

My money is that outside of a couple of dog and pony demos with everyone on one well-administered LAN you could not make this work with system time and NTP on consumer devices. You will regularly see 100ms difference in NTP time.

The fact that phased array microphones exist has nothing to do with the point we are discussing, which is audio coherence across heterogenous devices whose only real connection is a web browser.

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