Views: 2 Author: Site Editor Publish Time: 2023-05-18 Origin: Site
The conference room microphone is one of the most critical components of a successful video conferencing solution. There are many choices: wired or wireless; table-mounted or ceiling-mounted; directional or omnidirectional. Each choice has its own set of pros and cons that should align with your use case.
If you’re outfitting a large meeting space like a boardroom or an open workspace, there will probably be multiple speakers that need to share the microphone with each other and with people sitting at other tables. For this scenario, a directional microphone is required as it will pick up voices from the speaker’s immediate vicinity and remove background noises, such as conversations going on at other tables or huddle rooms in the same office suite.
Other types of conference microphones require a little more work to ensure they can cover the entire room and avoid audio issues like feedback from other speakers. These microphones typically involve a series of microphones, loudspeakers and a digital signal processor that captures the near-end voice and sends it to in-room loudspeakers for everyone to hear.
A high-quality meeting room microphone is one of the most important pieces of equipment in a video conferencing system. Without a clear, crisp audio transmission that is free of echo and noise, no amount of HD video clarity is going to make up for poor voice quality.
Choosing the right conference mic for your room requires careful consideration of many factors, including the acoustics of the space and how many people will be seated around the conference table. A large number of participants will require a mic with a larger pickup range to accommodate everyone.
Gooseneck microphones get the mic closer to talkers and are the best for picking up a single speaker's voice, but they take up desk space that could interfere with laptops, papers, phones and other items necessary for meeting participation. They also tend to receive pushback for aesthetic issues, and they are not ideal if the room's configuration changes often.
Ceiling-mounted microphones are a more discreet solution that occupy no table space and eliminate the need for cords. They are particularly well suited to large rooms, and their directional pickup pattern minimizes pick-up of unintended sounds like AC or ambient noise. They're also less expensive than gooseneck mics and boundary mics, but they don't capture as much sound coverage as the other two options on this list.
