With team members, contractors, vendors, and customers spread all over the globe, most meetings by necessity include a mix of people in the room and some joining from remote locations.
The AV equipment in the room can either ensure a successful meeting or it can obstruct communication in any of several ways. Poor sound quality is at the top of the list. Remote participants frequently complain about hollow sound, excessive room noise, mismatched sound levels, or poor interactivity that make it hard to carry on a natural discussion.
When any of these things happen, productivity is derailed and decision-making can be impeded. The equipment itself becomes a disruptive participant. Think of it this way: if one person in a meeting repeatedly prevented everyone else from being heard or understanding others, you’d probably ask them to leave.
“You don’t have to be an audio expert to have expert audio.”
Your audio system may be doing just that, and if so, it deserves to be kicked out. By producing poor audio, it is creating an obstacle that disrupts every meeting. Attendees are forced to spend extra effort trying to overcome the effects of bad audio, like asking people to repeat themselves, speak louder, move closer to the microphone, etc. In the worst cases, they just give up and tune out. Good ideas never make it to the table.
Make audio work for you, not against you
But the audio system can act like a great meeting facilitator who makes it effortless for everyone to contribute their best ideas. The good news is that you don’t have to be an audio expert to get expert audio. The key is to choose audio solutions that can offer a consistent experience for users and a standardised approach to system management for AV/IT managers, and do it across the full range of room types and meeting styles within your organization.
This last bit reflects the reality that rooms come in different sizes, shapes, and configurations, and are often used for different purposes. While a mix of equipment from different brands can work, in reality it can be a burden when you figure the need to understand multiple configurations, control schemes, and firmware update procedures. Troubleshooting technical issues becomes more complex without a uniform standard, causing unnecessary delays in returning the room to active service.
How to build great audio
Recognising the vast diversity of rooms and use cases, Shure takes a building-block approach by offering three ceiling array microphones that deliver consistent audio in a variety of situations. They each have varying feature sets and performance capabilities, but all of them use a standardised configuration and firmware maintenance platform for easier management.
They all share Automatic Coverage technology, which automatically distributes microphone capture where it’s needed within a defined area. They all include IntelliMix DSP with echo cancellation, noise reduction, and automatic gain control to provide a well-balanced output mix. And they all feature certification with popular collaboration applications like Microsoft Teams and others for a guaranteed quality of service without the need for time-consuming adjustment and integration. But each one serves a unique niche.
- MXA902: The all-in-one solution for one-device rooms
In new rooms where there are no existing loudspeakers, the MXA902 Integrated Conferencing Ceiling Array is the ideal choice. Its array microphone and built-in loudspeaker provide consistent audio capture and reproduction throughout a 6 by 6 meter (20 by 20 foot) area, making it suitable for small and medium-size meeting rooms. One network cable carries microphone audio, loudspeaker audio, control signals, and PoE+ power for the ultimate in installation simplicity. The internal IntelliMix DSP includes all of the essential processing for superior sound quality, so the only thing to add is an audio interface like the ANIUSB-MATRIX which facilitates connection to a computer via USB or a hardware-based videoconferencing system via analog input/output.
- MXA901: The Perfect Companion to Existing Loudspeakers
The sleek, round MXA901 is an even more compact ceiling array microphone with the same coverage area and IntelliMix DSP as the MXA902 but without the built-in loudspeaker. It works very well in room upgrades where the existing loudspeakers will remain in place, and mates with the ANIUSB-MATRIX which provides analog audio connections for a hardware codec as well as a USB connection for a laptop in BYOD rooms. In larger spaces that require expanded coverage, multiple MXA901 units can be combined using the IntelliMix P300 audio DSP. The P300 automatically selects the MXA901 that is closest to the talker, which eliminates the hollow sound that can result from being picked up by multiple mics at the same time.
- MXA920: The Flagship for Larger, More Complex Spaces
Many contemporary meeting spaces are large or incorporate flexible seating arrangements. Some have glass walls (or no walls at all), concrete ceilings, or other architectural elements that make for difficult acoustics. In such rooms it is often more effective to have distinct coverage areas in specific locations, such as in front of a white board, at a lectern, or over each section of a U-shaped table. Other rooms require automated camera tracking driven by data from the microphone system. In some situations, it is desirable to have ‘voice lift’ to make it easier for people on opposite sides of a large room to hear each other, which requires microphone and loudspeaker coverage to be fixed in multiple zones. The MXA920 ceiling array microphone provides complete flexibility to define multiple coverage areas of different sizes, with a choice of either a mixed audio output or individual audio outputs that can be routed to specific loudspeakers in the room. It also delivers real-time coordinates for the location of every talker, which can be utilized by a camera control system to generate more accurate framing of the people talking. Multiple MXA920’s can be deployed in a very large room like a lecture hall and routed through the IntelliMix P300 processor or IntelliMix-Room DSP software running on a room computer.
From the back room to the board room, your audio systems should support engaging meetings that don’t waste time for managers or impede effective communication for users. Sub-par or overly complex equipment that drain your organization’s productivity and efficiency don’t deserve a seat at your meeting table
