Slioghtly OT: Audio during web-based design reviews

I don't have that problem with GoToMeeting, except for those who use those damn speaker phones in the middle of the conference table :-( ...Jim Thompson

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| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
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I love to cook with wine.     Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Some programs (e.g., Ventrilo) allow you to assign individual settings to users (volume, compression, etc.). Maybe there's something like that in the selection of programs you have available?

As for POTS, beats me... regular calls are hard enough, every other place has a different setting. Go figure.

Tim

-- Deep Friar: a very philosophical monk. Website:

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

We have a Polycom phone in the conference room, works like a champ compared to the conference phones offered by the phone system mfg's.

Cheers

That's exactly the problem, those star fish thingies! A full conference system comes with 3-4 satellite mikes on wires but they tend to just get all balled up the in middle of the table.

GoToMeeting works better than Webex IMHO but the client is king and they get to pick. But the audio issues are kind of universal.

Webex shows who is speaking and that display is AFAICT always correct. So why can't there be an independent volume setting in the Webex SW for each speaker location?

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Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Suggest that to Webex ?:-) ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.     Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Won't work here because it would need to be piped back into the computer from the POTS phone. Audio via web is horrid, on pretty much any service. Sometimes it's plain ... not there.

Maybe I do have to whip out the soldering iron and build an AGC box.

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Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

I don't know why you have so much trouble. I Skype all the time, no problems. Likewise GoToMeeting -and- Webex, sound is just fine, even on-the-road, using Laptop and the hotel's WiFi.

I've even used my LG VN530 as a speaker-phone in the car for design reviews ;-)

Yep, Just add a compander in front of your headphones. ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.     Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Yup, quality of Skype calls, even from Asia, even over WiFi is often as good as a land line, and just about always much better than using a cell phone. I usually use a cheap headset (Microsoft passive one for travel and USB for in the office). VOIP can be a bit more iffy. I did a 30+ minute call to a small town in Brazil recently, and the land line was actually worse.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

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I think Motorola used to make a great AGC chip just for audio microphones, you could add that as a part of a blackbox infront. Going from soft to loud person will work fast. going from loud to soft person takes more time, but the gain does come up. Also from memmory handles something like 30+dB gain adjustment

From memory it has some logarithmic detector and you can set the rise and fall time constants separately. Just pass theaudio through the black box and it'll sort it out, as long as each speaker talks for some length of time. single words won't work well.

Ever heard of an expressor - expander/compressor? I knew an AT&T engineer (who has passed away), and he was working on the idea when he retired.

It sounds like an idea that wouldn't work, but this was the guy who designed the first video conference call, for which he got 1 of 7 citations.

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Put a basic AGC in the audio stream with a threshold to avoid annoying amplification of line noise during pregnant pauses?

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Regards,
Martin Brown

On a sunny day (Wed, 13 Jun 2012 15:41:46 -0700) it happened Joerg wrote in :

Has AGC, runs Linux, not easy top set up. There must be other AGC programs

For me it must be easy to set up and Windows-based :-)

And it has to work on audio that is piped back in from the POTS telephone because that's more reliable. I am sure there is something like that, just don't know what really works.

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Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

I might but usually such stuff falls on deaf ears. I tend to only do that at companies where people really listen such as Cadsoft or Linear Technology. But since I haven't tried at Webex I shall do that.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

It's not just me. 3-4 conferences ago I asked the guys to dial in when a

3rd party chimed in: "Yeah, we hear the same gargling noises and can hardly understand". The Internet protocol is just not meant to transport realtime stuff. That's not to say that it can't work ok at times ... until some major sports event begins and big servers across the land get bogged down.

I am not using headphones but if there is a (reasonably priced) compressor that can deal with at least 20dB I'd be willing.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

On a sunny day (Thu, 14 Jun 2012 06:20:31 -0700) it happened Joerg wrote in :

You mean analog? xpequ can do that.

I am sure there is something

I am a bit surprized that an old radio amateur like you does not solder a small VCA (diode or JFET works great too as gain controller), peak detector, capacitor, takes about an hour if I did it from memory and junkbox...

Any old casette player has some mike AGC to, solder in a few wires....

I'd need Windows software. But I should find some if that's the only way.

junkbox...

Well, two things. Once you make your hobby to be your job like I did the desire to solder together gizmos drops dramatically. For example, yesterday I was wielding the soldering iron almost all day long. I was glad to flick the power switch at night. Secondly, I really do not want kludges hanging off the desk here, like an old hacked cassette player :-)

Anythow, I am a bit surprised that web conference providers haven't thought this through. It's an age-old problem, we even had it with the remote conferencing gear in the mid-90's when more than two locations were involved. But there we had real volume controls on the GUI, one for Rotterdam and one for San Diego. Nowadays it seems we don't anymore.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

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that

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If anybody is on satellite....

Usually none of them is. What does make it worse thuogh is if they use VoIP at a certain location. Then you can have warbling noises modulated by more warbling noises. POTS rulez.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/