Acoustics of teleconferencing

Abstract

Room acoustics is an element of teleconferencing too often neglected. Ideally, the room should not be symmetrical and the walls should be nonparallel, covered irregularly with sound scattering and noise absorbing panels. At the very least, a place for teleconferencing must be quiet and not reverberant. Technical specification of various sizes of desirable acoustical spaces which match both people's behavior and equipment constraints will be set forth in this talk. Equipment and techniques will be discussed which select acoustics for a natural feel within the room while generating signals that create clear and recognizable voice sounds when heard at remote location(s). These include phased array directional microphones, carefully positioned loudspeakers, simple acoustic absorption, and for the more sophisticated, nonparallel walls and irregular ceiling clouds. The real challenge is to implement this technology in an aesthetically pleasing fashion, tailored and matched to the culture of the expected user population. A variety of teleconferencing rooms will be presented in photographs, showing evolution in the design of rooms for audio, audiographic, and full motion video teleconferencing.