Audio is the single most important aspect to successful conferencing. It has a profound impact on keeping communications effortless and productive. Audio should ensure clear, natural conversation as if you are in the same room. To achieve this, quality audio must eliminate echo, background noise, and unintelligible speech.

Regular telephone equipment and many tabletop conference phones don’t deliver on this goal. Standard speakerphones may only provide half-duplex audio, which produces “clipping” when more than one person speaks. Traditional tabletop conference phones have some full-duplex capabilities and can be appropriate for a small room with only a few participants.

If audio demands extend beyond the tabletop conference phone’s capabilities, echo and noise may dramatically compromise your ability to communicate.

Installed audio products have the processing capacity for eliminating echo and ambient noise as well as the ability to add microphones based on the number of participants. They also provide greater flexibility in room design, allowing you more choices in your conference room configuration.

Perfect audio is a difficult science. Look for a vendor that can offer the technologies you need to achieve the audio quality you want, but also one that has industry experience and a broad selection of audio offerings. The importance of high-quality audio cannot be emphasized enough.

To create an environment conducive to quality audio you must consider room acoustics and how those acoustics will dictate the equipment needed. You should take into consideration acoustics at the remote location as well as local site acoustics.