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I telecommute every Wednesday and attend a lot of meetings in a global company virtually. If every attendee is telecommuting, it works well. If some are physi

I telecommute every Wednesday and attend a lot of meetings in a global company virtually. If every attendee is telecommuting, it works well. If some are physically present, sotto voce comments are my nemesis. Folks in the room can hear them just fine, and frequently they are hilarious (judging by the laughter). For the distant attendee, the microphones do not work well enough yet. Once that is tidied up, I can imagine much more adoption of no-office corporations.

coldtea 7y ago
I'm not sure what the problem with microphones / voice transmission is in 2019. Using Zoom and other such platforms (across different companies, computers, meeting rooms) the result is almost always a distorted, low bit, overly compressed sound. Plus crazy 2-5 sec latency in some cases. One would expect this to be solved in an age we stream 4K movies...
- phoobahr 7y ago
  bandwidth != latency
  - amelius 7y ago
    Yes, in particular, you can't just buffer ahead with a voice call, which is something you can do with a Netflix stream.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    They can suffer orthogonally, but when it comes to realtime, how much bandwidth you have compared to the data you want to carry absolutely matters for the latency you'll see. If a 10K "hello" voice sample (that takes 2 secs to be spoken) needs to pass through a 1Kbps bandwidth line, then it would have lotsa latency. In any case, we stream 4K movies with not much buffering (as evident by the ease of skipping ahead at random points). One would expect better audio latency based on that. And we also stream 4K video games as video streams (or Google claims so).
- crazygringo 7y ago
  As someone who worked on videoconferencing for a while, there are four answers: multiple microphones, echo cancellation, background noise, and network issues. If everyone in a conference room wore individual headsets it would be great. But when you have 3 different mics along the table all of which are picking up different audio signals (to make sure people at both ends can be heard), you need to subtract background noise of construction and hallway chit-chat and people typing on their laptops, and also subtract everything coming out of the speakers (which has different delays in each microphone and is distorted by both the speaker response and microphone response)... and then it's 2:30 and your office upload link is saturated because everyone's starting a new remote meeting uploading HD video simultaneously? That's why. But the main culprits behind the "distorted, overly compressed" sound are echo cancellation and then noise cancellation. It's insanely hard. It's actually not low-bit at all, it just winds up sounding like that in the end. (Play with a noise removal filter in Audacity and you'll realize it will produce similar-sounding audio.)
  - crankylinuxuser 7y ago
    It would seem that much of this problem could be solved with microphone arrays and software. Bandwidth isn't that much a limitation, but latency is. I'm not sure of the state of the art in 3d positioned sound in a data format, but you could do that pretty easily. I thought of a startup back in 2016 for selling auto-transcripting, voice-signature tracking, meeting logging microphone arrays for businesses. Never had the capital to do it.
    - crazygringo 7y ago
      > much of this problem could be solved with microphone arrays and software That's how it's done already. Beamforming mics have been around for a few years. They're definitely better, but still far from perfect. Because signal processing just isn't perfect. Incredibly smart engineers are doing their best on this stuff.
    - ElKrist 7y ago
      Beamforming is actually already implemented in commercial products (both for microphones and speakers). You can look at the phones from a company called Invoxia. I know voice-signature tracking was also in R&D a few years ago so it might be available too
- rjsw 7y ago
  Was just in a Zoom call that covered US, Europe and Japan. Didn't notice any delays and sound was clear. We were using screen sharing but not video.
  - IggleSniggle 7y ago
    This is absolutely incredible, unless it was a very presentational meeting. I can't remember ever having an overseas conversation without there being perceptible delay, regardless of transmission medium. You need under 20ms latency to be truly imperceptible, and probably under 150ms to avoid scenarios where people are often talking over each other. I wonder what their routes look like to make this possible?
    - clarry 7y ago
      It's pretty much not possible. Their perception of delay is just not that sensitive. A transcontinental link might just be fast enough for 150ms, but stack on that all the buffering, codec delay, etc. and it's night impossible to have imperceptible delay.
    - rjsw 7y ago
      I'm not saying that there were no delays, just that they didn't stand out as interfering with the discussion. This is a group that has worked together for a long time, 30 years for some of us. I'm guessing there is an element of knowing each other's speech patterns from talking face-to-face that will help with knowing when to contribute.
- marcosdumay 7y ago
  To be fair, latency isn't a problem at all for streaming 4K movies.
chadlavi 7y ago
Big giant plus one on this whole comment
52-6F-62 7y ago
The funny part is that mic-ing a room is a solved problem. It just doesn't look invisible enough for "enterprise" deployments.
- ScottFree 7y ago
  Can you elaborate on that?
  - 52-6F-62 7y ago
    A typical boardroom running remote video chats in any corp. buildings I've been in usually get outfitted by Cisco or someone and want something like this that ties everything together in a nice, neat little package with terrible microphones: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.telcodepot.com%2Fblog%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2014%2F03%2F2.-Konfet-300.jpg&f=1&nofb=1 https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fw... A lot of pro-audio companies also make boardroom devices but there are huge compromises because of the form factor—usually companies want their audio to be as invisible as possible. That and acoustic treatments. So many "teleconference" rooms are half glass. That's going to add extra noise. Hell for a 20-person meeting you might do a lot better with a few SM57's slung from the ceiling or standing on the desk and a few baffles. Pitching that would probably be disappointing, though.
    - blaser-waffle 7y ago
      It's a no-sell because in-person offices are still the main push and people want to be able to enjoy the slick meeting room thing. If remote work was pushed to the fore / was the main effort, I think they'd care less.

coldtea 7y ago

I'm not sure what the problem with microphones / voice transmission is in 2019. Using Zoom and other such platforms (across different companies, computers, meeting rooms) the result is almost always a distorted, low bit, overly compressed sound. Plus crazy 2-5 sec latency in some cases. One would expect this to be solved in an age we stream 4K movies...

phoobahr 7y ago
bandwidth != latency
- amelius 7y ago
  Yes, in particular, you can't just buffer ahead with a voice call, which is something you can do with a Netflix stream.
- coldtea 7y ago
  They can suffer orthogonally, but when it comes to realtime, how much bandwidth you have compared to the data you want to carry absolutely matters for the latency you'll see. If a 10K "hello" voice sample (that takes 2 secs to be spoken) needs to pass through a 1Kbps bandwidth line, then it would have lotsa latency. In any case, we stream 4K movies with not much buffering (as evident by the ease of skipping ahead at random points). One would expect better audio latency based on that. And we also stream 4K video games as video streams (or Google claims so).
crazygringo 7y ago
As someone who worked on videoconferencing for a while, there are four answers: multiple microphones, echo cancellation, background noise, and network issues. If everyone in a conference room wore individual headsets it would be great. But when you have 3 different mics along the table all of which are picking up different audio signals (to make sure people at both ends can be heard), you need to subtract background noise of construction and hallway chit-chat and people typing on their laptops, and also subtract everything coming out of the speakers (which has different delays in each microphone and is distorted by both the speaker response and microphone response)... and then it's 2:30 and your office upload link is saturated because everyone's starting a new remote meeting uploading HD video simultaneously? That's why. But the main culprits behind the "distorted, overly compressed" sound are echo cancellation and then noise cancellation. It's insanely hard. It's actually not low-bit at all, it just winds up sounding like that in the end. (Play with a noise removal filter in Audacity and you'll realize it will produce similar-sounding audio.)
- crankylinuxuser 7y ago
  It would seem that much of this problem could be solved with microphone arrays and software. Bandwidth isn't that much a limitation, but latency is. I'm not sure of the state of the art in 3d positioned sound in a data format, but you could do that pretty easily. I thought of a startup back in 2016 for selling auto-transcripting, voice-signature tracking, meeting logging microphone arrays for businesses. Never had the capital to do it.
  - crazygringo 7y ago
    > much of this problem could be solved with microphone arrays and software That's how it's done already. Beamforming mics have been around for a few years. They're definitely better, but still far from perfect. Because signal processing just isn't perfect. Incredibly smart engineers are doing their best on this stuff.
  - ElKrist 7y ago
    Beamforming is actually already implemented in commercial products (both for microphones and speakers). You can look at the phones from a company called Invoxia. I know voice-signature tracking was also in R&D a few years ago so it might be available too
rjsw 7y ago
Was just in a Zoom call that covered US, Europe and Japan. Didn't notice any delays and sound was clear. We were using screen sharing but not video.
- IggleSniggle 7y ago
  This is absolutely incredible, unless it was a very presentational meeting. I can't remember ever having an overseas conversation without there being perceptible delay, regardless of transmission medium. You need under 20ms latency to be truly imperceptible, and probably under 150ms to avoid scenarios where people are often talking over each other. I wonder what their routes look like to make this possible?
  - clarry 7y ago
    It's pretty much not possible. Their perception of delay is just not that sensitive. A transcontinental link might just be fast enough for 150ms, but stack on that all the buffering, codec delay, etc. and it's night impossible to have imperceptible delay.
  - rjsw 7y ago
    I'm not saying that there were no delays, just that they didn't stand out as interfering with the discussion. This is a group that has worked together for a long time, 30 years for some of us. I'm guessing there is an element of knowing each other's speech patterns from talking face-to-face that will help with knowing when to contribute.
marcosdumay 7y ago
To be fair, latency isn't a problem at all for streaming 4K movies.

chadlavi 7y ago

Big giant plus one on this whole comment

52-6F-62 7y ago

The funny part is that mic-ing a room is a solved problem. It just doesn't look invisible enough for "enterprise" deployments.

ScottFree 7y ago
Can you elaborate on that?
- 52-6F-62 7y ago
  A typical boardroom running remote video chats in any corp. buildings I've been in usually get outfitted by Cisco or someone and want something like this that ties everything together in a nice, neat little package with terrible microphones: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.telcodepot.com%2Fblog%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2014%2F03%2F2.-Konfet-300.jpg&f=1&nofb=1 https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fw... A lot of pro-audio companies also make boardroom devices but there are huge compromises because of the form factor—usually companies want their audio to be as invisible as possible. That and acoustic treatments. So many "teleconference" rooms are half glass. That's going to add extra noise. Hell for a 20-person meeting you might do a lot better with a few SM57's slung from the ceiling or standing on the desk and a few baffles. Pitching that would probably be disappointing, though.
  - blaser-waffle 7y ago
    It's a no-sell because in-person offices are still the main push and people want to be able to enjoy the slick meeting room thing. If remote work was pushed to the fore / was the main effort, I think they'd care less.