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The reason for this is because the conferencing system typically has an automixer setup which turns up the active speaker and turns down everyone else. That's w
by digitallyfree 4y ago
The reason for this is because the conferencing system typically has an automixer setup which turns up the active speaker and turns down everyone else. That's why it's impossible to say have a group of people sing a song together on Zoom (ignoring latency) because the automixer will switch between different singers erattically as opposed to hearing them all at the same time. In typical videoconference setting with one person speaking at a time this feature typically makes sense.
This kind of mixing won't work well in a game for obvious reasons, so the audio is sent direct. However, the game uses direction and distance based audio to make the sound more natural. E.g. if the player to your right speaks, the signal you hear will be panned to the right. Humans are great at identifying different voices coming from different directions - you can try this yourself by loading up some voices into a DAW and seeing the difference in intelligibility having them panned out vs mono.
Note that this tech may work well in a VR meeting room or something but it won't in a regular monural video call. Also the user will need a proper stereo setup (headphones or speakers a reasonable distance apart) for this to work.
- aeternum 4y agoI think a huge improvement to zoom and other conferencing systems would be to place the other call participants in virtual 3d circle around each person. The human auditory system is great at reconstructing directional audio even just from a stereo source. You don't need a VR meeting room to simulate the same idea, it'd make the call so much realistic and easy to follow.
- nivenkos 4y agoAnd forcing people to use headphones would make it a lot easier too.
- perryizgr8 4y agoA problem is that many wireless headphones nowadays have horrible mics. I can immediately tell which person is using an airpod in a meeting. They always sound low in volume and quality, and have difficulty in hearing what I'm saying.
- denkmoon 4y ago> E.g. if the player to your right speaks, the signal you hear will be panned to the right FYI that is fairly atypical. Mostly in mil-sim type games like ARMA, or VR games. Most in game voip is just a mono source played through both stereo channels equally.
- gabereiser 4y agoYes however, this can be configured and for the real-simmer’s out there, it’s a must. DCS SimpleRadio has two split audio channels for two radio frequencies. Arma 3 has tac radio that does this too. By default it’s setup like a game. Audio in both channels. It can be (and often is) extended.
- BeFlatXIII 4y agoOne other automixer problem: they are tuned for overly-sensitive laptop condenser mics with an assumption of massive fan noise. My dynamic mic with a hardware mute switch causes me all kinds of weird gain problems when I use the mute switch instead of the software muting.
- digitallyfree 4y agoI also use a dynamic connected to an interface. The issue is that there is still a bit of noise from the preamp and analog circuitry when the mic switch is turned off, and the AGC cranks up the gain when it detects that thinking that you're speaking softly. I know in Zoom and Teams there is an option to turn off AGC in-app (think it's called automatically adjust mic volume or something like that). The same issue has plagued cheap camcorders with no manual gain controls for a long time too as they crank up the gain whenever there's silence - making their audio noisy garbage even if the ECMs and pres are adequate.
- BeFlatXIII 4y agoThe AGC amplifying the circuitry noise happens to me, too. Very annoying when I'm afk and only hardware muted.