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Do any of the video call services support full duplex audio? It feels so stifling to have to be perfectly silent while others are speaking, compared to the give

Do any of the video call services support full duplex audio? It feels so stifling to have to be perfectly silent while others are speaking, compared to the give and take of a normal conversation.

stavros 2y ago
Yes, all of them. Wear headphones.
- Groxx 2y ago
  To +1 this, yes, every single one AFAIK. What you're running into is almost certainly noise cancelling. It's turning off your incoming audio so it doesn't intrude on your microphone picking up your voice. Disabling or tweaking noise cancelling or audio modes (i.e. to "headset") on basically every meeting software will eventually get you a combination that doesn't do this. It's sometimes a bit hidden though, and many have chosen to just say "everyone gets maximum noise cancelling" rather than trying to guess based on your audio device(s) so it doesn't always do it automatically or obviously.
  - stavros 2y ago
    Minor correction: it's echo cancelation, not noise canceling.
- leghifla 2y ago
  +1 And usually, the one person in the meeting not using headphones does not feel the problem: he can speak all the time and be heard correctly, while the others cannot interrupt him while he is speaking
  - stavros 2y ago
    It's the other way around, the person who has no headphones cannot be heard while anyone else speaks.
simonbarker87 2y ago
I feel like Zoom does the best job of the corporate offerings. Google Meet feels like the worst and most stifling. I was talking to someone who specialises in corporate communication at a conference last week and she confirmed my feeling above as well. Her thing is “talking over each other is a key part of human interaction and forcing one at a time is stifling and unnatural”
- jpalomaki 2y ago
  Might be also related to the delay in communications. There's the time the packets traverse the networks, but also delays due to buffering to accommodate poor connections.
  - toast0 2y ago
    Total audio delay is from record buffering, sampling (typically 20 ms samples), encoding, packetization (1-5 samples per packet), time in transit, decode, jitter buffer, playout buffer. You could reduce sample size, and send fewer samples per packet to reduce total delay, but overhead goes way up (overhead is near 50% at 20ms samples, one per packet). In theory, you should be able to do something nice for people doing audio and video by including audio on the video packets, but it's not simple, so I think most conferences don't do it.
- haiku2077 2y ago
  I just don't understand how this can work perfectly in Discord while working so badly in Zoom.
  - jerlam 2y ago
    They seem to be designed differently. The business ones try to replicate a business meeting where someone talks at the front of the room, shows slides, and prompts for questions. Discord is more like a LAN party.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
crazygringo 2y ago
Pretty sure literally all of them do, but generally only full duplex. Not triplex or quadruplex etc. In other words, if you're having a 1-1 video call, both of you have your audio working at all times. But as you go to 3, 4, 5, 10, 20 participants, it generally continues to be just max 2 simultaneous audio streams, determined by whoever has been the loudest recently. Unless you turn on special features like music mode etc. This is a feature, not a bug, because otherwise background noise and sounds would start adding up to become intolerable. (Why we usually try to intentionally stay on mute anyways, so we don't accidentally become even just that second audio stream.)
- toast0 2y ago
  Last N audio with N about 3 is pretty common. That might be you and three others, or three speakers including you. Beyond that isn't very common, because a) it's not very useful, and b) Google's WebRTC software (which is commonly embedded elsewhere) would only decode three audio streams anyway.
  - yobid20 2y ago
    They changed that recently and removed the restriction that capped playing of 3 audio streams.

Do any of the video call services support full duplex audio? It feels so stifling to have to be perfectly silent while others are speaking, compared to the give and take of a normal conversation.

stavros 2y ago

Yes, all of them. Wear headphones.

Groxx 2y ago
To +1 this, yes, every single one AFAIK. What you're running into is almost certainly noise cancelling. It's turning off your incoming audio so it doesn't intrude on your microphone picking up your voice. Disabling or tweaking noise cancelling or audio modes (i.e. to "headset") on basically every meeting software will eventually get you a combination that doesn't do this. It's sometimes a bit hidden though, and many have chosen to just say "everyone gets maximum noise cancelling" rather than trying to guess based on your audio device(s) so it doesn't always do it automatically or obviously.
- stavros 2y ago
  Minor correction: it's echo cancelation, not noise canceling.
leghifla 2y ago
+1 And usually, the one person in the meeting not using headphones does not feel the problem: he can speak all the time and be heard correctly, while the others cannot interrupt him while he is speaking
- stavros 2y ago
  It's the other way around, the person who has no headphones cannot be heard while anyone else speaks.

simonbarker87 2y ago

I feel like Zoom does the best job of the corporate offerings. Google Meet feels like the worst and most stifling. I was talking to someone who specialises in corporate communication at a conference last week and she confirmed my feeling above as well. Her thing is “talking over each other is a key part of human interaction and forcing one at a time is stifling and unnatural”

jpalomaki 2y ago
Might be also related to the delay in communications. There's the time the packets traverse the networks, but also delays due to buffering to accommodate poor connections.
- toast0 2y ago
  Total audio delay is from record buffering, sampling (typically 20 ms samples), encoding, packetization (1-5 samples per packet), time in transit, decode, jitter buffer, playout buffer. You could reduce sample size, and send fewer samples per packet to reduce total delay, but overhead goes way up (overhead is near 50% at 20ms samples, one per packet). In theory, you should be able to do something nice for people doing audio and video by including audio on the video packets, but it's not simple, so I think most conferences don't do it.
haiku2077 2y ago
I just don't understand how this can work perfectly in Discord while working so badly in Zoom.
- jerlam 2y ago
  They seem to be designed differently. The business ones try to replicate a business meeting where someone talks at the front of the room, shows slides, and prompts for questions. Discord is more like a LAN party.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

crazygringo 2y ago

Pretty sure literally all of them do, but generally only full duplex. Not triplex or quadruplex etc. In other words, if you're having a 1-1 video call, both of you have your audio working at all times. But as you go to 3, 4, 5, 10, 20 participants, it generally continues to be just max 2 simultaneous audio streams, determined by whoever has been the loudest recently. Unless you turn on special features like music mode etc. This is a feature, not a bug, because otherwise background noise and sounds would start adding up to become intolerable. (Why we usually try to intentionally stay on mute anyways, so we don't accidentally become even just that second audio stream.)

toast0 2y ago
Last N audio with N about 3 is pretty common. That might be you and three others, or three speakers including you. Beyond that isn't very common, because a) it's not very useful, and b) Google's WebRTC software (which is commonly embedded elsewhere) would only decode three audio streams anyway.
- yobid20 2y ago
  They changed that recently and removed the restriction that capped playing of 3 audio streams.