We are often asked by our dealers and consultants, “What is it that makes a Digital Conferencing microphone system powerful and why should I use it in place of my standard DSP-controlled automatic microphone mixing solutions?” Read on!
Before we dive into the details of answering these questions let’s take a step back and define what we mean by Digital Conferencing. At its basic level a Digital Conferencing System is a simple all-in-one sound system. It can be used for a variety of meetings where you have a main presenter but also need input from participants – such as a city council, PTA, corporate, university lectures, panel discussions etc.
It typically consists of unit that is a microphone and loudspeaker combo. These units are daisy chained together all running back to a main control unit. Each person participating in the meeting would have their own unit placed on a table in front of them. When a participant wants to speak, they would simply press the button on the unit in front of them and activate their microphone. Their voice gets converted to a digital signal and sent to the control unit where the audio gets processed and distributed back to the built-in loudspeaker on all of the other units. This simplicity of having a daisy chained cat-5 cable to connect all of the microphone/speaker units is one of the key differentiators of a digital conferencing system.
It typically consists of unit that is a microphone and loudspeaker combo. These units are daisy chained together all running back to a main control unit. Each person participating in the meeting would have their own unit placed on a table in front of them. When a participant wants to speak, they would simply press the button on the unit in front of them and activate their microphone. Their voice gets converted to a digital signal and sent to the control unit where the audio gets processed and distributed back to the built-in loudspeaker on all of the other units. This simplicity of having a daisy chained cat-5 cable to connect all of the microphone/speaker units is one of the key differentiators of a digital conferencing system.
Because the system is digital, it is possible for many channels of audio and data to be simultaneously sent back and forth on the single daisy chain cable. This means fewer cables running back to the control unit – simple and clean.
There are a number of benefits that a digital conferencing system has over a traditional DSP based auto-mixing system including:
- Daisy-chaining Cat-5e cable structure which makes management and control of large numbers of microphones easy
- Better sound quality because of low-level distributed speakers (because the speaker is built into the same housing as the microphone)
- Advanced features such Voting, language interpretation features and assistive listening
- Advanced software capabilities
It is the simple fact that these systems are a powerful information gathering tool that puts them in a whole other league from the standard audio solution.
An information gathering tool? What on earth do we mean by that?
A Digital Conferencing solution is based on an SQL database. So as a meeting is happening, valuable information is being stored in this database allowing users to access the information and use as they see fit. Every action taken within the system during a meeting has the ability to be recorded within the database. Information like:
- Who spoke
- When they spoke
- How long they spoke
- To which agenda item they spoke
- How they voted on that agenda item, etc.
An SQL database makes it easy to interface with because it is a common (and often preferable) format. The information within the database can be used to:
- Record and document meeting minutes
- Verify voting results.
- Attendance verification
- Populate custom reports
- Populate websites
- Talk to third-party legislative management software
In addition, it communicates to the versatile SW 6000 Digital Conferencing software suite, which is unique in the industry and provides a wide variety of capabilities. This provides the end user a powerful tool to use to meet their specific application.
It is the ability to gather, store, access, and share valuable data that makes a Digital Conferencing solution is so much more than just a microphone system with voting. As they say, perception is reality, and what I have hoped to achieve in this blog is to have you think twice and consider the benefits of including a Digital Conferencing solution in your next system design. I hope you’ll consider it.