Accessibility

Breeze Article

Enhancing Breeze Meeting Audio with the Phoenix Duet Speakerphone

Introduction

Audio is the most important component of a web conference. Without high-quality audio, the PowerPoint slides or application you are sharing, the collaborative whiteboard session you are having with colleagues, or the video conference you are having with a client have little value. And yet, today, many users of web conferencing have been forced to sacrifice audio quality to enjoy the benefits that comes with web-based collaboration. This article introduces you to the Duet speakerphone by Phoenix Audio Technologies and explains how this device integrates with Breeze Meeting from Adobe to provide a seamless Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) experience.

Requirements

Audio and Web Conferencing

Although you may tolerate less-than-perfect video in your web conferences, you cannot effectively conduct a meeting without high-quality audio communication. Yes, it’s true — for most people, audio trumps all other features as a priority. If you consider what we value about meeting face-to-face in a physical conference room, the zero-latency, crystal-clear verbal communication is something we take for granted. As you’ve probably experienced, to fully realize the benefits of web conferencing, you need the closest approximation of the in-person meeting as possible. Delays or degradation in the quality of audio can lead to inefficiencies and productivity losses, or even worse, misunderstandings and miscommunications.

Traditional speakerphones have conditioned us to expect to hold meetings remotely without having to wear a headset, and without having to sacrifice audio quality or speak directly into a microphone with limited range. However, because of technical limitations, many users of web conferencing have lowered their audio quality expectations when using computer-to-computer Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). This has been a big step backwards, and web conferencing users want VoIP audio to work just as the phone does—simple, seamless, and reliable. One way customers have sought to remedy audio quality issues with VoIP is by going with traditional teleconferencing. But choosing this option can be costly when you consider the high, endlessly accruing per-minute costs associated with this approach. You may have thought to yourself, “There has to be something better” — and now there is.

Introducing the Duet Speakerphone

Anyone trying to deliver phone-quality audio for personal computers faces the challenges of random background noise, echo, reverberation, and proximity of the voice to the microphone. Many of today’s current VoIP solutions have not met the needs of business communication. They are not reliable, robust, or appropriate for long-term use in mission-critical meetings, where an inability to communicate clearly can mean the difference between winning or losing a deal, meeting a delivery date, or getting your message across. These problems can be overcome only with sophisticated solutions. Such hardware solutions have not been available until now.

Phoenix Audio Technologies has introduced a line of business-grade speakerphones for the web conferencing and softphone VoIP market. These speakerphones can be easily integrated with Breeze Meeting to provide an unparalleled VoIP experience and bridge the gap between the in-person experience and the web conferencing experience. Phoenix Audio products empower you to abandon the high costs of traditional teleconferencing and, instead, realize the promise of VoIP communications. With proprietary echo cancellation, noise suppression, and voice level compensation technologies fully integrated into a single device, Phoenix’s Duet speakerphones are delivering boardroom-quality audio outside the boardroom.

How the Duet Speakerphone Works

The Duet PCS and Duet Executive speakerphones deliver boardroom audio conferencing quality virtually anywhere. This is achieved through proprietary echo cancellation, noise suppression, and VLC (voice level compensation) algorithms running within the speakerphone itself, so it is not vulnerable to “jitter,” or lack of synchronization between the operating system and the sound card —  an obstacle that many embedded echo cancellers cannot overcome. Phoenix’s products deliver true full-duplex audio, so business users relying on web conferencing as a primary means of communication and collaboration are equipped with an effective audio solution.

Adobe has put a lot of effort into creating a world-class, natural meeting interface in Breeze 5. The Duet provides a similar groundbreaking experience for using integrated VoIP by delivering headset-free, handset-free, high-quality speakerphone audio, thus enabling users to use VoIP just as they would use a normal speakerphone. The Duet’s 360-degree room coverage allows several people to conference at one laptop. What’s more, the Duet Executive can connect to telephones as well as computers, giving you the ability to bridge VoIP audio from Breeze with users on a traditional audio conference or even a mobile phone to provide a unified experience regardless of a participant’s preferred mode of communication. Furthermore, the Duet Executive model has a “daisy-chain” feature that lets you connect multiple Duet Executive units together, distributing audio input and output for larger conference rooms, classrooms, courtrooms, or other environments where audio needs to be captured from a large area.

With a sampling rate of 16 kHz, the Duet delivers 8-kHz bandwidth for speech, which is much better than the audio quality delivered by traditional teleconferencing. If you incorporate audio into your Breeze Presentations or play MP3s or other files containing audio from your computer, the Duet will pass through audio at a bandwidth of 22 kHz.

The Duet Executive speakerphone has these technical specifications:

The Phoenix Audio DUET Executive provides boardroom quality audio outside of the boardroom and combines a sleek design and groundbreaking technology all at a highly affordable price.

Figure 1. The Phoenix Audio DUET Executive provides boardroom quality audio outside of the boardroom and combines a sleek design and groundbreaking technology all at a highly affordable price.

Power:

  • USB power for PC and laptop (LED illuminates)
  • External power supply included for telephone-only configurations
    (when USB power is not available)

Audio:

  • 100% full-duplex performance — no attenuation (either way) during full duplex
  • Acoustic echo cancellation  > 40 dB
  • High-end performance: conforms to ITU-T G.167 standard
  • Line echo cancellation
  • Noise cancellation  > 10 dB
  • Residual echo is suppressed to the environment noise level to prevent artificial ducking of signal
  • Voice level equalization
  • Convergence speed of 40 dB/sec
  • Tail length (200 ms)
  • Convergence during full duplex (no recovery time after full duplex)
  • Low delay (10 ms)
  • Bandwidth of 20 to 7500 kHz for speech processing maintains the sound card bandwidth
  • Integrated loudspeaker
  • Mute button and loudspeaker volume control buttons (LED blinks in mute mode)

Performance:

  • Speech processing and echo suppression at 16-kHz sampling rate
  • Maintains audio performance of the PC for HiFi audio applications when external speakers are connected
  • Plugging in a headset automatically turns off the speakerphone

Using the Duet Speakerphone with Breeze Meeting

Phoenix Audio Technologies built Duet speakerphones with the nontechnical business user in mind. To begin using a Duet speakerphone, simply connect the Duet PCS/Executive into an available USB port on your computer, and it is automatically set as the computer’s default audio input and output for as long as it is connected. You do not need to load any special drivers. Duet speakerphones are compatible with Windows, Macintosh, and Linux systems.

If that isn’t easy enough, Phoenix has also made an audio-setup utility available for download on the Phoenix Audio website. This utility manipulates and automatically adjusts your audio settings in Microsoft Windows and provides a memory setting for future use, so that there is zero setup every time you connect a Phoenix Audio product to that computer. If you plan to roll out web conferencing on a large scale, the cost of deployment in terms of setting up the Duet speakerphone is almost zero.

Once you have the Duet speakerphone connected to your computer, you are ready to use it with Breeze. Simply open your meeting URL as you normally would, and click the Share Audio button from the Camera and Voice pod to start using integrated VoIP in Breeze. And that’s it! You are now sharing boardroom-quality audio from your Breeze meeting.

For a more in depth look at how to use the Phoenix Audio Duet speakerphone, you can view the complete Duet Operating Manual (PDF) .

Where to Go from Here

Duet speakerphones are business-grade products designed with aluminum die cast and metal mesh grill, but small and lightweight enough to travel alongside your laptop. The Duet PCS speakerphone lists for $199.95 and the Duet Executive lists for $299.95; both are available through a wide range of resellers.

You can visit www.phnxaudio.com for more product information and independent product reviews, and you can download the audio-setup utility at www.phnxaudio.com/techsupportn.htm. Dealers interested in reselling Phoenix Audio products should contact ReviewVideo at www.reviewvideo.com. End-users can purchase products from HelloDirect, VoipSupply.com, emicrophones.com, or other select resellers.