Say Goodbye to Traditional Boardroom Microphones
We’ve all experienced it. That horrific moment when we, or someone else at the meeting flips the switch on their microphone to speak and – nothing – no sound, or garbled sound. The point is lost. The moment is gone. And all eyes go to the person hosting or organizing the meeting.
So we were really pleased to preview German manufacturer Sennheiser’s newest ceiling microphone system at Infocomm16 this year. We’re always on the lookout for proven, high quality, innovative products that are simple to use, simple to maintain, and that we can integrate into our clients’ businesses and boardrooms to improve upon the meeting experience and position them for the now and the future. This one meets the mark.
The system utilizes groundbreaking beam-forming technology to distinguish between the acoustics of different conference participants in a room. 29 omnidirectional microphones do away with visible cables, table mikes and infuriating tech problems. It intuits the spatial configuration of the room and pinpoints the active speaker. The high directivity eliminates background noise so there’s no distortion.
Boardrooms are made for collaboration, and this system is absolutely designed to enhance that. It can be used cross-platform with virtually any business-conferencing application including Skype, GoToMeeting, OpenScape, IBM, Cisco and Avaya. And meeting participants can connect with any device they want – smartphone, tablet or notebook.
We’re all about making our clients’ lives simpler, and this system accomplishes that in spades. There’s no complicated set-up. We install it once and you can use it anytime.
We like the aesthetics as well. Installation is simple: It can be mounted in three ways – like a piece of architecture from the ceiling; suspended by steel cables or virtually invisible in an acoustic ceiling.
The uptake? When you have the freedom to communicate, collaborate and connect in any way you want; freedom from a clutter of table mikes, desk wires, tech problems and background noise, and the freedom to fully integrate it with lights, shades and AV, one touch will provide a new definition of the word.