Driving Virtual Meeting Success with Intelligible Audio

Video and audio conferencing have been integral communication platforms for decades, facilitating virtual conversations across distance and time. Over these decades, conferencing technologies have advanced significantly but so have user expectations. The success of a virtual meeting is underpinned by the ease of the technology that drives it. User tolerance for ‘technical difficulties’ in meetings has lowered and network patience can wear thin as technical issues are resolved in meetings. It can cause a loss of meeting focus. It interrupts the flow of the discussion and ideas, undermining the meeting entirely. Technical issues in today’s virtual meeting environments can include poor connectivity, low quality video but most predominantly, audio issues. From background noise and audio distortion, audio cutting out while people speak, audio level disparity and complete inaudibility between users positioned further from microphones, audio issues remain the most disruptive and most frustrating for meeting participants.

According to research undertaken by Shure, 4 out of 5 professionals said that audio-related issues were their top frustration. 82% of professionals experienced negative consequences such as the inconvenience of rescheduling meetings and more concerning, damage to their personal and business reputation with a loss of client trust in them due to technical difficulties. From having to ask people to repeat what they said, to being unable to hear your own voice clearly over echo and background noise, the smallest audio issue can have a big impact on user focus.

Poor audio quality is a significant impediment to productive meetings. And with an increasingly remote workforce relying on these technologies for everyday communication, the loss of efficiency due to poor audio is costly. With an almost complete reliance on virtual meetings over the past few months during social distancing, audio issues have been more detrimental than ever. Meeting technology usage has been at an all-time high, tested to the limit. While we have learned about the massive benefits and possibilities of virtual meetings, we have also seen where the gaps in our own systems may be. Now is an excellent time to bolster your meeting technology and ensure your audio is there to enhance, not detract, important conversations.

Shure’s understanding of how audio clarity is central to virtual meeting success has driven the latest innovations in their audio conferencing ecosystem solutions. The solution is exactly that–an ecosystem that sees the full picture of meeting room technology and where audio’s all-important function in virtual meetings is positioned in the scheme of things. The IntelliMix Room DSP –with Shure’s licensed algorithm– enriches meeting audio for multi-channel rooms of any size. Couple that with the intuitive MXN5-C Networked Loudspeaker and the convenience of the configurable MXA Network Mute Button, Shure offers an end-to-end intelligible audio solution from input to output, delivering audio clarity in virtual meetings that can elevate conversation, drive productivity and foster positive meeting outcomes.