HDConference™ - Technologies that deliver the ultimate high-definition audio conferencing experience
Distributed Echo Cancellation
One of the challenges in delivering good sound quality during a conference call is eliminating acoustical echo. Acoustical echo results when sound from the far end phone device is sent into the local conference room, where it is picked up by the microphones on the conference phone and then sent back to the far-end phone device. Because of this process, far-end participants hear their voice echoed as they speak. Distributed Echo Cancellation solves this problem. By assigning an acoustical echo canceller to each microphone, the echo canceller identifies the sound that would otherwise be returned to the far end as echo and eliminates it.
Noise Cancellation
Noise Cancellation stops ambient room noise from being picked up by the microphones on the conference phone. Examples of ambient noise sources include HVAC systems, laptop computers, projectors and fluorescent lights. ClearOne uses a spectral content analysis technique that discriminates a talker’s voice from ambient noise and only applies noise cancellation to ambient noise sources. This allows the voice signal to pass to the far-end phone device with pristine sound quality.
First Microphone Priority
When multiple microphones are active simultaneously in an audio conference phone, voice signals arrive at different microphones at different times due to the reflection of the sound from walls, ceilings or other surfaces. This causes sound distortion, which participants typically describe as a "hollow" or "tunnel" sound. First Microphone Priority technology minimizes this distortion by using an intelligent voice detection method to activate only one microphone at a time based on its proximity to the person speaking.
Adaptive Modeling
In any conferencing environment, a number of factors can cause changes in the room’s ambient noise level, including the HVAC system cycling on and off, an increase or decrease in the number of people in the room, changes in seating arrangements and other similar acoustical events. These events can cause a variety of audio problems, such as feedback and residual echo. Adaptive Modeling monitors key acoustical elements to predict and adapt to such changes, ensuring high quality audio, regardless of varying room dynamics.
ClearEffect
The vast majority of conference calls are conducted using narrow-band telephony signals, which eliminate the high and low tones from participants’ voices. This causes listener fatigue due to participants straining to hear what is being said. ClearEffect™ creates natural, full-sounding audio by simulating the high and low tones that were eliminated by the narrow-band signal. The result is similar to moving from a clock radio to a full-room entertainment system.
Net-Log Network Audio Logger
The Net-Log is a new way to record and play audio. The Net-Log overcomes the inherent unreliability of PCs for long-term recording by providing a dedicated hardware recording platform that uses a simple network connection for audio playback. Playback software on a network connected PC streams the audio to the desktop where it can be played out or saved as a file.
The Sonifex Net-Log is a 4 channel audio logger which can record weeks of programming on a large internal hard-disk. The unit was designed as dedicated hardware for reliability reasons, i.e. there’s no PC motherboard in this machine. Although PC based systems are great for playback, they generally aren’t robust enough for continuous recording 24/7/365. The Net-Log was designed from the ground up to offer :
High reliability for continuous operation.
High quality audio (mpeg compressed).
Compatibility with existing broadcast & Windows based systems (bwf files can be saved).
Automatic operation with very simple to use software.