So I'm Hosting a Virtual Meeting, Now What? - Part 1: Audio

Virtual meetings, net meetings, Facetime hook-ups, whatever flavor of technology you use, everyone wants to be seen and heard clearly and professionally. The technology available today is amazing and has improved dramatically in the last few years. If your only experience with virtual meetings is a few years old, give the new suite of tools like Zoom and MS Teams a chance. You’ll be pleasantly surprised.

That said, the quality of your presentation depends on many factors, many of which are not related to the software or technology, but to your meeting setup. Many of these skills and knowledge you need are the same kinds of talents videographers, audio engineers and stage managers have built as key tools in their toolboxes. I’m going to try to simplify some of these technical recommendations and make them relevant to the professional meeting host.

If it is a “contest” between the importance of the video and audio quality of your meeting, audio wins, hands down. Back before digital television, the audio and video signals in broadcast television were carried on two different channels. The rule of thumb was that if there were problems with the video feed, the show would continue to broadcast. Fuzzy pictures, snow, glitches, dropped video could all potentially be overlooked. But, if there was an audio problem, the show was stopped. Broadcasters understood the importance of audio compared to video.

Warning! Technical information ahead. Sound is carried on a wave of air. Think of how a wave rolls up on the beach, or how ripples spread out from a pool when you throw a pebble into the water. It travels, or emanates from the source (your mouth) and radiates out like that ripple in a pool. That's why someone can have their back to you and you can still hear them talk.

Sound bounces off walls (and other stuff). The sound that leaves your mouth and is picked up by that little built-in microphone in your laptop doesn’t just travel directly from your mouth to the mic. It also travels from your mouth, bounces off the wall than to the mic, and the ceiling, and the desk, and your computer screen, and the other wall. That echo and thin tinny sound you hear from most video chat sessions is the result of the sound bouncing around the speakers room.

The degree to which it does, depends on the ratio of the distance from your mouth to the mic compared to the distance from your mouth to the wall, to the mic (and the ceiling, and the floor, and the desk, etc.). Let's say the distance from mouth to mic is 24 inches, and the distance from mouth to wall to mic is 48 inches. that's a 2:1 ratio. The reflected audio from the wall is a prominent part of the sound picked up by the mic. If the wall was eight feet away (96 inches), then the ratio is 4:1, and the sound reflecting off the wall is less prominent.

That doesn’t mean that you necessarily want everything far away from you to make your sound “better”, but understand, “the room” is part of your audio. Different rooms sound “better” or “worse”. When a musician rents studio time, part of what they are buying is a room that sounds “good” and an engineer that knows where to place the mic in that room to optimize the instrument's sound.

For most “vocal” performances, engineers try to minimize the room. They place the mic close to the performer's lips and use a booth that has sound-deadening material in it to get rid of reflected sound. You're not going to hold your meeting in a sound booth, but you can place the mic closer to your mouth, thereby reducing “the room’s” prominence in your audio.

Engineers use soft absorbing material, like foam on walls and surfaces to reduce sound reflections. Soft surfaces like curtains, and even soft furniture in a room can help to reduce audio reflections and improve the sound of your virtual meeting. Hard surfaces, like metal and glass, are the most reflective of sound.

The first, best option, to improve audio is to use a stand-alone desktop mic placed close to your mouth. An expensive stand-alone mic, placed far away from the speaker, will probably not be much better than the built-in mic in your laptop. Almost any brand of mic you buy will be a better option than the built-in mic on the side of your laptop computer. The farther the mic is from the speaker, the worse the ratio will be, and the more of the room/less of the speaker, the mic will pick up.

Another option is to use a headset with a built-in mic. These work well, although you may not want that headset in your video. Either way, your voice will become more full and prominent. If you use a mic built into a headset, be wary that the mic can get too close to the speaker's mouth and pick up heavy breathing, plosives and sibilance.

Sibilance, usually heard on words with Ss and Cs at their start, is a literary device where strongly stressed consonants are created by producing air through the use of lips and tongue. Such consonants produce hissing sounds.

Plosives, usually heard on words with Ps and Bs at their start, send out a strong blast of air, which travels forward from the mouth. If that air blast reaches the microphone diaphragm, it creates a massive pressure change that takes a while to subside.

If you’re in a small boxy room the amount of reflected sound and relative close distances can result in less appealing audio. Find a “softer” room, get your mic on your computer, manage your microphone to speaker distance and speak clearly avoiding some of the more annoying voice related audio issues.