[lsb-discuss] This is what we should fix

[Theodore Tso]

On Thu, Feb 22, 2007 at 07:58:33PM -0800, Wichmann, Mats D wrote:
> voip is cheap, but often leaves the conference call unusable
> by other participants (consider Ian's call into the LF
> meeting a couple of weeks ago as a good sample of what happens
> on the other end).  I've tried to use skype for conference calls
> when I'm travelling, and it's universally been a failure.
> Quite simply, at this stage of maturity of the technology,
> calling in to a teleconference with voip is *rude*.

I've managed to dial to successfully use Skype to talk on conference
calls many times, *however*, there are some things you have to do in
order for it to work well.

1) Use a set of headphones or ear buds plugged into your laptop.  You
don't need the fancy headset with the built-in microphone, at least if
you have a Thinkpad; it's more than adequate.  *However* you must use
earbuds in order to avoid an echo effect which is very useful to
people on the other end of the line.

2) Don't type while you are using Skype; it will sound really annoying
to your attendees because the built-in microphone *will* pick it up,
and it will sound like a herd of thundering elephants.  (I guess that
might be one reason to use a specialized headset, but they take up a
lot of space in the laptop bag.)

3) If you must type while using Skype, fire up aumix and adjust the
microphone gain down to zero to mute the connection.  The gain will
creep up so you will need to periodically to keep an eye on it and
adjust it down as necessary.  When you need do want to talk, you'll
need to turn up the gain to its original level.

A friend of mine has successfully used the mVox MV900 with skype and I
can attest that both in Speakerphone and in "connect-to-bluetooth"
mode (using the Motorola H700 headset, which has a DSP that really
helps filter out extraneous noise when you are in a noisy environment,
and which I also highly recommend), that it also works quite well with
Skype.

The bottom line is that as long as you have a half-way decent
connection, Skype works pretty well dialing into conference calls.
It's echo suppression is pretty sucky, but if you use headphones/ear
buds you can work around that problem fairly easily.

Regards,

						- Ted