“Can you repeat the question?”: Optimizing Classroom Audio for Streaming Online Instruction

Hello, and welcome to our continuing series of live

webinars documenting creative use of

Mediasite around the world.

I'm Sean Brown, Vice President of Education, and today's

webinar is entitled, Can You Repeat the Question:

Optimizing Classroom Audio for Streaming Online Instruction.

Once again, we have a lot of people joining us from all

over the world.

Today is one of the largest audiences that we've ever

assembled, which makes us feel really good

here at Sonic Foundry.

I won't go through all of the countries because there's not

enough time, but let me tell you that every geographic

region is counted today, and we welcome you all.

We have representatives from institutions from every single

providence in Canada, and every single state in the

United States, so thank you very much for joining us.

Before we get started, I'd like to point out a few

housekeeping items for those of you who are new to a

Mediasite live webcast. For those of you who are using our

advanced player with a primarily black background, if

you allow your mouse to hover below the video frame you'll

notice a horizontal control car.

If you're using our classic player, above my head you'll

see a series of persistent icons.

In either case, you'll see an icon that looks like a speech

bubble from a cartoon.

That's how you're going to ask questions today of me, the

moderator, that I'll relay to our presenter.

In the same toolbar that you've located, also there's

an information icon for the advanced player, and there's a

links icon in the classic player.

In either of those places you'll find the slides that my

presenter is going to be referencing today

for your own use.

This presentation, when it's completed, will be available

in its entirety as an on demand presentation that you

can share with others, at the same length that you used to

watch it today.

Now to introduce my guest and friend, Randy Tritz.

He is from Shen Milsom & Wilke, it's an international

technology consulting practice that offers comprehensive

design and consulting services for multimedia, audio visual,

information technology, acoustics, and more.

Randy, partner in Shen Milsom & Wilke Chicago office, has

more than 25 years of management experience in the

design, engineering, and installation of audio, video,

command and control, acoustic, teleconferencing, and

audiovisual systems.

He's a founding and charter member of the Illinois chapter

of the International Television Association.

He serves on several audiovisual manufacturers

advisory councils, providing expertise on the development

of new products, including ours,

industry trends in training.

He also conducts annual training courses for the

International Communications Industry Association.

He holds a bachelor's degree in broadcast communication

from Marquette University, right down in Milwaukee, and

is a certified technology specialist, CTSD, awarded by

the International Information Communications Industry

Association.

I like to be able to listen to all of you, work with our

marketing team to figure out what topics that you might be

interested in, and when we found that so many of you were

interested in how to optimize classroom audio capture we

thought we'd bring the expert to you.

So welcome to Madison, Randy.

Thank you Sean, thanks for having me up.

This is good.

So I'm going to continue to feed you in some questions.

Before this broadcast we took the most important questions

that we've been commonly asked and fed them to Randy, and

he's prepared some remarks to share with us.

You bet.

So let's get rolling on some of this.

We've got a short time frame to squeeze a lot of

information into.

So starting with the whole premise of discussion, as Sean

introduced, it's classroom audio acoustics and recording,

is really the primary key to it.

Starting off with an overview, the envelope of the space

itself, there's obviously a number of things that go into

a lot of these sites.

Whether it's for video conference, whether it's for

capture, whether it's for presentations, camera

locations, monitors for the instructors as well as for the

students, all of these things come into play.

Today, however, we're focusing really on this discussion of

microphones for the presenters, as well as

microphones for the students.

With the assumption this is recording, this isn't

necessarily voice enhancement, it's recording.

So keeping that in mind, one of the things that we're asked

many times, and Sean and I chatted about earlier last

night, is the question of the environment, the space.

What is really the optimal space, and how

do I make it optimal?

Well there's really three ways that we can

approach this thing.

First is, if it's a new space, obviously, you have a little

more latitude in the acoustical properties and how

you can design the space with the surfaces and finishes

within the room to optimize audio.

Certainly if it's an upgrade or renovation of a space you

don't have as much latitude many times.

So we're limited in some of the things.

One of the things that I like to do when I walk into a

space, especially a renovation space, and we chatted about

this as well, is to do one of two tests, and sometimes both

of them work.

First is just walk into the room and close your eyes.

Listen to it.

What you hear is what the microphone, or microphones,

are going to hear.

If it's not pleasant you're not going to correct it by

putting a lot of microphones into the space.

You can try to work with it, but it's

still a challenge sometimes.

So almost a blindfold test.

It's a blindfold test. The other one is just walk into

the room after you get done listening to it and clap.

Just clap your hands and listen to it.

If you have time to go out and get coffee and come back into

the room before the echo stops you may have a challenge.

So we start with the environment of the space

itself, but we focus more, as we go to the next slide here,

on how the users are going to be able to control the sound

within the environment, the recorded sound that we're

really focusing on today, and what happens with the space

itself so that we can help minimize some interruptions

within that classroom space or the lecture hall space.

Certainly one of the things that we like to look at in any

opportunity is how do we let people know before they walk

into the room it's a live room, or it's a recording

room, or it's a studio room of that nature.

Certainly some sort of a light outside of the room enhances

that opportunity.

Many times a light inside of the room will let people know,

or remind people, there's a microphone on, be careful of

what you're saying.

The other opportunity is certainly

within the control system.

The users, many times, have the ability to turn up or down

the microphone controls, as well as turn on and off the

microphones themselves, mute them or open them up for use.

If a microphone is open there should be a button indicating

whether or not there is an open microphone.

So you have some latitude there, that the control system

allows the users the ability to turn on and off

microphones.

That can become a challenge, as we'll get farther into the

conversation here, when you have multiple microphones, and

who's controlling them.

From an instructor standpoint, being able to turn everything

on, everything off, simply, is about as easy as it gets.

But at the same time it's as complicated

as it needs to get.

When you start having to turn on and off multiple

microphones at the same time they pay more attention to the

technology in the space versus what they're there to really

do, and it's instruct.

So you started here now, and I know this in advance, but

you're telling me that as an expert that's called around

the world to help people with acoustics relative to many

different things, but including capture, that one of

the most common mistakes that folks make, or things they can

do to improve, is to have some sort of notification system to

tell people they're on the air?

That's certainly number one.

Number two is having too much control at the desk.

So being able to tell people you're on the air, or you're

being recorded, is certainly a major issue.

Many times you get things that you don't want to pick up.

That never happens.

That never happens.

The snow blower will be coming through in a minute.

So moving beyond that into the devices themselves that we use

to capture audio, one of the things I wanted to spend just

a minute on are the two primary different types of

pick up patterns that microphones use.

And it doesn't matter about the style of the microphone,

forget that for the moment, just the different styles of

pick up patterns that are out there.

Certainly an omnidirectional, as we're looking at on the

left side of the screen, that microphone, when it's placed

anywhere in the environment, will pick up virtually in a

360 degree pattern.

So behind the microphone, to the sides, to the front, are

very similar in their pick up capabilities and sensitivity.

A unidirectional microphone, and there's

variations on this.

Cardioid or hypercardioid look at restricting the back side

of the microphone sensitivity.

So in the case here on the right side of the screen, the

back side of this envelope itself is dead, as we call it.

The placement of this type of a microphone in many

environments will help the noise behind the microphone be

reduced, while the noise in front maintains its integrity.

So this microphone is a--

These microphones are unidirectional, they're

picking up virtually in 360 degrees around us, because

they're using ourselves to reflect that sound.

But you also, as we turn our heads back and forth, we're

not losing a lot of that momentum of the microphone, as

opposed to when we're directly on the beam, as we say.

And this is the guy that I'm going to get an email from

every time we do one of these if I put my mic in the wrong

place, if I turn my head.

And you have.

Now you're being punished, good job.

What we're going to do is spend just a moment looking at

miking the presenter, a single presenter in the room, looking

at situations miking multiple presenters, or maybe a panel

discussion, and then turn the microphone conversation to

miking audiences or classrooms themselves.

So let's start with the presenter for just a moment.

How do you mic the presenter?

What's the best way in different environments?

Certainly what I've shown here on the left side is a head

worn or an over the ear microphone.

We're seeing these in school systems, we're seeing these in

churches, we're seeing these in corporate environments now,

where the presenter may not have the strongest voice, but

certainly has an ability to move around, or a desire to

move around.

This type of microphone, on a wireless transmitter, allows

them the ability to move.

It places the microphone very close to the mouth, and the

opportunity to pick up that sound very

quickly and very closely.

These microphones, typically, are unidirectional, so we're

not picking up noise from behind.

Many times they're omnidirectional, we can

produce microphones in either/or

fashion for this thing.

That's probably the best type of a lavaliere microphone, of

a presenter microphone to use.

The challenge is many people don't like to have this

microphone over their ear.

That's the challenge you run into.

So let's go to the other alternative, something like

what we're wearing, which is a traditional lavaliere

microphone.

It buttons onto your tie tack or your buttons to your shirt,

or, what we call a lipstick type of a microphone.

Different styles do the very similar function for you, but

it's a wireless device.

It allows the presenter to move freely throughout the

room, and limits the range of the microphone's capability to

that person, or a couple of feet around them at very best.

So you believe, sorry to interrupt, but you believe

that that type of attached microphone like this, either

on my tie or around my ear, which some people wear, is the

best way to go, versus a podium based microphone?

For a single presenter, absolutely.

The challenge with that type of microphone is keeping

batteries fresh.

When we solve that all of us on this webcast can retire.

You bet.

That is a challenge.

But with the capabilities of rechargeable microphones many

times, or the ability to keep multiple microphone batteries

handy, you can get around the situation, it just takes some

due diligence.

But that's the best alternative for you, is the

lavaliere or the tie tack microphone.

Alternate to that, should you have a situation where budgets

may not allow, or at the same time batteries are never

replaced, and you have a challenge, what do you do?

The next type of our microphones themselves offer

an opportunity for a person to be somewhat tethered but still

keep a pool of sound around them that's available, the

hanging microphone, which is used a lot in some of the

smaller classrooms. Hanging above the lectern or in front

of the room itself allows a pool of sound within a

relative area--

Like a choir mike?

Good point, that's a good way to put it.

These microphones can be controlled, they can be hung,

they're small enough, they will give you a pool of sound,

but they open the opportunity for other sounds in the room

to be picked up.

We're moving the microphone farther away from our

presenter now, so as that happens other things in the

room start to open up with it.

The alternative are what we call pressure zone

microphones, or smaller located microphones that use

boundaries.

These, many times, are put on the lectern,

they're put on the table.

They offer a very small form factor, and something that

gives us a relative decent sound, based on the distance

that we're able to keep from them.

The challenge is with that the instructor is tethered now to

one location.

These microphones, these last two here specifically, are

something that's very close proximity microphones.

The goose neck microphone, like we're using, the image in

the upper right corner here, is basically one of these

types of microphones.

They work very well within proximity, but

their distance limited.

A question came in already from a person, and I've always

wondered this too, I don't want to make it too technical

or you'll lose me, you won't lose them.

But what about back up?

A lot of faculty, this person writes, will forget to put

their microphone on at all.

Could use you use both as reinforcement, or do

microphones interfere with each other?

Good point.

The interference discussion, let's leave that to the side

for a moment, because that gets into probably a whole

other 20 minute session.

And you'll need your chalkboard.

He can do that in his office.

You bet.

The use of a backup function.

Many times people forgetting to put microphones on, it's a

very good question.

If we go back to our first slide with the remote control

system, we can set the control system up so that if the

microphone isn't being used, or if there is not enough

volume being received by that microphone, the touch panel,

the remote control touch panel, which can sit on a

lectern, can be in somebody's hand as a remote control

system, we can light a button up in there that says no

audio, or limited audio.

And as everybody up there knows, and we know, the

Mediasite now does that per suggestions from your team.

It knows when it's not getting any audio.

So you're saying that type of feedback, just tell people,

back to your first slide.

It'll alert them, back to the first one.

So there's alternatives for that.

Certainly when someone forgets the first time, many times

they're reminded in a fashion that helps them remember the

next time through.

It's one of those things.

Going to the next one, looking at that same discussion about

multiple presenters now, as opposed to a single

instructor, that upper right corner about the ideal

distance between the microphone comes

back, again, to us.

We like to look at about two feet, plus or minus a couple

of inches around there.

That gives us the closest proximity between the

microphone and the presenter that allows us to optimize the

quality of that sound without having to pay quite as much

attention to the ambient sound around us.

So two feet, that's a pretty healthy distance.

So when I'm on a panel discussion and I'm leaning in

like I'm in a senate hearing I'm going to get an email from

you that I'm messing it.

You got it, you bet.

So they can be more towards the front of

your average table.

They can.

Most tables you figure about 30, 36

inches, 24 inches, roughly.

It allows us an opportunity to be able to

minimize that distance.

Now in most table environments, as long as we're

in that direction let's go there.

If we're looking at a standard conference room table, it's

about 46, 48, 50, 52 inches, many times a unidirectional

microphone like we're looking in the upper right corner

here, offers the opportunity to focus sound on one side of

the table versus the other.

That helps minimize some ambient issues within the

room, from sound issues or reflections, but it also then

requires more microphones, which equates to more cost and

more technology to service that.

It gives us a better quality many times, but the downside

is the cost.

So what we'll do in those types of environments is,

instead of using a unidirectional microphone,

remembering that second slide, we go to an omnidirectional

microphone, which will pick up in virtually

a 360 degree pattern.

So the microphone sits in the center of the table and picks

up people from both sides.

It reduces the number of microphones, but in using that

type of a microphone you need a little more control over

your environment, the amount of noise in the background.

You have to look at your environment, and if it's noisy

you just don't want to go that way.

You can in another way.

Before you go to the next slide, another person asked a

question, and they said, and this might be very technical,

it's a great question.

My friend Raymond asked, please describe the frequency

response curves of the various microphones presented,

especially with regard to critical applications and

speech acoustics, phonetic transcription,

speech language pathology.

If Raymond will ask that question with your email this

guy will send you a paper on it.

It'll be a white paper.

60,000 foot for me, not Raymond, what is he talking

about when he's talking about frequency response curves of

the various microphones in general?

Very good question, and again, a whole

other session in itself.

Many microphones, most microphones, are not the same

in quality.

60,000 feet, response curve meaning, in

this discussion, quality.

Many microphones offer us the ability to be able to pick up,

effectively, the vocal range of sound, the frequency curve

within a vocal range.

Some microphones we use for instruments allows us a

different sonic curve, or different range of pickup

pattern, or better yet, pick up sonic quality.

So for instance, a microphone that we would use for a piano

would be a completely different microphone than I

would use for voice track.

Because the frequencies generated by a piano are here

and a voice is over here?

Right.

The voice is a very narrow pattern.

Now, for speech pathology the sonic quality of the

microphone generally required for speech pathology is

looking at the extremes of the vocal track, because you have

many times smaller kids that have a higher pitched voice,

adults with a lower pitch voice.

So you have the complete sonic range for speech pathology.

They want to hear the inflections very closely, very

critically.

That type of microphone is probably a little more akin to

a broadcast level mike, a little more expensive mike.

So if you're using your Mediasite like some people are

in an observation room in a speech pathology lab you'd

better [UNINTELLIGIBLE]

concentrate.

Better quality mike.

Getting out of that question, exiting that question on this

thought, when you go all over the world to all of these

different environments that we've worked in together, do

you find people are getting it right?

That they're getting microphones that

are right for speech?

Or are they getting piano mics and putting

them in their classroom?

What do you find?

It's a variation.

When we have instructors trying to design sound

systems, they have a limited grasp of tools that are

available to them.

And many times we find that they get it as right as they

can, given the tools that they have. That's not right or

wrong, it's just the limitations that are there.

A good design and a good knowledge of the technologies

is really required to be able to hone in on the choices that

are available.

Moving through.

Now we're looking at the audience capture, which is

where the questions have been leading to at a certain point

here for us.

The biggest challenge, and quite honestly the challenge

that we get called in to resolve many, many times in

projects, we have 30, 50, 150, 300 students that we need to

record and we need to gain interaction with for questions

and answers.

How do we accomplish that?

Oh, by the way, we do have tables, but we don't want

microphones on the tables.

Or we don't have tables, so microphones have to be some

other direction.

How do we accomplish that?

There's multiple ways that we've looked at that.

First being multiple microphones hanging in the

space that we can either leave open all the time, which is

easy to do from a instructor standpoint.

So when I walk into a classroom and it's studded

with microphones.

The whole room is live.

The challenge with that is when everybody coughs, drops a

paper clip, rattles paper, everybody hears it, everybody

records it.

So again, back to the closed eye test. If you're standing

in the room in that environment and close your

eyes you can hear more than you can see.

And the microphone's going to pick that up.

Generally what we'll do is we'll suggest, in those

environments, that a gated microphone, or one that the

electronics will open and close based on a certain

threshold of sound, are used to automatically control

whether the microphone is on or off.

That saves having a technician in the room that's going to

manually turn up and down the microphones.

Preferable to have the person in the back of the room, but

that's not reality.

That's not a cost effective way to work.

So the gated microphones, many times, can limit some of those

coughs or pops, and some of those inherent things that

operate in the room.

Certainly the overhead microphones are a

backup way to work.

The challenge we run into in a larger environment, like this

right hand picture up here, the lecture hall, is the

microphones may be 30, 40, 50 feet away.

In that environment a microphone has very little

capability to perform.

So if your ceiling is too high it's just not going to work.

Don't go there.

Is there roughly how much difference?

Generally about 15 or 20 feet is effective.

After that it falls of.

And again, the farther you get from that voice the more of an

issue you have with your environment that you need to

pay attention to.

In the larger environments like we're looking at here,

smaller tables in front offers an opportunity to record or

interact with the people in the front of the room.

The gallery, or the back of the room, many times you have

to put a stick microphone on a stand, people have to get up

and go to that microphone to ask their

questions or to be heard.

It offers the best opportunity.

Is it the most convenient?

No.

But there's a trade off in what you're looking to

accomplish.

Certainly that distance issue comes back into play again.

Back to the same choir microphone discussion we had.

If there's need in the ceilings to be able to put

that in, and there's a low enough ceiling, that's an

option to go.

Microphones on the table, whether it's a small hockey

puck type of a microphone, or the smaller pointed

microphones with the goose necks, the closer you get that

microphone to the source the better, that's what you're

going to run into.

Now you run into other situations here where

sometimes your architects in a new facility, or a renovated

facility, just do not want things on the table.

We're talking now about a smaller classroom, maybe a

conference room or a boardroom in application.

No microphones on the table, they need to be pristine, how

do we get around that?

You have a ceiling that's probably nine feet high.

In the center picture here there's a light fixture that

just happens to be in that room.

Interestingly enough, in that center dot there's a

microphone.

Speak into the chandelier.

Speak into the chandelier, nobody's listening.

So there are ways to manipulate locations of

microphones, and use the environment to enhance the

capabilities that you need.

But you need a trick bag of tools that you can

draw from for that.

And your question earlier about what challenges were you

going to run into, to be able to do something like this you

have to be very early in the design process and working

with the lighting manufacturers and the

architects to be able to bring that together.

To walk into a room and glue a microphone into a light

fixture probably isn't going to work.

We have a flurry of questions just right in here, and I'm

going to hit you rapid fire and get you back on track,

sorry to pull you off.

First question is backing up to gated microphones, people

want to know if that's a function of the microphone

choice, or if that happens in the mixer that you're going to

talk about later.

Gated microphones happens in the electronics, the mixer.

Got it.

Next question, boundary microphones.

What's your experience been using a boundary mic similar

to brands that work with video conferencing systems that

maybe have some Plexiglass involved, and are advertised

to solve this problem?

And others that I've seen, personally, I'll just go

there, my Home Depot solution where I'm putting a microphone

under Plexiglass and thinking I'm doing something.

What do you think about boundary microphone

strategies?

Good point, and let's go to that center photo for just a

minute here that we have. This is a real good one, we'll get

back to it.

The strategy itself needs to be very carefully employed.

In some classrooms we've seen them where the boundary

microphone has an angle to it, it's mounted at an angle, and

the size of the boundary is just clear Plexiglass.

And that works well given the right environment.

What most people assume, though, is the larger the

Plexiglass the bigger the pickup and the better the

quality of the microphone.

It's diminishing returns.

That's diminishing.

There's a logarithmic size function that needs to be

taken into account that looks at the type of microphone, the

pick up pattern of the microphone, that equates to

the size of the boundary that's used for that, so be

careful about that.

They can work, they become many times, again, a nine

foot, nine and a half foot ceiling.

Maybe they're hung too low, many times you walk into them,

bang your head, that's a challenge itself.

By having those microphones in place they can help, but

they're not the panacea.

So they're not a panacea, they're not a magic bullet,

throw these up and you have your

classroom's questions easily.

Another great question that came in, the gated mic

question, again.

If the gated mic eliminates pops, coughs, et cetera,

doesn't it also by definition cut off the beginning of a

question asked by a participant?

It can, absolutely.

And that's the challenge with the gated microphone versus

having an intelligent person controlling the volume.

It's a trade off.

What do you want to lose?

Are some better than others?

It depends on the person setting up the gating and the

person setting up the control system of the electronics that

you're using for the mixture.

Pops, blasts, coughs, many times,

yes, they're a challenge.

But if you pick up the cough as opposed to picking up paper

shuffling there's a threshold that you can set.

And you've taught me that in rooms where, with a closed

eye, you see the two of us looking crazy standing there

with our eyes closed in

universities around the country.

But you're right, when you close your eyes and you listen

there's so much noise from students rustling about.

Your mind goes right to the cough or this.

So you may get a cough or a sneeze, but that's not what

interrupts the performance, it's all that other mess.

When you cut that out you have a much better Mediasite

recording, if I said that correctly.

You bet.

That's great, we're cool for now.

Alright, going on.

Let's look for the moment, we've gone through the

discussion about the audience, the microphones for the

individual as well as for groups.

What about the room geometry?

Certainly if you're walking into a room where the room is

fixed, you are not going to change the walls, the

ceilings, the floors, but somebody wants to take a

standard classroom and convert it, you're limited in what you

can do, hence the discussion of the types

of microphones involved.

But if you have any kind of a opportunity to change the

orientation of the room, or one of the things to look for

in a room is the orientation.

You want to make sure that people are looking forward to

a direction, to a focal point.

All the audience?

All the audience, and that's a good point, because the key

being the instructor is really that focal point in that room

that you're trying to record, more often than not.

With that environment your microphones, or the audience,

is directing their questions to that direction as well.

So the microphone placement becomes

directional to that function.

It also helps to camera locations and those other

things that we're not talking about today, but it helps to

organize the orientation of the room.

Now there are also situations where, again, the size the

room becomes a challenge because the placement of the

microphone needs to be close.

So if we're to take the upper left picture, microphones

placed on the tables themselves allow every other

student to have a microphone.

We generally place microphones between every two people.

It just allows a lower quantity of microphones, but

very [UNINTELLIGIBLE].

But it still works, one for two.

Very good.

Smaller rooms, the same thing holds true.

It allows us that opportunity to be able to do that.

We get into a larger lecture hall environment,

realistically doing q and a and trying to record the q and

a for that type of environment becomes very challenging, as

we talked early on.

More often than not those types of spaces are used

better for individual presenters or team presenters,

panel discussions.

If you're recording in that environment then you don't

have to be quite as concerned about the rest of the

environment that you're trying to do audio in, because

there's no audio there.

So if you're in an upgrade situation or if you're in a

renovation situation you might have limitations that are

there that need to look at maybe a different location for

your recording functions.

But I see, to jump in, a lot of times people have

opportunities that aren't that expensive.

First of all, what you said is a lot of the things that apply

to visual focal points apply to audio focal points, which I

hadn't thought of.

So a lot of times if you're in a room like we've gone into

where they've oriented themselves historically wide,

the room is too wide.

And if you twist that room and have all the seats going--

In one linear dirction, right.

--That they can see better, you're going to be able to mic

them better, even though the people may be father away.

And that's the challenge you run into.

So there's pluses and minuses, gives and takes.

We've gone full circle now between the sources and some

of the questions that popped up earlier looking at gating

and some of the electronics.

Really The the sources themselves need to be

controlled by something, whether it's a manual control,

manual mixer, an intelligent body back there taking and

moving things around.

That works very well, the challenge is how often are

these people around to be able to help in a classroom

environment.

That's not very often.

The larger the room the more the opportunity for a live

body should be taken into consideration.

Midsize to small rooms, an automated system

works rather well.

And for the cost involved and for the efficiencies involved,

can do a very good job for you.

Those mixers become automatic in function.

They generally are augmented by either a push to talk on a

microphone, if we have the option of a microphone on the

table or in front of the students.

Push to talk offers the ability to forgo the gating

discussion that we had, and some of the issues involved

with gating.

It offers the opportunity for no sound to be heard or

recorded unless somebody presses the microphone button.

And they get that feedback on most of the microphones.

Your microphone's red, start talking.

Right.

And if you have multiple microphones that people want

to get a very active interaction discussion going

where people are pressing microphones to talk, you can

stack them up so that two or three people are a queue.

So as the first person presses their microphone it turns from

red to green, now you're able to speak.

Or in some cases black to red.

So you mean you're pending in some of these,

you're in the queue.

That's cool, I like that.

Now pausing on captures.

Throw out Mediasite for a moment, perish the thought.

Do you have universities in these tough times, based on

other initiatives, finding that they want to have

microphones in the classroom so that students can be heard?

I'm saying I went to school in the Stone Age, so in these

large lecture halls only the students with the loudest

voices could be heard by other students.

I've been to universities this year where, independent of

lecture capture, you have faculty practically in tears

saying, I don't care what we do, I want the other people to

be able to hear the other students' questions.

Otherwise we can't have interactivity.

Now it serves me to capture that, but do you see people

using microphones, reinforcement, all that, to

accomplish that independent of capture?

That's probably the largest challenge you can run into in

today's environment, is using an existing hall of 200 or 300

students that doesn't have any audio, and trying to be able

to pick that student up so that the instructor or people

int he opposite end of the hall can be heard or can hear

the person asking the question.

Simplest way out, probably the least effective from a user's

standpoint, is a microphone on a stand in the aisle.

Get up, go ask your questions.

It does tend to also lead to the most organized q and a,

but it's a challenge in that students from the center of

the seating area need to get up, move, go to the

microphone, ask the question, and then sit back down again.

So there's a lot of orientation discussion there.

The other alternative gets into the other discussions

that we had.

If there's tables involved it would be great to put

microphones on the table.

And let that sound come into the

house through the speakers.

And let that sound come into the house.

Right.

Now in doing that, back to the control system, and let me

full circle here, the DSP, which is a digital signal

processor, also part of the automatic control system for

recording or for mixing, allows the ability for a

microphone in zone one, lower right corner of the room, as

that microphone button is turned on, or the gate is

opened up and the microphone is hot, the speaker in that

area turns off.

So now we can get a little more gain out of that

microphone.

So you don't get feedback.

So we don't get feedback.

So in that kind of an environment now you're into a

design where you really need to know what you're doing,

because the programming that's involved in the signal

processing and the mixing system is rather intricate.

It's not something an instructor is going to

understand by any means.

But, generally, their technical staff or a good

integrator would certainly understand how to be able to

set the system up for that.

My wife's an instructor, you just pissed her off.

I probably did.

She would understand.

I'm just kidding.

But you're saying that the automatic systems, the

programming, the logic, is available.

Now in that situation, leave this point, exit this point.

So you're saying that these types of technologies that

you're talking about, when used creatively, could

actually defeat bad acoustics in a room.

It could theoretically make a bad room into a room where

everybody can hear each other.

Could you do that kind of a miracle?

It could take a bad room and make it almost acceptable.

I wouldn't go quite that far.

There's a disclaimer, but definitely improve some

historically challenged rooms, and have the side benefit of

making it easy for Mediasite to capture both

presenter and audience.

Fantastic.

Not a cost effective thing to do on a limited budget, but

certainly if the opportunity is there and the requirement

is there it would get you where you need to go.

There are three housekeeping questions, and I think you can

explain something to everyone here.

So your role, your firm's role, you're tapped by

architects, you're tapped by universities and businesses

directly to come in and do this type of consulting.

And you try to be brand agnostic.

A lot of people have asked, and I haven't ignored your

question, but they've literally asked consumer

report type questions.

Tell us what your favorite brand of this or that is.

Should I go to Radio Shack or should I go here?

So generally speaking--

That's difficult to do for several respects.

My favorite microphone, or my favorite mixer and my favorite

DSP for one application may not function well in the next.

And that's really the difference

that you'll run into.

It's very situation dependent, and it's also really looking

at the need of the application within the situation.

So it really looks at, the reason for being agnostic is I

don't care what's on the shelf, because I have nothing

on the shelf.

I'm not selling anything.

I'm helping you obtain the best operation for your need.

So to that end, my best today for this application is

probably not the best tomorrow in a different application.

Difficult answer to hear, but that's the reality of it.

And the only other question, and we've already answered it,

but a lot of people want to know if they can use these

slides, if that's OK, that we've given them from you,

they can use them and share them.

Provide me credit, please.

Great.

Sorry to slow you down.

No, we're to the point here where we're

wrapping this thing up.

And really the discussion lent to this anyway.

But really, at the end of the day, as you know, and we've

talked about, there are multiple things that really

affect that recording function.

It's the environment, it's the application of the instructor,

or the presenters, or the students involved, or the

gallery, that also then talk to the environment.

So they're all rolled together.

And it's a balancing act of dollars.

It's a balancing act of the environment, and maybe about

the physical capabilities of the room.

It's a balancing act of how can you get wire where it

needs to go, or are there enough wireless frequencies

available to do what you need, and can it all be

done on your budget.

So at the end of the day one of the things we look at when

we start talking about balancing, it leads into

balanced versus unbalanced audio.

So it's not just balancing the weight of whether it's the

room acoustics or the audio system, we look at things

about the signals and the signal quality as being part

of that quality control.

And it looks at the type of source that you have and the

type of recording device that you're employing.

The two of them need to work together.

So for instance, you're not putting

unleaded gas in a spaceship.

It doesn't work well.

So you wouldn't want to put a balanced audio signal into a

device that wants an auxiliary level, unbalanced, high

impedance signal.

That's where your hums, your pops, your phantom noises that

faculty are going to find out about and be annoyed by.

Or you're not getting enough volume but you get a lot of

sound and there's no sound in the room, but maybe you have

an impedance mismatch in there, so

something to look at that.

The control, also.

We can build rooms that are exquisitely designed for audio

systems, but nobody can control them.

The instructor can't figure out what to do with them.

That's useless to you, they're overdesigned.

Got it.

You have to be careful of both.

I have three more questions that I want to get in with the

time that's left, because one of them is my favorite one and

I was hoping someone would ask.

So you've done just fantastic to get an expert in here.

The first one I'm going to ask, I have no idea what he's

talking about, but you have the expert here online.

Is NC30 a valid target when designing the acoustics in

HVAC system for a 300 seat auditorium with ceiling

microphones and a 12 foot ceiling?

If you can achieve an NC30 at a budget that

works, god love you.

And that's optimum, absolutely is optimum.

An NC30 is?

An NC30 is a noise criteria of 30.

And what that does is it takes into consideration the

background noise within in the room as, again, close your

eyes, listen to the sound, it's a measured level of

background sound.

NC30 for a large environment is absolutely excellent.

But it's very difficult to achieve from a cost point.

It's getting more and more expensive to do that.

Absolutely.

NC32 to NC35, depending on the environment and the types of

microphones and the placement of microphones, will also

suffice in that type of a large hall.

And probably a little more achievable.

It's definitely good for capture.

For capture and, again, looking at the audio system in

that environment, the two of them can work well together.

You could be on the NC35 and now you really have to be

very, very critical about the audio systems that you're

using, to the point where that scale starts to balance in the

opposite direction.

It becomes a little bit too heavy, in the case of the

budget, to require that.

If you can achieve a 30 at a budget that anyone would allow

that's fantastic.

That's the optimum.

32 is probably a little more achievable and a little more

budget sensitive.

35 would be on back side of that scale, but again, very

achievable and more cost effective.

Excellent.

I'm glad you knew the answer to that question.

Didn't stump the band.

Wireless microphones.

A friend of mine asks, what's your opinion on wireless hand

held mics in auditorium settings of

150 students or more?

Their cell phones, the size, and

distance, what do you think?

The hand held becomes the pass around for the q and a.

And we see that an awful lot.

It certainly allows the students to stay seated.

It requires, probably, some TAs to walk up and down the

aisles and hand the microphone in, which works well.

It tends to have a little more control on it.

The issue of cell phones and Blackberries interacting with

that, which I think is where the question is really going,

the newer microphones, many of them, and you have to be

careful of the type of microphone that you're buying,

have been designed to the point where the Blackberries,

the smart phones and some such, don't interact with them

any longer.

But there's an isolation that's required for that.

Your standard Radio Shack microphone is

not going to do that.

I'm sorry, I had to bring up at least the [UNINTELLIGIBLE].

The Shack.

I'm sorry.

Some microphones are designed for that

function, they're isolated.

Some microphones still are not.

But there's a cost difference in that, so be careful of the

sensitivity of the cost involved.

There's an inside joke there.

Many calls from me to Randy are, I'm in an emergency.

I'm in a Radio Shack.

And the call is, there's nothing you can do in there.

Radio Shack has their place.

They're a fine company, sorry, they're a fine company.

Not taking anything, again, at issue.

But not for professional audio.

One of my other favorite questions that did come in, do

you have any experience, because this gets asked a ton,

do you have any experience with parabolic or shotgun mics

mounted on the attention wall and aimed back at the audience

for pickup, or being hand held in an ad hoc

capture type situation?

Do they work or is it just science fiction?

They can work very well.

Generally you want, again, an intelligent body pointing that

microphone.

Because between the distance to the microphone and the pick

up pattern of that microphone if you miss the beam, we'll

call it, and I'll come back and explain that, it does

little value for you.

So if you have a shotgun microphone, or the parabolic

has a very similar pickup capability or

requirement to it.

At 30 feet that microphone probably has an effective pick

up pattern of about 10 feet in diameter.

And it's very focused.

If the microphone is off focus or off direction by 10

degrees, 15 degrees, you have nothing.

You have somebody coughing as opposed to somebody talking.

In high fidelity.

You bet, absolutely.

So very good microphones to use in ad hoc environments.

Use your football game, baseball, any of your sports,

they use parabolic microphones extensively.

Your TV talk shows use shotgun microphones overhead, and

they're out of the picture many times.

But instead of using necessarily only the

lavalieres, or in some cases they don't have the

accessibility to lavaliere, the shotgun microphones is

used for that function, and it works very well.

But again, you have to be sensitive to how it's pointed.

We are out of time, but I have to sneak this last question

that Christopher got in because it's so universal.

So this is our final question and I hope you

all think it's good.

Can audio for recording be integrated into an existing

video conference system successfully, or are we in for

a world of hurt?

Ideally, the audio system would serve for both standard

Mediasite classroom presentation capture, video

conference, and the classroom presentation itself.

Can be done?

In a nutshell, yes.

I knew you'd say yes.

The question is how you get there.

But it's good to know that a lot of times the system that

you have in place for video conferencing, if you've

already gotten there, can be tuned and used very

effectively with Mediasite for capture.

You bet.

The two should work.

See, I learn stuff from you, I do listen.

Thank you so much for joining us and sharing

with us your views.

I'd like to thank all of you out there

for watching us today.

I would like to thank Mediasite Event Services for

producing other fantastic webcast technically.

If you have any more questions that we didn't get to, or you

want more in depth, just hit that question button again and

include your email address and I'll pass these along Randy

who's agreed to answer all of your questions offline.

Have a great day and we'll see you the next time.