Is there anything more annoying than listening to a wonderful podcast with great audio where the talent sounds crisp and clear, only to be interrupted by some low-budget advertisement where the hiss in the recording is nearly as loud as the speech? I’m all for supporting artists, but if you’re going to interrupt my show, the LEAST you can do is pay attention to the audio quality of the content. I know I sound like a grumpy old man, “Back in my day, advertisements were recorded in a professional broadcast or recording studio where they knew a thing or two about signal to noise.” The point is, that hiss that creeps up every now and again is representative of an audio system that is not meeting user expectations. If users can hear that hiss, something is not right in the gain structure of the system. The system signal (the sounds we want) are not playing at levels far enough away from the system noise (the sounds we don’t want). This difference is called a signal to noise ratio, and it’s what we’ll be discussing today.

Whether you’re an IT manager or an AV integrator working with corporate businesses, you’ve surely noticed that software as a service (SaaS) is more in demand than ever. In the past seven years, the SaaS industry has grown by 500%. And today, organizations with more than 1,000 employees will routinely use more than 150 SaaS applications. 

To use the majority of AV software products, you need to host them. Off-the-shelf software solutions like Slack and Google Workspace are easy to implement, but they don’t leave room for customized accounts, and if you run into any issues, you’ll have little support. 

An alternative is to privately host your software with SaaS. Cloud hosting requires servers and maintenance that is out of scope for most AV integrators. But luckily, a managed service provider like Level 3 Audiovisual can supply your business with privately managed SaaS. You’ll still access the software through a web browser, but the infrastructure and applications are privately operated and hosted. 

Read on to learn how SaaS will work for your business and make your software experience simpler, more secure, and cost-effective.

Once a term previously only used in business and production discussions, it seems that everyone is now acutely aware of the global supply chain. The pandemic shutdowns caused production and logistical disruptions usually only seen in wartime situations. While everyone has heard of automobile production slowdowns due to a critical shortage of specialty semiconductor chips, those in the AV and IT spaces also know it’s affected AV systems that don’t get as much attention as automobiles. 

What does this mean? Just like Ford cars sitting in vast lots waiting for chips that enable them to work, specialty AV solutions have also experienced production and availability delays. Whether it's room control systems or integrated AV soundbar solutions for meeting rooms, the deployment of video conferencing and collaboration solutions is challenged in many organizations. 

As workforces return to offices, this presents more of a challenge. With hybrid work environments, the need to reimagine communication and collaboration between in-office and remote workers is even more important, yet the latest technology that facilitates it is not readily available. 

Fortunately, there are alternatives. While there’s no substitute for the specialized chipsets that provide critical functionality that make cars run, there are solutions to integrate software with commodity hardware to provide the missing pieces in the deployment of communication and collaboration solutions. Let’s explore how a managed services model can help your Scottsdale, AZ organization meet its hybrid workforce technology challenges.

Virtual meetings are straightforward enough when everyone participates over video. People join individually from their laptops or computers, and we see each other in small squares on a grid. 

But now that companies are making the move to return to the office (“RTO”), video meetings are presenting new challenges. Some of us may be together in the conference room but are joined by remote participants over platforms like Zoom and Teams. 

At the table, people have the advantage of proximity to pick up body language and spur-of-the-moment conversations. Over video, remote participants may struggle to hear or see what’s going on, and their ideas may not be heard, either. 

How can we ensure the “new normal” of hybrid communication doesn’t create new problems? With an intentional AV design, we build conference room systems that address these issues and make meetings a seamless experience for all. 

Keep reading to see how Level 3 Audiovisual enhances hybrid conferencing for businesses worldwide.

Up until now, we’ve discussed several applications of our SimStation healthcare simulation solution in medical, nursing, emergency response, and police environments.  Of course, the common thread across these is that they are dealing with human behavior and physiology. This time, we’re going to explore the advantages of simulation for medical training for veterinary doctors, technicians, and nurses. The benefits of simulation solutions in veterinary medicine are similar to those for human medicine, and simulation allows for professionals to gain experience without harming live animals – after all, they can’t communicate what ails them.

Unlike working on humans, veterinary professionals will work on a wide variety of species, from typical household pets to birds, reptiles, farm animals, and even wildlife. Veterinary simulation labs can accelerate knowledge and decrease the anxiety of learning and working with different physiology and anatomy.

I have been accused of “not listening” to my wife many times in the past. I should preface this by saying that I love my wife dearly, and on date nights or after the kids go to sleep, I am very attentive. However, there are times during the weekends where I am upstairs listening to a podcast, the kids are fighting about what to have for lunch, there is background music playing downstairs, and my wife picks THAT time to ask me, from all the way downstairs and at a whisper (probably), to take the trash out.

Fast forward an hour: the trash had not been taken out.

My wife argues that I wasn’t listening. I argue that her public address system did not have adequate intelligibility. That didn’t go over well, but the science was on my side!

The past two-plus years of the pandemic brought Zoom meetings into the modern lexicon. As work went remote in companies small and large, video conferencing became the go-to approach for meetings and interaction. Zoom is not the only video conferencing and collaboration solution, but its ease of use made it the standard for many organizations.

It wasn’t too long ago that conference room audio consisted of a lowly speakerphone. In the U.S., some of the first speakerphones were speaker add-ons to the ubiquitous Bell system phones in executive offices and boardrooms. In the 1980s and 1990s,  Polycom’s (Poly today) popular Soundstation speakerphones did much to diminish the use of the phrase “can you hear me now” at the start of every conference call.

Audio is still critically important in today’s age of video conferencing, hybrid workplaces, and fully remote teams. For individuals working on a laptop or even a smartphone, being heard is not problematic with the ever-higher quality of microphones in these devices and software DSP that can mitigate ambient noise. In a small huddle room, all-in-one devices like a Poly soundbar with a camera and microphone employ beam-forming microphones that do a reasonably good job capturing a small group. However, put a large group of people in a conference room, and the auditory challenges increase significantly.

Let’s take a closer look below at some of the issues and ways to improve sound quality and intelligibility in conference room audio-video systems.