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	VCOM Central

Audio Conferencing - VoIP

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This is the very best part of VCOM Central technology. An audio codec that takes up less than 20 Kbps of bandwidth (GSM 19 kbit/sec codec) and that is privy of drops, or other disturbances during even adverse dial-up conditions.

Any of the participants in an online meeting can talk by simply pressing the left Ctrl key on the keyboard. If another participant is already talking their request will be queued visually in order not to have cross talking during a session.

A small but handy feature prompts you with a beep when you should start talking, in order to avoid loosing the first few instances of talk due to the activation of the command. In fact not many people realize that, since immediate connection is not yet a reality of VoIP, waiting a fraction of a second before speaking is always a good habit for any online presenter.

The mike can be locked in an "on" position so that a presenter can proceed hands-free in delivering a presentation without the need to keep pressing the Ctrl key (Ctrl-H).

The meeting host can set audio to be used either in half or full duplex, though for reasons of good communication policy I would suggest to keep it always on half-duplex so that people do not talk over each other even if the technology would allow them to.

The audio delay is rather small but it is certainly there. According to my empirical tests it does not ever get better than 700-800 ms, which by itself is not bad at all.

Interestingly the audio control feature of VCOM can be activated even when you do not have the VCOM application shown on top of your desktop. This allows for running other applications such as the browser or your word processor while simultaneously being able to talk live to your online participants.

The audio facility provides highly visible microphone and speaker adjustments though the automatic gain control facility accessible through the Options -> Audio menu works very well.

The VCOM Central voice conferencing facility sports a handy VU Meter display as a vertical dynamic blue bar that provides real-time feedback to your own voice when you speak into the microphone.

Also very handy is a connection quality indicator, which provides at all times a "reading" of the connection quality available for voice communications. This indicator proves indeed to be very useful in identifying phone line problems and drops in bandwidth available to your line during a voice conference. It is not rare to see even on ADSL or better lines the indicator drop to "Bad" or "Poor" levels indicating high probability that the voice connection may be lost or may be disturbed and unclear.