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	Voxwire MeetingRoom

Audio Conferencing - VoIP

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The Voxwire MeetingRoom offers probably the very best audio quality facility you can find in any Web conferencing product.

The quality of audio is crystal clear and using it is as simple as pressing the Ctrl-key. The quality is so good that in ideal conditions it easily surpasses the quality of a standard telephone call. There are no drops or fastidious clicks during the conversation and I would be very hard pressed to find someone who was not extremely impressed by the quality of the audio when first using this technology.

While the technology utilized by Voxwire allows for full-duplex audio, I am very happy to see that the company has consciously chosen not to activate this feature. The nature of online voice meetings suggests that it is much better and many times more effective to have a natural self-moderating mechanism in place as half-duplex. Like in a physical conference worth of that name, only person can speak at one time.

Voxwire employs 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.

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).

Interestingly the audio control feature of Voxwire can be activated even when you do not have the Voxwire 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 Voxwire 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.

A nice feature well complements the audio facility by providing a glimpse of visual feedback that can make a whole lot of difference during an online audio exchange. By way in fact of the Ctrl-key that one needs to press to talk, it is also possible to automatically have a green baloon appear next to your name in the attendees list panel. Though apparently insignificant this feature by itself makes the price and use of Voxwire worth double.

The feature can in fact be used for people to auto-queue themselves in line to get the microphone. As one participant is talking, several others can press simultaneously the Ctrl-key and what happens then is that inside each green baloon a number is displayed indicating the precedence order that should be given to each one of these people. Extremely useful for a moderator, this feature makes itself valuable even when a moderator is not there.

I also use the Ctrl-key + green baloon feature to signal and interact with other participants during a meeting or in a live presentation.

For example, I generally agree with the participants that to signal me that they are understanding what I say and to indicate to proceed further on the topic they need to press the Ctrl-key twice in rapid sequence. As I keep an eye on the attendees list during my live sessions it is easy for me to see if I have got all of them still with me. This also allows me at any time to ask the participants to give me a sign that everything is indeed OK (and they know then that they should press the Ctrl-key twice and in rapid sequence). It then becomes very handy.

From this you can derive a lot more useful signals. Ctrl-key pressed extensively means "stop", "I want to talk". And whatever else you can agree to.

Lots of manual controls are also available to control the quality of audio including both microphone gain and speaker/heaadphone volume.