How to Keep Distracting Noise Out Of Your Meetings

[Brian Phillips (Brian_Phillips)]

Polycom has some amazing acoustic engineers working to solve real-world problems that we encounter in today’s workplace. To improve the quality of audio and video meetings, our engineers have been working on getting rid of distracting sounds that we experience during these meetings in open work environments such as open floor plan offices and manufacturing floors. Some of the new innovations were launched earlier this year with the release of Polycom NoiseBlock and Acoustic Fence.

• Polycom NoiseBlock keeps extraneous sounds like paper shuffling and keyboard typing from interrupting your meetings. Polycom NoiseBlock was released as a software enhancement to RealPresence Group Series earlier this year. (Click here to watch the related video.)

• Polycom Acoustic Fence creates a virtual “fence” around a meeting space, so only voices from inside the fence are heard on the other side of the video or audio call, and conversations happening outside the fence are kept out. Earlier this year, Acoustic Fence was released as a Polycom Labs feature. (Click here to watch the related video.)

Polycom Labs is where our engineers demonstrate and test new projects. When our labs engineers release a lab feature, it is so that our customers can start trying our innovations in their own labs and give us feedback. Polycom does not necessarily offer any support for the lab features and reserves the right to change or remove them at any time. 

Now, with the public announcement (read the press release) of the new RealPresence Group Series 5.0 software, Acoustic Fence is an official feature, available for you to deploy in your own meeting spaces.  The officially released Acoustic Fence feature in the Group Series 5.0 software uses multiple microphones to create the virtual fence, which is very powerful and effective in larger meeting rooms or other collaboration spaces that suffer from outside noise. 

*New* Polycom Labs Feature Customers Can Start Trying Today: Acoustic Fence with Beam Shaping!

With the Group Series 5.0 software version of Acoustic Fence, Polycom Labs released a new labs feature: Beam Shaping. Sometimes your workspace needs are simpler; e.g., one person at a desk in an open office environment or someone working from a home office dealing with noisy neighbors.  That’s where Acoustic Fence with Beam Shaping comes in.  It uses just a single microphone, either the Group Series table mic or the microphones built into the EagleEye Acoustic camera, to create a “beam” that captures the voices inside, while blocking those from outside.

You can see a live demo of this new feature in action in this video clip.

I’ve been using Acoustic Fence with Beam Shaping for the past couple of months and it is amazing! Even when my neighbor in the cubicle next to me is having a loud phone conversation, the people on the other end of my video calls don’t hear a thing! 

Please keep in mind, Acoustic Fence with Beam Shaping is a Polycom Labs feature today, and we welcome your feedback on our Polycom Community pages.  All you need to try it out is to update your RealPresence Group Series system to the latest 5.0 software, available later this month, plus either a Group Series table mic or the EagleEye Acoustic camera.  Come to the community forums and let us know what you think.