Nothing, in what the acronym actually refers to, but the purpose is to reveal an inconsistency in philosophies toward the importance of audio. In video conferencing, a network engineer has to ensure the quality of service (QoS) for a company's video conferencing performance by prioritizing the traffic coming in and going out of their network to enable users of any platform to enjoy a consistent video conferencing experience. They understand, in the world of video conferencing on the network, it's the audio packets that get priority. This is to ensure that If your picture freezes and you can still continue to communicate. But, if it's the other way around - decent video but poor or no audio. What's the point? With the understanding of why audio is actually more important to communicate from a network perspective, why don't we prioritize audio in our physical spaces? Because most builders and designers of rooms, from architects to interior designers, don't get sound. So most look at it the rooms impact on sound as an afterthought - a nice to have but not essential. Imagine watching a movie with no sound! Would you watch a movie where you can't hear what they are saying? You would, however, watch an old VHS if you could at least hear the audio, wouldn't you? It's the same with video conferencing. And even if you're a movie goer, you should be aware that "Sound is 50 percent of the motion picture experience".
"Sound is 50 percent of the motion picture experience"--George Lucas
Because a typical room has too many hard surfaces, furniture that has glass surfaces and no decorations to assist in absorbing or breaking up sound reflections, a typical AV integrator will sell you a $3,000-$5,000 digital signal processor (DSP) in an attempt to equalize the sound reflections coming into the microphones and coming out of the speakers instead of offer you an acoustical approach. And, in most cases, they won't get the room tuning right the first time and sometimes even the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th time. So, after all of that cost and labor to still deliver something that is trying to mask an inherently poor performing room, why not spend a few thousand dollars on acoustic treatments and improve everything? You'll have better meetings with way less effort and fatigue whether you are in a video call or not. Better speech intelligibility and less ear fatigue mean better communication. My point? Shift some dollars in your video conferencing budget and spend the effort making the room right for all meetings and for all around better communication.
Remember the real reason you build one of these conference rooms in the first place. It's an opportunity to convey the professionalism of your organization and supports the importance of communicating clearly and ultimately, a reflection of your brand. If you're engaged in business meetings that could significantly impact your organization's revenue, isn't it important to have clear communication?
You can tame hard surfaces with things like curtains and area rugs. Provide chairs, tables and furniture that have a bit more stuffing and absorptive qualities to them instead of transparent or hard and reflective surfaces like glass or formica countertops. You can also mount simple acoustical panels in blank areas of your walls to absorb some of those resonant standing waves, especially at head height on opposing walls. Most importantly bring your audio visual people in earlier in your process of making these decisions and, if you can, even invite them the participate in design of those rooms before your room is built. This kind of planning can save you much time, money and frustration later.
So, Quality of service for Brilliant customers starts in the room. Maybe we'll call it Quality of audio and use a new acronym of (QoA) for the actual waveform traffic happening in your room! As audio video consultants, it's our job to prioritize the audio in your room and give you the best performance for the best communication. We invite you to call for an assessment of how Brilliant can help no matter where you're at in your project.