7 Critical Audio Visual Components for Your Conference Room

Updat­ed May 2019

From our home office to the con­fer­ence room, the way we work is chang­ing at a rapid pace. More and more com­pa­nies are allow­ing employ­ees to work remote­ly part time to cut down on com­mut­ing and cre­ate more work-life balance.

They’re also putting the cus­tomer-first, focus­ing on rela­tion­ships and bring­ing togeth­er part­ners to offer a com­pre­hen­sive solu­tion.   The right meet­ing room tech­nol­o­gy enables the seam­less con­nec­tion between all these par­ties. Not only does it enable rela­tion­ship build­ing on a deep­er lev­el than audio alone, it also acts as a cost-sav­ing tool by reduc­ing trav­el expenses.

To get the most out of your col­lab­o­ra­tive efforts and max­i­mize your effi­cien­cy, there are a few key pieces of con­fer­ence room audio visu­al tech­nol­o­gy crit­i­cal to success.

We’ve bro­ken it down to the sev­en main com­po­nents you need to bring your work­place into the mod­ern day.

1. Displays

The first thing peo­ple notice when walk­ing into a con­fer­ence room is the dis­play. This is the “visu­al” part of con­fer­ence room audio visu­al, and it is one of your main col­lab­o­ra­tion tools. The dis­play enables you to see col­leagues in oth­er loca­tions, view pre­sen­ta­tions, and screen share from lap­tops, tablets and smartphones.

Com­pa­nies like Sam­sung, Sharp, and NEC all have a hand in the game, devel­op­ing state-of-the-art dis­plays to fit a vari­ety of needs. 4K UHD is now the stan­dard in dis­play tech­nol­o­gy, but a dis­play alone doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean a 4K UHD image. The band­width and con­tent can all impact image quality.

Sin­gle dis­plays are a go-to choice for many small con­fer­ence rooms. Dual dis­plays are a pop­u­lar option, espe­cial­ly for com­pa­nies that are heavy video-call users. These dual, or even tri, dis­plays allow screen shar­ing and video con­fer­enc­ing to share the spotlight.

When on a video call with a sin­gle dis­play you’ll like­ly have pic­ture in pic­ture view capa­bil­i­ty. This means you get to choose between see­ing the con­tent that’s being shared or the oth­er peo­ple on the video call (also called the far side) in the large view. Con­tent is often cho­sen for the large-screen since it typ­i­cal­ly dri­ves the meeting’s con­ver­sa­tion.  Whichev­er isn’t in the large view is shown in a small square at the bot­tom of the screen. Since con­tent is usu­al­ly in the large view, peo­ple on the call are shown in a small frame. In a con­fer­ence room, this can reduce one of the main ben­e­fits of video con­fer­enc­ing- see­ing people!

Dual dis­plays offer a solu­tion to the pic­ture in pic­ture view. Meet­ing atten­dees see both the con­tent being pre­sent­ed and the oth­er video par­tic­i­pants, each on their own full-screen.  Instead of choos­ing between con­tent and peo­ple, you can see both clear­ly. We’ve found this helps col­lab­o­ra­tion by enabling the team to see nuances like facial expres­sions dur­ing the presentation.

2. Audio or Video Conferencing

The next choice in con­fer­ence room tech­nol­o­gy is whether you need audio con­fer­enc­ing, video con­fer­enc­ing, or both.

Video con­fer­enc­ing has tak­en cen­ter stage in the meet­ing room. Zoom, Teams,  Poly (pre­vi­ous­ly Poly­com), Star­Leaf, and Life­Size all offer var­i­ous con­fer­ence room solu­tions. Most plat­forms pro­vide Out­look and Google inte­gra­tions for easy meet­ing sched­ul­ing. Push to join is also becom­ing a more read­i­ly avail­able option.

As video calls become more main­stream, orga­ni­za­tions are on calls with clients, part­ners, and off-site employ­ees. These exter­nal par­tic­i­pants may be call­ing in from a dif­fer­ent video con­fer­enc­ing plat­form. A com­pa­ny work­ing with Zoom may need to invite a part­ner that uses Poly­com, and a cus­tomer that’s on Life­Size. For­tu­nate­ly, most video con­fer­enc­ing tech­nolo­gies can han­dle these sit­u­a­tions offer­ing easy dial in instruc­tions for those work­ing with dif­fer­ent systems.

Scal­ing web con­fer­enc­ing is a big trend. More and more com­pa­nies are stan­dard­iz­ing on tech­nolo­gies like Zoom and Skype for Business/Teams in their con­fer­ence rooms. Cre­stron, Star­Leaf and Poly­com are a few of the man­u­fac­tur­ers that offer hard­ware to scale these plat­forms in the con­fer­ence room.

Audio is the sec­ond piece of the meet­ing room com­mu­ni­ca­tion. While some com­pa­nies are com­fort­able going all-in with video calls, oth­ers still want the option for audio con­fer­enc­ing. It’s com­mon for com­pa­nies to have both audio and video con­fer­enc­ing tech­nol­o­gy in a sin­gle room, just let your AV part­ner know in the design process so they can include the func­tion­al­i­ty in your design.

3. Microphones & Speakers

Micro­phones and speak­ers are an impor­tant addi­tion to con­fer­ence room audio visu­al. These can be either in-ceil­ing, on-table, or a sound bar mount­ed below the dis­play (sound bars can be an appro­pri­ate solu­tion for small­er spaces).

Based on how you intend to use the room and the fea­tures of the space, your audio visu­al inte­gra­tion part­ner can select the right mix of micro­phones and speakers.

The choice of micro­phones and speak­ers will have a sig­nif­i­cant impact on the over­all con­fer­enc­ing expe­ri­ence. The right set-up can reduce echo, feed­back and oth­er nois­es heard by con­fer­ence participants.

4. Camera

If your room is staged for video calls it will need to be equipped with a cam­era.  This can range from a small cam­era in a hud­dle room to some­thing more sophis­ti­cat­ed in larg­er spaces.

Depend­ing on your hud­dle room fur­ni­ture con­fig­u­ra­tion, you might con­sid­er a cam­era with a 180 degree view­ing angle, like Panacast. The nature of hud­dle rooms are small col­lab­o­ra­tion spaces. There­fore, the table and chairs are often pushed close to the dis­play and cam­era. If the camera’s view­ing angle is too nar­row then those sit­ting clos­est to the dis­play will be left out of the field of view.

Pan-tilt-zoom cam­eras are com­mon in large con­fer­ence rooms. A vari­ety of man­u­fac­tur­ers offer these types of cam­eras. Your video con­fer­enc­ing plat­form may dic­tate the cam­era need­ed, or your AV part­ner will spec­i­fy one of the pre­ferred cam­era solutions.

5. Control Panel

Find­ing an easy-to-use, well thought-out con­trol pan­el is impor­tant to your suc­cess, as the con­trol pan­el acts as your con­trol cen­ter for the whole con­fer­ence room audio visu­al system.

The user inter­face on the con­trol pan­el is crit­i­cal. It should be easy for employ­ees to get in the con­fer­ence room and con­nect to video calls or launch pre­sen­ta­tions. The sys­tems allow you to tran­si­tion from a screen shar­ing pre­sen­ta­tion to video con­fer­enc­ing, all with a sin­gle touch.

Com­pa­nies like Cre­stron and Extron devel­op hard­ware for the sys­tem con­trol. Both offer excel­lent con­fer­ence room solu­tions with the right pro­gram­ming. The con­trol sys­tem has to be pro­grammed to work with all of your con­fer­ence room equip­ment, so find­ing an audio visu­al inte­gra­tion provider with Cre­stron or Extron cer­ti­fi­ca­tions can save you a big headache when it comes time to put it all together.

6. Connectivity

You have three choic­es when it comes to con­nec­tiv­i­ty: (1) wired, (2) wire­less, or (3) a com­bi­na­tion of wired and wire­less. Both wired and wire­less con­nec­tiv­i­ty have their pros and cons, and ulti­mate­ly it will come down to a mat­ter of per­son­al preference.

Many peo­ple pre­fer wire­less con­nec­tiv­i­ty sim­ply because it elim­i­nates the clut­ter of cords, but table inserts how­ev­er can dis­crete­ly hide wired con­nec­tiv­i­ty that would pro­vide a typ­i­cal­ly high­er-qual­i­ty and more sta­ble pre­sen­ta­tion experience.

Con­nect­ed table box­es can also include elec­tri­cal out­lets for charg­ing or a wired con­nec­tion for plug and play. If you want to be able to screen share with­out plug­ging in, a wire­less con­nec­tiv­i­ty solu­tion may be the right choice for you.

7. Interactive Whiteboard

If you host brain­storm­ing ses­sions in your office or work with peo­ple that are visu­al learn­ers (around 65% of peo­ple), an inter­ac­tive white­board can be a valu­able tool to add to your sys­tem of con­fer­ence room equip­ment. Inter­ac­tive dis­plays, like Clev­er­touch and Avo­cor allow you to write direct­ly on the board in var­i­ous col­ors, anno­tat­ing over web pages or documents.

In addi­tion, video con­fer­enc­ing plat­forms like Zoom enable users to white­board while on the call and share to oth­er par­tic­i­pants in real-time or after the con­fer­ence has com­plet­ed. This can be help­ful if your employ­ees present over video con­fer­enc­ing and can cre­ate a more engag­ing expe­ri­ence for the oth­ers on the call.

** Bonus — Room Scheduling **

Just out­side of the con­fer­ence room door is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to increase effi­cien­cy and gain valu­able ana­lyt­ics. Room sched­ulers are a robust hard­ware sys­tem built for the work­place. Cre­stron’s room sched­ulers, for exam­ple,  fea­ture both a touch-pan­el dis­play which sits out­side the room as well as a LED that lights up red or green depend­ing on the room’s availability.The room sched­uler auto­mat­i­cal­ly goes red when the room is booked and stays green when avail­able. This allows passer­by’s to quick­ly see which spaces are open for an impromp­tu meet­ing. The touch-pan­el dis­plays show the day’s sched­ule, meet­ing title, and invit­ed participants.

Employ­ees can eas­i­ly sched­ule a meet­ing room from their Out­look or Google Cal­en­dar by invit­ing the room just like they would invite a col­league. Open archi­tec­ture allows you to run appli­ca­tions like teem, Robin, and app­space. In addi­tion, room ana­lyt­ics share key usage data like hours each room is reserved, meet­ing fre­quen­cy at cer­tain times of the day, and aver­age length of the meetings.

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