When setting up an Adobe Connect meeting room – whether it’s for a virtual classroom, a webinar, or simply a persistent digital office – it’s important to consider which audio options to use.
The obvious reason to tie your audio information to your Adobe Connect room is so that you can record the meeting and make it available on-demand. There are three different options in Adobe Connect for audio:
- Voice Over IP (VoIP). This option is provided at no charge to our customers. A meeting host or presenter can use a microphone – typically as part of a USB headset – to broadcast audio to all participants. A microphone button in the Adobe Connect interface toggles the audio on and off. It can be optimized for a single speaker or multiple speakers. This is the most straightforward option since it doesn’t require any phones at all. An Audio Wizard in the ‘Meeting’ menu will help you optimize the sound quality to provide the best experience. VoIP is ideal for large meetings and webinars with a small number of speakers.
- Integrated Telephony. This feature enables customers to tightly integrate and control an audio conference directly from the Adobe Connect meeting room. The room can dial-out to participants, the host can see who’s speaking at any given time and even control the volume of everyone on the call including the ability mute specific individuals. This tight integration requires a special audio bridge; so it’s not available for every audio conferencing provider. Integrated telephony is available for Arkadin,Intercall, MeetingOne and PGi. Integrated Telephony is ideal for smaller, more collaborative meetings where everyone needs the option to speak.
- Universal Voice. Our third option combines VoIP and telephony. Universal Voice (UV) is a feature to enable Adobe Connect to dial into virtually any audio conference – even if it is not an integrated telephony provider. Adobe Connect dials into the audio conference as an additional participant – so the host doesn’t get the same level of control over the audio as they might using Integrated Telephony. The audio can be broadcast via VoIP meaning that participants don’t have to dial in at all, they can simply listen via their computer speakers. Participants on VoIP can hear those on the phone and vice versa. UV has the benefit of reducing toll charges since audio can be broadcast and you can use your existing audio bridge for those who need or want to dial in. Because of it’s flexibility, UV can be ideal for meetings of any size. Larger meeting and webinars should take advantage of the ability to broadcast VOIP, where smaller meetings will be better served if everyone dials in.