Similarly, when you are in the office, you don’t need to hear someone’s dog barking or child crying, or that there will be a delay to the arrival of the 15:36 from Waterloo. All noises that, when you are in the room, you automatically tune out, but that can be major irritations to a call participant. Background noise: The fan on the projector.Possibly useful when someone is talking loudly in the library, but not at all desirable on a conference call. It is so successful in doing so that it has been used in Japan to create a device called a ‘ SpeechJammer’ to silence people talking when and where they shouldn’t. Echo: The effect of hearing your own voice played back just a few beats later is known as delayed auditory feedback, and typically causes you to stop speaking.This ends up with everyone talking over everyone else, and possibly feeling awkward, embarrassed or annoyed. Humans are universally hard-wired to fill a gap in conversation the urge to speak kicks in after only around 200 milliseconds. Delays: When there is a delay in the audio, the flow of the meeting is completely disrupted.With frequent and prolonged exposure, it can even lead to audio fatigue, which may result in hearing problems. Static, crackles or hisses: This type of noise on the line is annoying at best, but at worst it can be stressful for participants.But Google ‘conferencing problems’ and you’ll see that poor quality audio is the primary issue when the sound isn’t working well, it can completely derail a meeting.
There are so many benefits to being able to video- or audio-conference rather than attend meetings. Unified communications technologies have revolutionised the workplace. But whilst lyrical mistakes can be amusing, it’s not so funny when you can’t hear what is being said in an audio or video conference, or when your customers or prospects mishear and, consequently, misunderstand what’s being agreed. This phenomenon is so common that there’s even a word for it: it’s called an oronym. But the reason this and other famous misheard lyrics happen ( kicking the dancing queen, anyone?) is that when we can’t hear clearly, the brain fills in the misheard words with others that seem to make sense. We all know that Jimi Hendrix didn’t really sing “S’cuse me, while I kiss this guy”. But the reason this and other famous misheard lyrics happen (kicking the dancing queen, anyone?) is that when we can’t hear clearly, the brain fills in the misheard words with others that seem to make sense.