Teams - Calls (meetings) Issues with Feedback: Best practices?

[Dan Barnett]

A user came to me with this situation:  they host weekly meetings via Teams - some members are located on-site while others are in remote locations.  Those on-site will gather in a conference room and each person has Teams open and in the meeting on their own laptop.

The issue is:  if everyone in the conference room turns on their microphone - there is a terrible amount of feedback.  On the flip-side, if only one person has their microphone on, then others (in the room) who speak are more difficult to hear (due to not having the microphone directly in front of them).  They are using the microphone(s) and speakers that are built into their laptops.

How can they overcome this challenge?  Is there a best practice for such a situation?  Does each person have to turn their microphone on or off, depending upon if they are speaking or not?  I'd love to hear if others experience this - and how they solved the problem.

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Best practice is having a meeting room device set up or available! There is Teams meeting room system which is a full meeting room experience which connects to the meeting itself as a user but it’s rather expensive! For a simple solution to this I recommend buying a external mic/speaker/cam which you have laying around in the meeting room! Then connect it via BT or USB to a single computer that connects to the meeting! See different devices here:

https://products.office.com/en-us/microsoft-teams/across-devices/devices

Adam

[#3]

That's why there are conference room systems. Aside from that, if you can dial-in, use a conference phone. If not, then you need to get one of the conference call speakers that can be paired with a PC. All users should join with NO audio in a conference room.

[#4]

To add on to @adam deltinger 's good response - I pack around a little Jabra disc speaker/mic - it works perfectly on a conference room table (for about 6 people). We use that for audio and our laptops for video. Very low cost way to get started with clear audio.

[#5]

Either what these guys have said with a meeting device, or have everyone use a headset for the audio. But usually best to have some kind of USB mic / speaker setup.

[#6]

@adam deltinger 

Thanks for that useful post. I take your point about the simple solution of buying a single external mike for the room. But wouldn't there still be feedback (or bad echo) in the room when the remote person speaks, even if they are doing so through a single source? Their voice will be broadcast into the room, picked up by the mike, broadcast back to them, and thence back into the room again...

I would guess that without a conferencing system there would have to be a lot of manual muting and unmuting - but I'd be interested to hear your experience. 

[#7]

@adam deltinger This used to work. But now the external mic is giving ring-feedback even with just me in the room. Not recognising external speakers and mic going together. To counter-act MS Teams automatically adjusts the mic volume down to zero. Not really a workable solution.

I think this changed in the last update (April?). It used to work fine before then.

Any ideas on how to fix it? Aggregate devices on Win 10?