How does a leading brand in audio technology view the collaboration market?
Every year Ofcom produces a report that outlines how the people of Great Britain and Northern Ireland consume their entertainment content for people like me who find that sort of thing interesting.
In the 2023 report, the media regulator found that one in five adults listen to podcasts each week, equating to roughly 11 million adults, which may not be surprising to many given the number of podcasts that have popped up since the turn of the decade.
In fact, the podcast industry is set to grow to $149.34 billion in 2030 according to Polaris Market Research and it’s not hard to work out why, when this content is being cut up into TikTok videos, and YouTube Episodes as well.
One thing that links most podcasters, nay, content creators together is the equipment they use. Specifically, if you look closely, the word ‘Shure’ is often etched on the microphones that pick up everything someone has to say; for better or worse.
Priding themselves on capturing high-quality audio, Shure is consistently identified as a ‘key player’ in the events audio industry, has built a large podcast mic market, and is getting ready to celebrate a century since S.N. Shure set up the “Shure Radio Company” in Chicago in 1925.
That knowledge is now being focussed in the virtual meeting room, bringing quality audio to the masses, because, as Shure Senior Director of Global Strategic Market Development, Rob Smith says you can’t have a meeting when you can’t hear anyone.
“When you think about it, there are three elements in a meeting,” said Smith. “You’ve got the video, content sharing, and audio.
“If you take away the video, the meeting can pretty much carry on, and a lot of people have meetings with people turning off the cameras. If you lose the content it’s going to impact some meetings but we have the ability to talk through a presentation. If you take away the audio the meeting is done.
“So if we look at the hierarchy of importance audio has got to be first but for a long time it’s been the least regarded part of the puzzle. In the last few years, we and others have been trying to demonstrate the need for good audio, and I think the message has got through for that top-tier room, in the boardroom, and the multi-purpose spaces.
“Generally speaking, most people realise you’ve got to have decent audio because otherwise, half the people in the room don’t know what’s going on. Certainly, all the remote participants are maybe only hearing from half the people in the room.”
Hybrid working
This new challenge to emphasise the importance of audio has come about from a poor experience in meetings between disparate participants.
As businesses seem to be on the precipice of giving up on remote work and enforcing mandatory office days, you’d think they might have a point. We’ve all been on calls that have been dominated by a dog barking or an overactive microphone, despite the participant having nothing to say.
This poor experience is exactly the scenario that Smith’s team are hoping to rectify, leaning on nearly 100 years of expertise to improve the experience for everyone.
“With the growth of hybrid working, the challenge we’ve got is that quality audio has to be in place for every room,” said Smith. “Otherwise a CEO joining remotely won’t be able to hear half the participants because the microphones are at the front of a room that is too big for the solution that’s been chosen. That’s a waste of quite an expensive amount of time.
“What we’re trying to do, as a company, is provide premium quality audio to every meeting room and education space, because it’s no good only having three or four per cent of meeting rooms in the world being useful.
“We’re trying to apply our expertise of nearly 100 years in other spheres to every meeting room, whatever the size, everywhere in the world.”
Speaking from Experience
These hypothetical scenarios turn into real-world experiences when Smith talks about his background.
Smith joined Shure five and a half years ago after establishing himself in the AV industry in various guises for 27 years, from building visitor attractions and museum exhibits, up to meeting rooms, auditoria, corporate government and education-type solutions, working in roles from engineering, to sales, and then management.
In these roles, the concept of working from home or being able to do work away from an office has become commonplace, with Smith explaining he has been frustrated in the past when communicating with the office.
“Using the built-in camera and microphone in a laptop might work,’ said Smith, “but to be sure businesses should want to have a good setup, and it’s actually quite easy to do if you spend a few hundred dollars.
“The challenge is when you’re a remote participant joining a large meeting room, particularly if you’re the only one.
“I’ve had the experience in a previous company where I was being introduced to the entire sales team, but I could only hear about half the room because the microphone was stuck at the front.
“If the people at the back of the room were having a conversation, I was excluded. If someone at the back was asking a question, I had to ask someone to repeat it, so I wasn’t a full participant in the meeting.”
This isn’t a new phenomenon for many of us, and as Smith points out, repeating contributions and battling unavoidable technical issues disrupt the flow of meetings and can inhibit creativity too.
“Forty-five per cent of remote participants have challenges finding a natural discussion flow,” continued Smith. “That means that they’ll start to zone out.
“I was lucky in the example I described because it was an introduction to me so I didn’t have too much trouble getting attention. But if it’s a big meeting and a participant can’t be heard, or discussions are happening that they’re not part of, they’ll tend to become just an observer in the meeting, which is a waste of talent and a waste of time.”
Blending into the Furniture
At this point, many of you will be reclining in the back of your chairs reminiscing – no, reliving your own worst experiences dialling into a meeting I’m sure.
One of the common themes of the past couple of years has been the fine-tuning of the meeting room solutions that had to be installed after the pandemic. In short, after slinging a camera and a mic into a meeting room to ‘video-enable’ it, it’s time to find a longer-term solution.
So what does that look like? According to Smith, it doesn’t have to be a complete rip-and-replace job.
“We’ve got a family of microphones called the MXA series which uses array technologies with over 100 individual microphones built into a single unit. These fit in the ceiling, keeping a low profile, and can pick up audio in the entire room.
“The secondary thing is, particularly for the larger room, just using the speakers on the screen or a couple of speakers at the front generally means that the people at the front will end up going deaf but the people in the back still can’t hear. What you have to do is place speakers throughout the room and then you start to create an easy listening experience at both ends.”
While Smith will emphasise the ease at which businesses can put together an effective meeting room solution, the essential feature that he mentions is keeping a low profile.
“People say ‘it’s got to be easy to use’, what we’ve got to aim for is ‘it’s got to be invisible’ to the user.”
“You should be no more aware of the audio system in a meeting room than you are of the carpet because it should just work. All you should ever have to do is turn the volume up, turn the volume down or mute it, and frankly, if you’ve engineered it properly, you probably shouldn’t even need to adjust the volume.”
Easier Set Up
While Shure can supply the right solutions to the customer they can only do so much.
Installation is a factor that not many hardware manufacturers can control, however, Smith says that’s where he and his team are looking to innovate.
“We’ve been providing technically-engineered solutions that require a high skill level to install,” said Smith. “So what we’ve been doing over the last five years is making these solutions easier to install, provide equity of experience for everyone taking part in a remote meeting, and provide the experience that my boss’s boss has to every single meeting room.
“The next thing is making systems that self-adapt to the room they’re installed in. It’s quite easy to establish what the acoustically perfect room needs to look like. Unfortunately, architects don’t give us that. They do like a concrete box with glass everywhere, and to be honest, I quite like the aesthetic myself, but it’s not the best for an audio room.
“Our goal is for IT technicians to be able to put the microphone in a room, push a button and it figures out that room and sets itself up to provide the best audio performance. Our current range of products do that to a certain extent, but we want to get it so you can put the right microphones in the worst room possible and it gives you the best possible solution.
“There will always be a space for those multipurpose rooms needing someone to program the microphones. But for 90% of the rooms that are a single space, we need to make systems that set themselves up much quicker and much easier.”