On Friday, March 17th, Biamp visited the Technology Engagement Center on Duke’s campus to provide three unique training opportunities for AV technicians and IT managers. The first session focused on the fundamentals of audio. Specifically, Biamp explored a variety of variables (room size, materials, HVAC, mic configuration, furniture, etc.) that can impact the speech transmission index (STI) of audio. The STI index of a room is a core component of speech intelligibility, or how well speech is understood at specific distances. The results of the test gave our meeting room a “B+” rating. How is this useful? If you consider classroom recordings or video conferencing, if the audio in the room that is being captured and sent to the remote site starts off with a low STI rating, it will only degrade in transit. If your classroom recordings are difficult to understand, testing the STI of the room may be a good starting point. While advanced digital signal process can shape sound, if the quality is poor to begin with, there is only so much you can do with technology.
The second session was a re-introduction to the Biamp TesiraFORTE. This device uniquely combines software and hardware to create a very customizable audio solution for small to medium sized teaching and meeting spaces. While all of the TesiraFORTE devices have advanced programming, acoustic echo cancelation, and frequency reduction capabilities (and much much more), the VI version also has built-in VoIP calling functionality. On a tangent, we had a rather detailed conversation where, theoretically, a TesiraFORTE could alert a local user if they forgot to turn on their microphone during a recording… if configured to do so.
Finally, we wrapped up the day with an introduction of Biamp’s new TesiraLux. This pre-production device offers audio and video over a standard network with AVB capabilities. This is the future of classroom AV. No longer will we have dedicated AV switchers, specialized cabling, etc. We will simply have transmitters and receivers attached to the network, used in combination with a control system that tells them where to transmit the data. The best part is, you won’t have transmission limitations, so you could stream the content to any location on campus (assuming the content is on an AVB capable network). Needless to say, it was an enjoyable time getting to test the future of AV.
