Our clients are having an echo.

[VyKo46797]

Okay, so to start off, I'm not native so I struggled a lot to find the right forum for this.

The problem: When we are having a video conference with our clients, the clients always hear themselves in form of an echo. This is very annoying to the point they don't talk as much.

We use WebEx on Mac and use the plugin to better the quality. We use a Samson Meteor Microphone.

Now the question: Is there a way to mute our microphone automatically as soon as someone else in the call is talking? So they don't get an echo.

Alternatively, what other solutions can be made?
The most obvious is to use headphones, but we don't want that. We were also thinking about getting a "shotgun-microphone" that is only recording from one direction so the TV Speaker in the back doesnt get recorded; the thing is though that our room has an echo to begin with so we think this might not work.

Do we need a new microphone that lets us enable that or is it possible to mute our microphone automatically as soon as someone else in the call is talking through WebEx or a third party software?

I greatly appreciate any kind of help, I'm frustrated.

Greetings, Vy Ko

[Matt_W]

Usually echos in video conferancing are caused by either no echo cancelation software or the mic pickup gain being too high.

Room devices have echo cancelation built in (which if you are new to audio in video conferancing set ups, makes room design so much easier). 

If you don't want or can't use a room device then I would recommend taking a close look at room size, distance to microphones, current gain, volume on the speakers, and mic placement.  It is almost impossible to get rid of room echo without echo cancelation due to the fact that the mic will almost always pick up some audio from the speakers.  

You can also get microphones with built in echo cancelation software.  However, the correct mic and how many are needed will depend on the room layout and size.

[PJMack · Accepted solution]

You are using an external microphone - what are you using for speakers? Echo is caused by the far end sound coming out of the speakers and going back into the microphone. Echo cancellation can usually handle that, but in your case you are using two different devices (assuming you have some kind of audio out to a sound bar or something), so echo cancellation might not work because of the timing - slight processing delays can cause these kinds of problems.

There are no microphones that auto mute - how would it know when to unmute? The mic would have no way of knowing what it's hearing is coming from someone in the room vs the far end via speakers. 

My recommendation is to switch to a device that combines the microphone and speaker functionality into one device. I've had a couple of different Jabra "Speak" devices over the years, this should solve your problem, you just have to choose which one best fits your use case. I'm sure there are other brands out there as well, but Cisco works with Jabra (testing etc), these I know will work. 

https://www.jabra.com/business/speakerphones/jabra-speak-series