[AG-TECH] Re: AGN PIG echo cancel?

[Matthew Wolf]

I did quite a bit of searching on this not too long ago.  It seems that
there's a big gap in price/quality on echo cancellation.  You go from
$400 to $2000 without much in between.

At the low end, for less than $500 you can get a speaker phone with
built-in echo cancellation and an interconnect to your PC.  ClearOne's
phone does the pc interconnect by default -- from polycom you need to
buy it separately.  Total cost is about a dead heat -- Polycom was a bit
cheaper in my case, so that's what I went with.

You then jump up to the dedicated echo cancellation gear plus
microphones, which is in that $2-5k range.  Polycom & ClearOne are the
two players, near as I can tell.  Polycom bought ASPI recently, and it's
the ASPI products that Polycom's pushing (the Vortex line). 
Unfortunately, you need to go through a local vendor in order to get
prices & info, since the polycom/ASPI web page meshing is still under
way. 

Here are some useful price links for the low end stuff I was talking
about. 

Polycom:
Soundstation phone
http://shopper.cnet.com/shopping/resellers/0-11788-311-185595.html?tag=st.sh.sr.pl.pr185595

Video interconnet for polycom soundstation (to hook to PC)
http://shopper.cnet.com/shopping/resellers/0-11752-311-185606.html?tag=st.sh.sr.pl.pr185606

ClearOne phone
http://shopper.cnet.com/shopping/resellers/0-8770305-311-9515817.html


I hope this helps!

Matt

Don Morton wrote:
> 
> Paul,  I'm forwarding your question to the AG-Tech list,
> since I really don't have a clue.  Maybe someone out there
> can help?
> 
> pwilson at lookout.itrc.umt.edu wrote:
> >
> > Hello,
> >
> > I have been reading about echo cancellation and background noise
> > filtration in reference to the Polycom and Clearone (used to be Gentner).
> > Do you have any opinions about either of these companies?  I have not yet
> > been successful in tracking down polycom prices.  The decent Gentner
> > products seem to be in the $2000 to $5000 range.  Do you know if there are
> > other quality echo and background noise cancellation devices in a cheaper
> > price range?
> >
> > Thank you advance, for your help.
> >
> > Paul
> 
> --
>    Don Morton                   http://MRoCCS.cs.umt.edu/~morton/
>    Department of Computer Science       The University of Montana
>    Missoula, MT 59812 | Voice (406) 243-4975 | Fax (406) 243-5139

-- 
                                        
        -- Matthew Wolf 
        -- Research Scientist, IHPC Laboratory
        -- College of Computing, Georgia Tech
        -- mwolf at cc.gatech.edu