[AG-TECH] Mute switch for AG.

[bernholdtde at ornl.gov]

On Wed, 24 Mar 2004 12:33:51 -0700  Cindy Sievers wrote:
> An easy solution is to use mics that have on/off buttons

No, please don't do that!  The time for the Gentner to re-train may
sound short on paper but during an actual meeting, it is a highly
disruptive eternity for the participants.  Use muting on the Gentner
or on the RAT instead.

In my experience, audio is still the least robust (and of course the
most important) part of an AG meeting -- it is highly dependent on the
individuals involved in the meeting (especially if there is a phone
bridge) and it is not usually practical to spend much time
testing/tuning audio with the actual participants (they want to get to
work).  I don't have a magic solution, but the more we all avoid
anything that can contribute to audio problems, the better off we'll
all be. (Of course a single site with audio problems is enough to
disrupt the meeting for all participants.)

P.S.  I'm not picking on Cindy here.  There are a number of sites with
whom I've specifically experienced problems due to locally-muted mics,
but I don't recall LANL ever being one of them.
--
David E. Bernholdt                   |   Email: bernholdtde at ornl.gov 
Oak Ridge National Laboratory        |   Phone: +1 (865) 574 3147    
http://www.csm.ornl.gov/~bernhold/   |   Fax:   +1 (865) 574 0680