Gentlemen, let me run this one by you....
A dtmf digit is used in a push to talk mode could be a novel solution. If you
want to join the "I wish to
talk next queue" press "#" and as soon as the last person has finished talking
and toggled the "#" digit
the next person has the "floor". This solution would only require the setting
up of a channel queue on a
first in - first out basis. Obviously some bugs would need to be ironed out but
it does follow the KISS
principle.
Uncle Henry
=================================
Henry L.Coleman [www.VoIP-PBX.ca]
Tel: 647-723-5160 Ext.203
=================================
{ D. Hugh Redelmeier}
> I should say that I'm approaching this from first principles and not
> from any practical knowledge. So this is probably not of interest to
> Rachel. But I do find the problem interesting.
>
> | From: Jim Van Meggelen <[email protected]>
>
>
> | If memory serves correctly, the conference mixer doesn't have to mix all
> | incoming audio, but rather only has to mix relevant audio (i.e. figure out
> | who's talking, and take that single audio stream and send it out to all the
> | participating channels). One challenge I would expect would be figuring out
> | the noise threshold (i.e. what is talking and what is just background
> noise),
> | and knowing to quickly enable a channel when somebody is speaking. A good
> | mixer should be able to handle more than one person speaking, but since for
> | the most part people can only handle one person talking at a time, if the
> | mixer is good, it doesn't have to work so hard at that.
>
> You also asked whether the problem was to handle M conferences of M
> people (where perhaps M * N = 1000) or one conference of N people
> (where N = 1000).
>
> A very good question. In a face to face conference, people behave
> differently as the number of participants increases. In particular,
> speaker selection gets to be more and more formal because the problem
> gets harder to solve.
>
> Things don't get easier with telephone conferencing:
>
> - some out of band signals are lost
> - eye contact, gaze
> - standing, sticking hand in the air
> - designation by chairperson
> - leaning over and whispering to a neighbour
>
> - some signals are degraded
> - only some frequencies are carried and the accuracy is reduced
> - dynamic range is reduced ("speaking up" works in real conferences
> but not nearly as well over a phone)
>
> - even modest time delays confuse informal conversational protocols
>
> - (with current systems) localization clues/cues are lost. The human ear
> can tell (with some ambiguity) where a sound comes from. This turns
> out to help quite a bit in understanding what is going on with
> several auditory things going on at once.
>
> I don't immediately see how a largish conference can be run as
> anything other than broadcasting by a single speaker or a small number
> of speakers designated manually.
>
> As a thought experiment, consider how one can hear a speaker in a lecture
> even over coughing. I don't see that working in a telephone
> conference with all mikes open.
>
> | I suspect the math involved is pretty complex, though.
>
> Math I can handle (perhaps). What I don't know are the practical
> considerations. The psycho-acoustics are not obvious.
>
> | This also gets me wondering if multiple, discreet conferences eat up more
> | horsepower than a single conference would, even with a large number of
> | participants.
>
> I imagine that small conferences would be more amenable to automatic
> solutions and hence could take more processing (per participant) than
> large conferences when simple designation must be used.
>
> I have no idea what the thresholds would be. I don't even know how
> many different strategies there would be (i.e. how many thresholds).
>
> | I suspect there's a lot more to it than that, though.
>
> Agreed.
>
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