Most video conferencing systems are equipped with one or two units of boundary microphones. These microphones are usually sufficient for video conferencing room with rectangular table of about 5 or 10 people.

For meeting rooms with long rectangular table, o-shape table or u-shape table, these microphones will not be able to have good audio pickup for the entire room.

Therefore, external automatic microphone mixer, digital sound processing system and boundary microphones are recommended e.g. ClearOne Converge SR1212, Audio-Technica U891R and Audio-Technica ES947 etc.

ClearOne Converge SR1212

Audio-Technica U891R Boundary Microphones with ON/OFF button

Audio-Technica ES947 Boundary Microphones

The ClearOne Converge SR1212 automatic microphone mixer and digital sound processing system is a compact 1U 19” rack mount unit with built-in audio mixing, matrix switching and noise filtering functions. Each ClearOne Converge SR1212 is able to support 8 microphones, and up to 8 ClearOne Converge SR1212 can be cascaded to support a maximum of 64 microphones. Phantom power for the boundary microphones is provided by the ClearOne Converge SR1212.

On the table top, the Audio-Technica U891R or Audio-Technica ES947 boundary microphones can be used. The Audio-Technica U891R is equipped with touch sensitive ON/OFF button while the Audio-Technica ES947 is very small in size. For ideal deployment, 1 microphone is recommended per person. For cost effective deployment, 2 persons will share 1 microphone.

These microphones are usually programmed the 1st mic priority setting with or without a chairman overrule function during installation.

The same setup can be used for sound reinforcement in the same room with speaker zoning effect. For this application, multi channel power amplifiers and ceiling loudspeakers are needed.