Audio

Getting Close To A Yeti

Blue-Yeti-200 My ongoing involvement in the VoIP Users Conference has me occasionally pondering my home office equipment. While I make my living in the broadcast television equipment business, in truth, audio was my first love.

The VUC can easily be joined using any phone, but sometimes a phone…even my long-time companion Polycom IP650…doesn’t feel like the right tool for the job. So last year I put a microphone on my holiday wish list, the Yeti from Blue Microphones. Seeing an opportunity to address the my voip-geek habit, my wife decided to put one under the Christmas tree.

The Yeti is in many ways special. It’s a USB-attached microphone, so it plugs directly into a computer. That means that the critical electronics of the pre-amplifier are housing in the mic itself, away from the harsh electrical environment of the computer’s internals.

Further, the Yeti has three microphone capsules under it’s wire mesh head. The output of the three capsules can be mixed in various combinations resulting in several directivity patterns; omni-directional, cardoid, stereo (left-right) or figure-eight (front-back.) This makes the Yeti very adaptable to different  situations.

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Review: Plantronics Voyager Pro UC Bluetooth Headset – Part 2

PLANTRONICS-SAVI-&-VOYAGER-PRO-UCIn part one of this review I examined the use of the Plantronics Voyager Pro UC in mobile applications. In this chapter I’ll share my experience using it in my office for computer-bound applications.

Given that I still have the Plantronics Savi Go headset in my home office I felt that at least theoretically the Voyager Pro UC presented me with more opportunities for mobile applications. After all, the Savi Go is a Class 1 Bluetooth device with a one hundred foot range that covers my workspace completely. The Savi Go sounds good and I like the convertible wearing options. In general, I didn’t feel that I needed something better for office-bound activities.

Nonetheless, most people will buy one headset for use both in the home office and with their mobile phone. Thus I felt it only appropriate to explore the use of the Voyager Pro UC around my home office.

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Review: Plantronics Voyager Pro UC Bluetooth Headset – Part 1

Preface: I’m taking a little different approach with this review. Plantronics offers the Voyager Pro headset in several versions; the Voyager Pro targets the common portable application accompanying mobile phones, while the Voyager Pro UC extends it reach to use with soft phones or Unified Communications (UC) clients on computers. Since these use cases might be considered separately I’ve decided to offer the review in two parts, one addressing each use case specifically.

PLANTRONICS-SAVI-&-VOYAGER-PRO-UCWhile I have tried a number of Bluetooth headsets over the years, I’ve found that most are seriously disappointing. Until relatively recently I had simply given up on trying to find a Bluetooth headset that would meet my needs.

In the fall of 2009 Plantronics gave me a Savi Go Bluetooth headset to use in the presentation that I was developing for Astricon. Given the project at hand I had some very specific needs, including wideband audio capability to compliment a SIP soft phone. The new generation of cordless headsets targeting “Unified Communications” application seemed like a good match for my needs. “UC” implies wideband audio.

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LADSPA Integrated Into FreeSWITCH

For me one of the great frustrations of conference bridges is that they don’t give you the kind of control of audio properties that is commonly found in even simple audio mixing and editing suites. Wideband conference services, like ZipDX, make the conference experience a lot better, but there’s a lot of room for improvement.

Of course, this comes from the perspective of someone who has spent their working life in audio/video production, and only came to voip & podcasting later in life. Yes, a veritable Michael-come-lately. I bring to projects like the VUC the expectation of control that simply isn’t commonly possible. However, that is changing and we can thank the Freeswitch dev team for taking a leadership role in crossing these worlds.

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Bluetooth Headsets: Style vs. Function

Nichelle Nichols as Lt. Uhura, the original wireless headset goddess Let me lay before you a simple premise; people who habitually wear a wireless headset in public are often viewed as Geeky, Nerdy or very possibly even Dorky. The trouble isn’t the technology, but rather the question of its use, and abuse in various circumstances. Whether wearing such a headset is socially acceptable depends largely upon situational context. I’ve mentioned this once before.

To wear a wireless headset is most often a matter of convenience, only occasionally a matter of necessity. I accept that there are states where such tools are mandated for use while driving. I applaud such laws, and further think that a driver should not be allowed to operate a cell phone in any manner while a car is in motion.

Actually, I suspect that such headset laws are the result of intense lobbying by a secret cartel formed by the world’s leading headset manufacturers. It seems fairly obvious to me that Plantronics, Jabra, Motorola and maybe Jawbone form a kind of headset-axis-of-something-or-other.

Seriously, someone should look into this.

As ever, I digress.

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