Comment by drdaeman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by drdaeman | Hacker News Reader

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> And if both parties are using this setup, it greatly reduces the "only one person can speak at a time" feeling, allowing you to use more natural vocal interactions without feeling like you're interrupting.

How does it work? Asking, because I always have this issue in 3+ person calls, where I'm frequently starting to talk just about when someone else does, ending up in those awkward "oh sorry you go please" moments. That makes me prefer to not say anything at all unless explicitly talked to.

I always assumed that my issue is that I'm just a slow-thinking dumbass who can't get the cues in time (which is true, because it happens in face-to-face in-person conversations as well, just less frequently), but maybe it's a technical issue contributing to it?

I might be wrong on some of this because I'm not that knowledgeable about the mechanics of it.

But I think video conferencing software is built around the assumption that people are using their speakers and so the output is also picked up by the mic. So some of it is increased latency caused by filtering that out. And then it keeps people basically muted until it determines they're trying to speak, and there's a delay with it toggling.

If you're using a mic and headphones at all though, there are settings that cut a lot of that out. They're usually kind of inscrutable like in zoom IIRC it's called "audio for musicians" or something like that. If both people are using headphones and have those settings on, it removes most of that "switching talker" latency.

As you add more people it's harder and harder to get everyone configured correctly, which is why having company buy-in and policy is important. Sheer network latency comes into play too, but most people working from home probably have acceptable connections.

That's a latency issue, and there's no real fix for that.

The parent commenter, I believe, is talking about the problem where people use speakers and active noise cancellation, which makes it impractical to speak and be heard at the same time; the noise cancellation will ruin the speaker-user's mic audio while it has to cancel out another speaker. Headphones, worn by all parties, resolves this issue.

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