Investing in the Right AV Technology to Bolster Credibility & Supercharge Collaboration

A good friend recently showed me a study that claims audio quality could be impacting how our co-workers perceive our intelligence. Some of the key takeaways from the experiment were that high-quality audio can make a person seem more attractive, intelligent, and persuasive, while low-quality audio undermines the speaker, making them and their opinions, far less appealing to the listener.

As an executive of a global marketing team at an audiovisual manufacturer, I know these claims aren’t overstretching. Every day we collaborate, debate, and persuade our co-workers over digital video and audio environments. Even with the highest-quality gear, we’re still losing important interpersonal signals. And many times, our audio and video gear is adding unwanted noise.

I love this study. This data demonstrates the importance of high-quality audiovisual equipment in a real quantitative way. In the modern work era, so much of our daily lives runs over Microsoft Teams® and Zoom® calls. This study makes it clear that we need to be more aware of how we are representing ourselves as individuals, professionals, and as organizations as we pursue digital transformation initiatives.

Expectations with video quality

One of the major topics of conversations I’m having with partners and clients every day is about how much video quality can impact the outcomes of hybrid meetings. If you think about it, we have been trained for decades to expect clearly focused and framed shots with smooth and quick cuts. This is what we get from broadcast news anchors and Hollywood productions; even social media has raised the bar here.

We all know that when you meet with a very important client or partner, it helps to dress professionally, smile, maintain eye contact, and show active listening through facial gestures and expressions. We believe that these things will help lead us to success. The same is true in a virtual meeting environment. But it won’t matter how well you dress or maintain eye contact with poor video quality. Your audio and video devices create that all-important first impression. It’s in our power to ensure it’s a great one and not an impression that undermines the credibility of our organization.

However, the quality of hybrid meetings goes beyond visual expectations. A poor experience can directly impact employee engagement, collaboration, and productivity. If the speaker’s face isn’t clearly visible, attendees miss visual cues of approval or disapproval, confusion or understanding, and even the basic connectedness that fosters company culture, partner relationships, and collaboration.

Creating a natural interaction

One way Crestron has attempted to raise the bar in this area is with a solution we call the Crestron Sightline Experience.

Sightline is a meeting experience that utilizes multiple cameras, microphones, and displays to make sure everyone is clearly seen and heard. It's designed so that when a group of people are in a meeting room and some attendees join remotely, everyone is on an equal playing field. It's a concept that we like to call meeting equity.

The really unique part of these rooms is that the cameras can do broadcast-quality switching, speaker framing, group framing, and presenter tracking completely automatically. These features are enabled through AI technology that we specifically architected for this system. By using computer vision and microphone zones paired with a powerful and simple room designer software, the cameras have a spatial awareness of the room and the people speaking in it.

It’s really the most natural hybrid meeting experience I’ve had. The first time I sat in one of these rooms for a global staff meeting, I instantly felt that I was more connected with my remote team than ever before.

A little help from AI

It’s important to keep pushing ourselves to make hybrid meetings more natural. That’s why we just released an update to our multi-camera system that introduces a new feature we call Visual AI Direction. Now, the cameras can detect if the person talking is facing a different direction, and it will automatically switch to another camera to show a head-on view of the speaker’s face. It’s a game changer for maintaining engagement with remote attendees. It helps them retain those subtle facial cues and emotional expressions that truly bring conversations and collaboration to life.

Understanding these dynamics and perceptions of hybrid meeting technology is so critical for success in this modern work era. I hope we continue to see more evidence surface that sheds light on these topics. Even as organizations ask workers to return to the office, hybrid meetings will continue to be a standard practice for conducting business with partners, vendors, and customers. We need to create meeting spaces that enable our workers to represent themselves and the larger organization in the best way possible.