323link was an early advocate of the combination of Zoom Rooms and Voice Tracker I array microphone to provide cost effective yet high performance video conferencing.

VoIP products like Zoom make video conferencing easy and affordable. At $279, the Voice Tracker I enhances that affordability, providing long pickup range and good sound quality at a price as much and 1/10th that of competitive array microphones.

The AEC in Zoom is robust enough so we don’t need the built-in AEC in the Voice Tracker II.

The Voice Tracker I is easy to set up and is extremely reliable, minimizing the need for IT support. We have had Voice Trackers installed for more than 8 years without problems.

A single Voice Tracker I can cover a 30 foot room, and two or more Voice Trackers can be easily combined for greater coverage.

The price/performance advantage of Zoom and Voice Tracker I has often encouraged our customers to install multiple rooms.

Don Cottom
CTO
323link, Inc

We have been using a Polycom SoundStation IP 6000 with two expansion mics for quite some time, but the far end participants complained that they had trouble hearing all the participants in the near end conference room. Our room size is 30×15.

Since we already had a Zoom VoIP, we tried calls using a Voice Trackerr, connecting it to the employees computers prior to making their Zoom call.

Our far end participants then reported that they could hear everyone in the room clearly, and we didn’t have to worry about people in the conference room moving the microphone close to them.

And with Zoom, we could do video as well as audio.

Jon Newman
Director of Operations
Kaon Interactive
3 Mill & Main
Suite 200
Maynard, MA 01754

Listen to the Cloud Recording of Fender Studio’s Personal Meeting Room

Walking Test Front & Rear MICs:

Click Here to Listen

We often get inquires on how to use the Voice Tracker II with iPads and iPhones for enhanced recording range, and for inexpensive conferencing/telemedicine.

There are two “tricks” for doing this.

First, a TRRS splitter is required. This is connected to the 3.5mm jack on the iPad or iPhone and creates separate 3.5mm connections for the mic and loudspeaker. See the photo of such a splitter. Such splitters are readily available commercially.

Second, the output impedance of the Voice Tracker II must be adjusted to match the expectation of the iPad/iPhone. These devices require an input impedance of less than 10Kohm. If the output impedance of the mic in higher than that, the iPhone/iPad will default to their internal mic.

The output impedance of the Voice Tracker II is higher than that, so an adapter is needed in the 3.5mm cable to reduce the output impedance to below 10K.

When the Voice Tracker is connected thru the TRRS splitter and impedance adapter, you can hear the improved pickup range:

Because the Voice Tracker II has built in acoustic echo cancellation, it can be used with iPads or iPhones for inexpensive conferencing. Connect the speaker jack from the TRRS splitter to the ref in jack on the Voice Tracker II, and connect an external powered computer loudspeaker to the speaker out jack on the Voice Tracker II. Provide power to the Voice Tracker II from USB battery, or a USB wall power supply. Then run a VoIP app on the iPhone or iPad.

See the photo below. Note the thicker 3.5 cable to the middle jack on the VT II (the audio out jack). That is the impedance adapter.

If you are using Zoom or Skype for Business as the VoIP App, they have good AECs, so the AEC in the Voice Tracker II is not required.

This reduces the number of cable connections (clutter). You can then connect the speaker jack from the TRRS splitter directly to the loudspeaker. See the photo below.

Bob Feingold

Bob@AcousticMagic.com

A well known eastern insurance company is employing Voice Tracker I microphones throughout cubicle areas to facilitate Skype for Business based collaboration meetings.

The Voice Tracker is mounted, together with a camera, on top of a large display monitor. A loudspeaker bar is mounted below the display.

Also below the display is a shelf to hold a laptop. The participants bring along their laptop, place it on the shelf, and connect it for the meeting. The team then stands around the monitor to engage in their conversation.

The Voice Tracker picks up the talkers around the monitor, and ranges of 25 feet or more, and with an extremely wide field of view.

The Voice Tracker I can be used since the AEC in Skype for Business is robust enough to adjust to the Voice Tracker’s listening beam as it moves rapidly from talker to talker. The Voice Tracker II can also be employed, using its own internal fast adapting AEC.

The Voice Tracker’s low cost make it possible to build several huddle areas on each floor.

Acoustic Magic exhibited at InfoComm for the first time this year.

We learned a great deal.

The professional audio world is now taking array microphones seriously and the catalyst for this is the MXA 910 array microphone from Shure, a respected Pro-Audio microphone leader.

Two other companies introduced array microphones, so there are now six or seven companies offering array microphones for conferencing.

The good news is that all these competitors price their microphones much, much higher than the Voice Tracker. And according to a lot of our Resellers, these competitive microphones do not perform any better than our microphone. In some cases, they don’t perform as well.

Part of the reason for this is that they use a different technology. The Shure microphone, the Clear One microphone, and the Phoenix Audio microphone create several listening beams that are fixed (but adjustable) to cover certain parts of the room (where talkers are expected to be).

In contrast, The Voice Tracker creates a scanning listening beam so one beam covers the entire room. A single beam is inherently less complicated, and less expensive. And with our technology you can’t miss talkers that happen to be in between the competitor’s listening beams.

The Shure MX a 910 is $4500 (plus mounting Hardware)

The ClearOne Beamformer Array is ~$2500 (plus it must be connected to a ClearOne DSP)

The Condor from Phoenix Audio is ~$1200

New Products:

The CS- 700 from Yamaha/Revolabs is $1200 (includes speaker and camera, but it has a small array that is only good to 12 feet)

The HDL 300 from a new Company called NUreva is $3000.

So clearly, we have a big cost advantage. Several Resellers told me this is their “secret weapon”.

From one reseller: “I just did a demo up against a competitor that was using a Shure MXA910 array microphone. The customer didn’t notice much of a difference between that and a VT I. I won the deal because on a $78,000 lecture system, I was $1,800.00 less than my competitor, and I went in with 50% mark-up. Nice, huh? Keep up the good work!”

From another Reseller: “I had to work too hard to make the Clear One work”.

Several Resellers came to our booth to tell us how great the Voice Tracker was. That made us feel good.

16 years of experience with array mics makes a difference.

Two Voice Trackers can be combined for greater room coverage.

Outstanding sound quality can be achieved by connecting them through a mixer. I prefer mixing them through a Biamp Tesira digital signal processor. This allows me to adjust gain and frequency response to achieve terrific sound quality.

For example, I installed two Voice Tracker I in a 60 foot room, with one mounted on the ceiling in each end of the room. I invert one Voice Tracker I in the DSP meaning the tip and shield are reversed, so that way I don’t get any cancellation and get excellent, uniform pickup throughout the room. You can hear the talker perfectly anywhere in the room. The mics worked so well that they had to install weather stripping under the edges of their computer flooring tiles because you could hear noise from the tiles when they walked around. Pretty impressive. Take a look at the pics, you can just see the mics up at the ceiling.

Since the cables runs are long, 89 feet in the 60 foot room, I convert the unbalanced signal from the Voice Tracker Is to balanced.

The microphone is just one small part of an expensive AV system, but it’s so important. I can do a better job with two VT Is than I can with a $4,000 Shure ceiling mic, believe it or not. All of my clients are impressed as heck with our systems’ speech quality. Just have to know audio and be innovative. I love this business, even after 43 years in it…finding your microphones has been a blessing for me, especially after all of my colleagues saying that these are not pro audio microphones. I just say let me demo it, and win every time so far except once, and that time they had me come back and change out their system after another contractor screwed it up..

Martin E. Pilewski
Lead, Systems Design
Harvest AV Solutions
1340 Burlington
North Kansas City, MO 64116

We just did an installation in which we replaced 12 hanging choir microphones with two Voice Tracker I array microphones to cover an entire middle school stage, 50 feet wide by 30 feet deep. The Voice Trackers were much better than the 12 hanging mics for live sound re-enforcement.

The Theater Director is thrilled with the outcome. They just did a big speaking play (no choral singing), and didn’t use any other microphones at all. I was able to hear everything perfectly in the audience.

We placed the 2 Voice Tracker microphones on the sidewalls, mounted vertically and pointed inward towards the stage. See the diagram below and the photographs. The Voice Tracker is the black line near the flag on the sidewall.

We converted the Voice Tracker’s unbalanced output signal to a balanced audio signal with a RD LTX J2 summing transformer to prevent humming.

We used a dedicated compressor limiter on each microphone and adjusted as necessary to provide superior gain before feedback.

See this PDF diagram with set up instructions.

Martin Pilewski
Harvest Productions, Inc.
Kansas City, MO