Cultural Hall Zoom Call Audio Quality

[tkdenny]

Recently for our EQ meetings in the Cultural Hall to support an individual's hearing impairment we have started using the installed building audio system using the house standard mic and wall-installed sound system as described in Tech Wiki article, https://tech.churchofjesuschrist.org/wi ... ther_Rooms.

During our meeting the instructor will take the mic to class members who are commenting, and the whole class is able to clearly hear whomever is speaking over any music or speaker from the congregation in the chapel during their Sacrament meeting. This is an improvement! (Many of our EQ members are older and likely have unexpressed hearing impairment.)

I am the Ward TS who does these second hour Zoom broadcasts using my Dell Latitude laptop, a tripod-mounted webcam, and a Jabra 810 MS speakerphone connected from the instructor's table with an active USB cable, and generally having no complaints from the Zoom call recipients.

Since using the amplified microphone I am getting complaints that the audio quality in the Zoom call is lower than before we implemented the amplified audio in our lessons.

I am set up for these Zoom broadcasts next to the audio control box but do not see a way to output the XLR mic cable to an input cable to my laptop. I think our building has a "Crab box" but don't know if it can take the mic cable in, passing that to the room's amp _and_ also to a cable into my laptop for the Zoom call. I am also reluctant to fiddle with the XLR mic cable after reading the "Final Words" warning in the Tech Wiki article https://tech.churchofjesuschrist.org/wiki/Audio_input

Another solution might be for me to buy a wireless mic (Bluetooth or FM system not interfering with the Chapel system), splitting that signal to both the audio control box and my Zoom audio input.

Any and all thoughts / comments / ideas are welcome. Thanks.

[russellhltn]

I think our building has a "Crab box" but don't know if it can take the mic cable in, passing that to the room's amp _and_ also to a cable into my laptop for the Zoom call.

No, it can't. The crab box is designed to take a line/headphone/speaker input and turn it into a signal compatible with the XLR mic input.

Another solution might be for me to buy a wireless mic (Bluetooth or FM system not interfering with the Chapel system), splitting that signal to both the audio control box and my Zoom audio input.

That would work.

I do wonder about how you're going to deal with both an audio input and your Jabra speakerphone. Will zoom work with both at the same time? You might want to test/solve that problem first so you know what you need to accomplish.

[tkdenny]

Thanks, russellhltn.

Excellent direction.

Yes, I'm looking to replace the speakerphone with a solution that both allows amplification in the cultural hall and passing along a cleaner, direct input to the Zoom call.

Cheers.

[russellhltn]

Ok, what I'd suggest is a small mixer that will take in the teacher's mic, participant's mic and audio out of the laptop. It will output to the cultural hall XLR (at mic level) and feed the audio in on the laptop.

While that laptop connection sounds like a disaster, it works. Zoom does a really good job of isolating the input and outputs. Far better than could be done in the analog world with professional equipment.

[nmecantwin73]

If you haven't tried this already, another option might be to adjust the Audio settings within Zoom. If it is set on the default background noise suppression setting, it is possible Zoom is not picking up the output from the cultural hall speakers because it is suppressing it as background noise. This article has additional info: https://tech.churchofjesuschrist.org/wiki/Zoom_Audio