Whether working in the traditional hustle and bustle of the normal office, working from home, or a hybrid situation, noise contamination is a real concern for audio quality. A crowded office with coworkers conversing with clients on the phones. Catching up over the weekend happenings at the water cooler. Reciting the happenings of the home workspace with pets, kids, the weather or potential traffic.
In any case, the last thing you need when having an important conversation or webinar with a team or client is that background noise distorting or distracting from the business at hand.
Poly understands that business and life are complicated and noise is inevitable. Thus, they developed Acoustic Fence and NoiseBlockAI to mitigate those problems, providing you and the person you’re talking to with crystal clear audio no matter the environment you are working out of. So what are they?
Poly Acoustic Fence
Acoustic Fence creates a virtual perimeter around your Poly device, for example with the Poly Blackwire 8225 Headset. Whether your meeting room is next to a reception area, by a bustling hallway, a shop or warehouse area with the noise of all sorts of machinery, or even a home office where you might have traffic or pets, Acoustic Fence greatly reduces distractions.
Acoustic Fence applies advanced echo cancellation techniques which smartly “cancel out” all the soundwaves except for your voice. But echo cancellation alone would not fully create the perimeter.
To achieve that, Acoustic Fence uses multiple microphones to determine how far sounds have travelled to reach them. The device then isolates any sounds that come from beyond a certain distance, creating a virtual “fence.”
It blocks noise beyond this virtual fence, so participants on the receiving end of the call only hear your voice. Without outside distractions, you’re both free to focus fully on the meeting at hand with no concern for the background noise of the office or home workspace.
Poly NoiseBlockAI
NoiseBlockAI reduces noise in a different fashion.
Let’s assume you’re video conferencing using a Poly Studio X50 Video Bar in a dedicated conference room. People may be actively taking notes or going through documents. Acoustic Fence would isolate the sounds from outside of your area, but it cannot help with the clack of fingers on keyboards or the shuffle and crinkle of papers.
While seemingly minor, these noises can prove incredibly distracting for the person on the other end of your conversation. One way you can get rid of these ambient noises is to mute the microphone. However, it’s a lot of work to have to constantly mute and unmute the mic.
This is where Poly’s NoiseBlockAI comes in.
NoiseBlockAI uses the microphones of your Poly device to listen for those instances where there is sound being generated yet nobody is speaking. The device then automatically mutes your microphone to prevent those sounds from distracting from the meeting. Once it detects your voice again, it unmutes the microphone.
This subtle yet powerful feature makes all the difference in your virtual meetings.
Comparing and Contrasting
While both incredibly useful, there are some differences between the Acoustic Fence and NoiseBlockAI.
Acoustic Fence creates a barrier around your conversation. This ensures that only the people who are in the meeting are audible to those on the other end of the call, which makes it especially useful in situations with lots of ambient noise, like open offices. However, it doesn’t distinguish those small yet distracting noises caused by the participants.
NoiseBlockAI stops the little distractions such as the loud click and clack of a keyboard, crinkles of paper or other mundane sounds of the office or hybrid workspace, which is excellent to have even in dedicated conference rooms.
Conclusion
Both Poly’s Acoustic Fence and NoiseBlockAI are incredibly powerful tools for the age of digital business. No matter if you and your team still work out of the traditional office or the increasingly common remote setup, both NoiseBlockAI and Acoustic Fence offer a solution for common teleconferencing issues. Each of these technologies can also be used simultaneously depending on the environment.
Whether you use a device like Poly Studio P15 Video Bar in the office or in a home environment, Acoustic Fence and NoiseBlockAI can offer you and your business allows you to pick the solution that is best for your video conferencing needs.