The ABC of audio conferences explained in simple words

Once, I was on the phone with my boss, when he suddenly called a customer to join our conversation: this was my first contact with Audio conferencing technology. We spent some little time defining the details of a project, and then we hung up. It was something neither difficult nor worrying.

An audio conference (also named conference call or audio teleconference) is nothing else than a conversation among remote speakers through any devices that enable the long-distance transmission of sounds, like smartphones or tablets. The number of people involved can be more than two: usually, we have at least three people, but they could be more.

PCs can also be used to participate to an audio conference, on the condition that they are equipped with speakers and microphones. Conference calls can be conducted either through the ordinary telephone line, or the internet. The first solution works better when your internet connection is bad. This is the reason why few tools for Audio Conferencing like R-HUB`s TurboMeeting (http://www.rhubcom.com) let customers the choice between the two means.

What are the advantages of conference calls? Usually, three key benefits of this technology are mentioned:

• Audio conferencing is more cost-effective than other means of remote communication, like video conferencing. The quality of audio-calls might be even better than the one of video-calls in many cases, and particularly when the pcs or tablets of the participants do not support High Definition.

• Audio conferencing is easy to utilize. Setting-up is intuitive and any other device than smartphones is requested. This proves to be a great advantage in those situations as standing in the bus or the train, or while sitting and waiting for your plane in an airport.

• Audio-conferencing is a powerful way to communicate, especially in business. The alternative should be a trip, an option that is much more expensive and time-consuming than a placing a call.

And the disadvantages? Yes, they are of course, like in every technology.

• During an audio-call, the non-verbal communication gets fatally lost. This is inevitable, as participants cannot see each other. However, most conferencing solutions support both audio and video conferencing today. Therefore, this does not seem to be a difficult problem to solve.

• You cannot be sure that participants are focused on the meeting. This is a consequence of the fact that you cannot see them.

• The quality of sounds could become a problem, especially if there is some background noise, or the telephone line is bad.

• During audio conferences, it is not possible to share documents, images, or slides. In these cases, you have necessarily to scale up to video conferencing.

In conclusion, you’d better choose a solution that let you free to switch to video calling, so as to have the highest number of options available and make the most of the two technologies.

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