Audio is the most important part of a conference room because communication depends on it, not displays, not cameras. Video conferencing platforms actually prioritize audio over video when bandwidth gets tight, reducing video quality first to protect voice clarity, because a meeting can survive a pixelated picture but not a garbled voice. Despite that, most organizations still spend more on displays and cameras than on microphones, DSP configuration, and acoustic treatment. That mismatch is where most audio problems come from.
Blog 3 of 8 in the series: What AV Topics Should I Be Paying Attention to in 2026?
Through most of the 2010s, AV investment chased video. Cameras improved, displays got bigger, collaboration platforms got slicker, and rooms became more visually impressive. Audio was treated like a solved problem, handled with a conference speakerphone or a ceiling mic dropped in at the end of a project almost as an afterthought.
Hybrid work blew that up. When half the participants are remote and half are in the room, microphone quality, room acoustics, and speaker placement determine whether the meeting actually works. Remote participants hear everything the room mic picks up, including HVAC noise, keyboard clicks, and speech bouncing off glass walls. Organizations that had ignored audio for years suddenly had a very visible, very embarrassing problem on every call.
Speech intelligibility is the percentage of spoken words a listener can actually understand under real room conditions. It is measured using the Speech Transmission Index (STI), which scores from 0.0 to 1.0.
Most conference rooms that have never had an acoustic evaluation score somewhere between 0.45 and 0.60. You do not always need to tear up the walls to make a real difference.
Ceiling array microphones with beamforming and automatic gain control have replaced tabletop speakerphones and boundary microphones as the standard for medium to large conference rooms.
For rooms under 150 square feet, tabletop conferencing units like the Shure MXA310 or Biamp Devio give you near-ceiling-array quality without the ceiling installation complexity.
A DSP handles all audio routing, mixing, equalization, noise gating, automatic gain control, and echo cancellation in the room system. It is the most critical component in determining final audio quality. The best microphones in the world will underperform in a room with a poorly configured DSP.
More than most people expect. The physical space has as much impact on audio quality as the equipment you put in it. Modern conference rooms love hard reflective surfaces: glass walls, polished concrete floors, and open ceilings. All of them drive reverberation time (RT60) above acceptable thresholds.
The target for a professional meeting room is an RT60 of 0.3 to 0.5 seconds. Above 0.7 seconds, acoustic treatment is necessary to hit acceptable speech intelligibility. Treatment options:
Acoustic design should happen at the same time as AV design, not as a fix-it project after the complaints start rolling in. Explore DGI's Sound & Acoustic Solutions for how we approach this.
Placement determines what the system actually captures. A ceiling array microphone positioned more than 8 feet from a participant picks up reduced direct speech and amplified room noise, which even the best DSP cannot fully clean up. Speaker placement that does not provide even coverage creates zones where some participants hear clearly and others are constantly struggling.
Placement decisions should be based on seating layout, room dimensions, ceiling height, and the specific coverage specs of the microphone being used, not on where it is convenient to run cable.
For the full 2026 AV trends picture, see What AV Topics Should I Be Paying Attention to in 2026