Identifying & Eliminating Sources of Echo

When there is echo in a conference, it is usually caused by a malfunction on one of the connections in the meeting. The specific cause of the echo could be a faulty speakerphone or headset, or some other equipment problem or a network problem.

The person that does NOT hear the echo is the one CAUSING the echo. This can be rather confusing, because if, for example, Amy, Michael, David and Susan are in a meeting, and Amy, Michael and Susan all complain that they are hearing an echo, David might say “I’m not having a problem – why don’t you all try re-connecting and see if it improves.” In fact, David is the source of the problem and HE should try re-connecting (ideally with a different telephone).

If the person causing the echo presses *6 on their telephone keypad, it will mute their line and the echo (heard by the others in the meeting) should stop. When the person needs to speak again, they would press *6 to un-mute.

ZipDX offers meeting HOSTS some additional tools to help diagnose and deal with echo problems:

1. Identify the source

Use the web-based Conference Dashboard to view all the participants in the meeting and see who is “talking.” When the display indicates that a particular individual is talking, it means that the system is detecting an audible signal coming from that connection. If, for example, you hear Amy talking, but the Dashboard shows that both Amy and David are talking, you can be suspicious that David is the source of the echo. Click on David’s name and choose a “Mute” option. If David was the source of the echo, it will stop.

2. Put the call in “Lecture Mode.”

In this mode, all participants (non-hosts) are muted by default.

In “Soft Lecture” mode, they can selectively un-mute when they want to speak, by pressing *6 on their telephone keypad. This is useful for larger meetings where a single participant introducing echo (or other noise) can be quite disruptive.

A HOST can invoke Soft Lecture Mode from the web-based Dashboard, or by dialing *961 on the telephone keypad.

3. From the telephone keypad

While the echo is occurring, a host can dial *962 from their telephone keypad. This will mute any participants that are detected as currently “talking” (that is, introducing sound into the meeting). This can be useful if you cannot access the web-based dashboard but need to “hush” whatever is causing the problem.

Tell your meeting participants that when they need to speak, they can toggle their mute status by dialing *6.

A participant can ensure their microphone is enabled by dialing *60 (that will ensure that muting is OFF); *61 forces a participant’s own mute state to “on” (audio is blocked).