The benefits of multi-speaker conferencing and the design of conference bridge control algorithm

The authors examine the benefits to be gained with a multispeaker narrowband conference capability and design parameters for such a system. Subjective opinions on 18 conferencing systems by 16 subjects, audio recordings of input and output channels for each subject and system, and data files that detail the speech activity and channel switch settings for each subject and system every 50 ms have been provided. An important conferencing objective or conference type effect has been found: for different types of discussion the speech dynamics and system requirements are substantially different. Various speech/bridge dynamic states are evaluated. The percent time that the system is in these states is provided along with interval distributions.<>