One time I worked at a zoom competitor, and our team got to prototype a "detect if these people are in the same room as each other" feature for dealing with echo cancellation etc, where everyone's laptop would emit a unique high frequency, and everyone's laptop would listen for other frequencies. Of course it worked in pristine conditions and fell down in the real world. But it was a fun experiment...
People need to learn manners, nobody should be using video calling without headphones. It's insane whenever someone joins and we hear all their background, feedback of whoever is speaking, etc as if nobody has ever told them to mute or stop using speaker in their life.
> People need to learn manners, nobody should be using video calling without headphones.
OK? it still sucks even with headphones. Imagine the following scenario: You are in a meeting using your headphones as you suggest. A coworker a few seats away from you are in the same meeting using their own headsphones. When they talk you hear their real voice reach your ears first (this happens with even the best noise canceling headphones to some extent) and then you hear their voice with some delay from the meeting.
This is not about manners or headphones.
Better meeting software identifies when this is happening and they suppress the streamed voice of your coworker just for you.
This is a great answer. But I would add that while a technical solution is welcomed, an organizational one could help too: why are multiple people in the same meeting joining from nearby desks instead of a conference room?
There's a downside to the conference room angle; the camera is far away, and the image of the room occupies the same amount of space on my monitor as the seven other heads in the call who are calling in remotely.
So unless I know the voice of everyone in the conference room, I have no idea who's speaking at any given point unless they're also gesticulating wildly.
I was in such a meeting yesterday where multiple participants were required by law to be each in same meeting from different computers in same room and with their mics and speakers on, and same law prevents use of conference room camera speakers and mic. There was a constant and annoying audio echo for everyone.
