“You’re straining to follow the conversation, background noise interrupts, and if two people talk at the same time, the sound cuts out,” complains Voxeet founder Stephane Giraudie as he describes the experience of conference calls. “It can be hard to tell who’s speaking, and that lack of context can make it hard to follow the conversation.”
Giraudie is from France and he found the conference calls between his colleagues in USA and Europe very frustrating. “The quality and functionality of conference calls aren’t much different than they were 10 years ago; we’re planning on changing that.”
Voxeet identified the three most common problems with conference calls: bad sound quality, no easy way to identify speakers, and no mobility. Voxeet wants to radically transform what it calls “the infuriating space of conference calling” by solving those problems.
It developed an app that provides more audio clarity through sophisticated audio processing, and that also lets you manage your call (and the people in it) through a visual interface. Now it works with Windows PCs and Android phones, but they plan to add iOS devices and Mac PCs.
Voxeet can transfer the call from a PC to a cell phone in mid-conference with a single click (and without beep-filled notifications to colleagues).
The audio is fully duplex--more than one person can talk at the same time without making the other people’s audio cut out. It’s in stereo and if you move the speaker’s avatar in the app from left to right, their audio shifts from left to right.
Giraudie says, “We’ll be producing an API to support our integration efforts with future development partners who will use Voxeet as an embedded technology in their own product. Also, we plan on developing Voxeet technology that will extend the same 3D Audio quality to conference room settings.”
Go Voxeet
