Suddenly a whole bunch of friends are overseas, all at the same time, and each with a laptop Mac. I’m starting to discover the reality of Skype — until now, only a theoretical experience.
I must say, that provided each party has broadband, it works pretty well.
One problem I’ve had though is the whole echo-ey thing where I can hear my own voice coming out of their speakers (and presumably it’s vice versa for my friends). It’s all been too new to really play around with it, so it hadn’t occurred to me to try this this LifeClever tip: Get clearer audio chats on your laptop:
The microphone [in the MBP] is located under the left speaker grille, and can contribute to horrible feedback during a call (the person on the other side hears himself coming out of the speaker on your machine, fedback into your mic).
I changed my speaker balance so that output was all to the right speaker, and the effect was fantastic. Conversations are in mono, but you can have a perfect conversation without requiring a headset.
[Via Lifehacker: VoIP: Improve the quality of Skype calls by changing speaker balance.]
The LifeClever post includes screenshots for how to change the speaker balance on both Mac and Windows, so I won’t explain that here.
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Was nice to meet you on webstock the other day
Another way to avoid the echo in a skype call is to just use ear phones on both ends. Stereo and absolutely no echo.
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