Polycom SoundStation Conference Phone
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Product Description
Why settle for an ordinary, handset speakerphone when you can use a SoundStation? Unlike other speakerphones that only allow one person to talk at a time, Polycom's breakthrough Acoustic Clarity Technology lets you have natural, free-flowing two-way discussions. Conference calls are not only more productive, but also much more efficient.While on a conference call, have you ever tried to interrupt someone who was making a point you did not agree with? Well, SoundStation enables you to speak at the same time as someone else so you don't have to wait for him or her to stop talking before you can break in. For basic conferencing in small and medium-size conference rooms, choose SoundStation.
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Product Description
Meet all your teleconferencing needs with the full-duplex Polycom SoundStation. This conference phone is ideal for small- to medium-sized rooms containing one to five people. With conventional, half-duplex speakerphones, only one party can speak at a time without clipping off the other party's voice. Echoes and howling can further disrupt your conversations and lead to costly misunderstandings. But because of the SoundStation's full-duplex operation, you can speak naturally and hear both sides of the conversation clearly.
The SoundStation ensures high sound quality with three microphones and a digitally tuned speaker for 360-degree coverage of an office or conference room. Polycom's Acoustic Clarity Technology uses digital signal processing with analog telephone lines to eliminate the clipping and fading that plague most speakerphones. This technology improves speaker and microphone performance over the full bandwidth of the telephone line--300 to 3,500 Hz. Other features that boost sound quality include dynamic telephone-line and dynamic room-echo cancellation, signal depression, microphone switching, and digital filtering of voice signals.
The SoundStation has a full alphanumeric keypad for dialing, with a mute button and a flash key to access functions like hold, conference, and transfer. There is also a jack to plug in a tape recorder. Dual-colored LEDs signal phone status, and other controls include a ringer volume, speaker volume, and microphone mute.
The SoundStation works with any analog phone system or with an adapter (sold separately) for digital phone systems. It comes with a wall module, 25-foot power cable, 7-foot telephone cable, and a one-year warranty.
Customer Reviews
Decent speakerphone for the money
No question about it, Polycom make the best speakerphones. This particular model is a compromise; its better than many phones but far from the best that Polycom can do. Here's the scoop.
This model uses three microphones (one in each corner of the triangle), all of which remain active the entire time. Depending on your room acoustics and where you sit/stand, you may sound like you are talking from inside of a deep well (kind of a hollow echo). Better Polycom models (like the Soundstation Premier) avoid this by only leaving one microphone active at a time, and with higher quality components and circuits. For example, noice canceling circuit to to remove background noise, a feature lacking in this model.
That said, you may still be happy with this model, as it costs a whole lot less than the Premier version and is way better than the built-in speakerphones included in many desktop handset units. To decide you need to consider how important the quality of your conference calls is, and what kinds of acoustics the room that you'll be using has. If you need the best, go with the Premier, otherwise this is a solid model.
Wonderful speakerphone
After getting frustrated with typical multipurpose phones (handset, speakerphone, answering machine, caller ID, potato peeler, and inflatable raft all in one) I went looking for an excellent speakerphone. This gets my highest recommendation. The sound is clear, the ability to carry on a two-way conversation without noticable pausing or clipping is wonderful, and the system is compact and easy to use. One slight caveat: though the microphones are sensitive enough for everyday use and the speaker can be turned up loud enough to make the party at the other end of the line clearly audible, there is a certain threshold below which you cannot hear the individual at the other end of the line - in this case, a handset can be superior. (I didn't downgrade this system from five stars for this, though - all speakerphones seem to have this problem.)
