Introduction to Microphone Gain

For each preset, you must configure the gain for your microphones. This is a fairly straightforward operation; however, it is necessary to find the optimum gain that seems to transmit the best audio to whoever is listening.

You cannot configure microphone gain in isolation. Always monitor your audio. This author suggests setting up the AG software on a machine (laptop, your control machine or some other desktop). You can then take this "monitoring node" into the venue and use a pair of headphones connected to it to monitor the audio from the other sources in the venue. This gives you the opportunity to detect echo coming from your node and to balance the audio level of your node with the other audio sources in the venue.

Alternatively, you should test your audio locally with the RTP packet reflector located at http://www-unix.mcs.anl.gov/~olson/AG/Software/Linux/linux-reflector.tar.gz or arrange time to test with a remote site. As you test your audio, be aware of the gain of the microphone, the location of your room speakers in relation to your microphones, and the loudness of the room speakers. This can cause a problem known commonly as "echo". Remote sites will be able to tell you if you are producing echo.

If you are testing audio with remote sites and don't monitor your audio from another machine, you will never hear yourself echo!