Intelligibility Matters By Dan James
You or your audience may not realize it, but your audience may have to strain to be able to understand what is being said by the presenter. Whether they are straining consciously or unconsciously the resulting stress and fatigue causes frustration, exhaustion, and confusion. As a meeting professional you are responsible to ensure that your audience freely understands every word of the presentation, and does not, because of an unintelligible situation, give up trying to understand or even worse misinterpreting what was said.
The purpose of these articles is to help both the new and the seasoned meeting professional ensure presentations are intelligible. Much of what is covered you may already intuitively understand, but it is good to review the importance of all issues relating to intelligibility. This is for the common good, so if I mess up or if you have something to add, please let us know via e-mail at dan@clearsound.us. The following are the topics we will cover.
- Intelligibility Criteria
- The presenter and set up
- Room acoustics
- Microphone Choice
- Microphone Placement
- EQ on the Mixer
- Effects: Comp/Limiter
- Speaker System Choice
- Speaker Placement
- Equalizing the System
