How to Implement an Effective AV System in Your Meeting Space
Just over one hour a day is the average amount of time we spend in conference rooms. Consider that more of us are working in hybrid teams, and you’ll see how this figure is on the rise. The office and workplace are, for most of us, where audiovisual (AV) and meeting room (MTR) systems come to the fore.
When you’re trying to communicate and collaborate with your teams across different locations, having bespoke and reliable video conferencing equipment helps make lags and glitchy screens a thing of the past.
Instead, you and your team can get back to working on your business together, with the right technology to support you.
In this guide, we’ll share how to implement an effective AV system for your meeting space. Read on for advice on assessing your room, equipment criteria and setting a realistic budget, garnered from our experience installing systems for our own clients.
Benefits of AV Solutions in Conference Rooms
First up, you’re considering an AV system for your meeting room… What benefits can you expect back?
1. Clear Communication
Well, let’s start with clear communication. Having a transparent and stress-free AV system is the next best thing to in-person meetings and can go way beyond your average Zoom call at your kitchen table.
Modern video conferencing technology and meeting room systems can even make it feel like remote team members or clients are right in the room with you, sidestepping the issues of poor audio and visuals traditionally associated with legacy video calling.
2. Collaboration
The benefit is not just better meetings. Whilst collaboration and connectivity software can never truly replace team cohesion and community that can be fostered by traditional office and workplace environments, it’s absolutely the next best thing.
AV solutions also come with their own advantages, encouraging and enabling colleagues who work remotely to get together more.
Data from Webex shares that teams that use video conferencing are 2.4 times more likely to find collaboration easier. This builds team trust and camaraderie, likely having further positive knock-on impacts on employee health in general.
3. Effortless Meetings
Whilst arguably the best part of a truly effective AV system for your meeting room is that you can forget it’s there. It’s clear that the wider impacts, which may not be as tangible at first, really are there when you invest in well-specified systems.
Your team can stay focused on the discussion, meetings can run efficiently, and it’s easier to make a positive and professional impression on clients and staff alike.
Effective AV systems slip into the background, allowing you and your teams to get to work.
How to Choose AV for Your Room
Ultimately, the AV system you’ll need will depend on your meeting room. Here are four questions to ask yourself when considering the equipment for you:
How big is the room? More on this below.
How many people do you expect to use it?
What kinds of meetings will you hold? For example, do you need interactive whiteboards or interactive flat panels for brainstorming or high-quality conferencing equipment for your board with multiple camera angles?
What is your budget? As we’ll cover later, this will help you assess how sophisticated a system you’ll need.
AV Systems for Small Meeting Rooms
If you’re thinking about AV equipment for a small meeting room, you’ll likely want to prioritise focused discussions and potentially brainstorming and quick content sharing. In this case, we’d recommend keeping your AV system simple, compact and versatile.
Huddle Spaces
For huddle spaces with up to 4 seats, a typical setup would be a 43” display and an all-in-one camera soundbar of some description.
Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is often preferred here, allowing users to quickly dock their company laptop and make, receive or transfer calls to a larger screen, with or without their local colleagues joining in.
Meeting Rooms
For true meeting rooms with more like 6 to 8 seats, you could consider interactive displays if the space is creative or a ‘dumb’ screen for a more presentation or video conference-focused room.
Please consider providing some method of USB tapback with any Interactive Flat Panel, whether that’s a wired USB connection, or increasingly using a wireless content sharing system.
High-quality speakerphone and a simple, wide-angle camera with auto framing for callers dialling in remotely. Pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras rarely add much in rooms this size, but there’s also no reason they still can’t perform well.
A Note on Installation for Small Meeting Rooms
Lastly, consider whether your system will be permanently installed, with cables routed through stud walls. If you don’t have permission or the load-bearing capacity to install an AV system permanently, you might consider a floor-standing trolley of some kind.
Please always ensure you follow all local building regulations and only ever use rated hardware. If you’re unsure, please feel free to reach out to us.
We set up a portable BYOD Teams Meeting Room System on a stand for this meeting room, allowing for high-quality display and flexibility, as the client only leased the space and was moving soon.
AV Systems for Large Meeting Rooms
For a larger room or auditorium, you’re likely to need a more complex AV setup. The key here is to be able to reach everyone in your audience. This could include:
Large-format displays or multiple screens positioned to be visible at different angles.
Ceiling speakers, beamforming mic arrays, or wireless mics for audio.
Multiple pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras, potentially with speaker tracking that can smoothly follow your speakers or switch between meeting participants.
Larger meeting rooms tend to fall into one of two major categories: true meeting rooms, such as board rooms and those closer to classrooms in nature, covering everything from town hall spaces to lecture rooms and increasingly, multi-use hybrid event spaces.
It can’t be stressed enough that the type of equipment you should choose depends hugely on the types of meetings your space needs to support.
Consider User Experience
We must mention that AV systems for large meeting rooms need to be highly user-friendly. After all, an AV system is only valuable if your teams can make the most of its capabilities.
Frustrated users will simply lose faith in installed systems, creating a barrier between themselves and the equipment, which, of course, then creates a barrier between themselves and the audience or their colleagues.
Failed deployments are exceedingly common across all manner of environments. If you’re considering AV for your meeting room, we can support you with designs tailored to your needs. Learn more about our AV installation and hire services here.
Your Meeting Room AV Equipment Checklist
We’ve covered the basics of why you might need an AV system and how to choose one for your meeting room. Next, let’s recap the basic kit you’ll need for your meeting room, as well as the advanced technology you might choose.
1. Audio
If your meeting room is small, audio might be as simple as a speakerphone. However, AV systems can go much further to maximise audio for your meeting room. You might choose from:
Microphones - whether wireless, ceiling-mounted or on tables.
Speakers - these may be portable or positioned on the ceiling or walls.
Acoustic treatments - For larger rooms, specialist panels and tiles can help to reduce echo and enhance sound quality.
This last point is especially worth noting, as too often we are asked to install meeting room systems in spaces with multiple parallel glass surfaces where previous meeting room systems haven’t ‘sounded very good’...
2. Visual
Most obviously, the screen that you choose needs to fit your room’s dimensions. From there, you might choose projectors for presentations or interactive flat panel displays for collaborative meetings.
It’s important to ensure that displays are neither too small nor too big. To do this, you can refer to the ANSI/INFOCOMM V202.01:2016 standards. Consider the type of content you intend to deploy, whether it’s basic decision-making or analytical decision-making
Mounting brackets on walls can give your screens stability, while stands can allow for flexibility, especially helpful if multiple teams make use of your meeting room for different purposes.
Again, you absolutely need to ensure that displays are at the correct height, not just so they can be seen but to avoid causing injury to the viewer in terms of eye strain and neck muscle injury.
3. Connectivity
Of course, we can’t talk about AV for meetings without mentioning connectivity. Getting your internet connection right is essential for smooth meetings, especially given that conference room data consumption has increased by 30% with the introduction of high-definition video.
For the best connectivity, your meeting room will need reliable Wi-Fi and a wired internet connection in case of disruptions.
Wireless content sharing devices such as Clickshare and our favourite offerings from Blustream are finally now at a level where they are genuine alternatives to wired connections.
Nevertheless, meeting rooms still likely require a mix of HDMI, USB-C, DisplayPort and more in order to service users adequately.
How Much to Spend on AV Meeting Room
This is a question we often hear asked and, as an AV installation company, we’ll always say that the amount your AV system will cost depends on what you need and want from it.
Setting a Budget
Many users make the mistake of not budgeting enough to kit out their meeting room from the get-go, and the project never truly recovers.
However, over the years, using our experience, we have been able to collate the best combinations of budget-friendly equipment possible for a variety of use cases.
The key is in establishing the kind of meetings your room should support, but also determining how many hours a day the room needs to operate.
Assessing Your Needs
For example, spending £25,000 on a meeting room system that is capable of turning live 2D photos into collaborative 3D objects is great. However, if those functionalities are used solely to show off to new hires and visitors, what is the point?
Likewise, you could put in the cheapest £3,000 system you can get to run a Teams Meeting Room license. If you then used it for 10 hours a day, 7 days a week, you’d likely face disappointment when the budget equipment develops faults.
These issues are absolutely avoidable by budgeting more realistically.
AV systems can be designed to meet all kinds of meeting needs, from creative huddles to AGMs. That’s why, when setting a budget, it’s essential to consider your needs and invest in the technology you’ll use.
Installing AV Equipment
For established businesses, installing your own AV equipment can be a great choice, especially if you’re consistently using your meeting spaces and have hybrid teams.
While the upfront investment may be higher, from £2,500 for a small room to £20,000+ for large rooms, you’ll benefit from a lower long-term cost compared to hiring. You’ll also be able to work with your installers to design a bespoke AV system that’s tailored to your needs.
How We Can Help
We hope you’ve found this guide helpful as an introduction to how to implement an effective AV system in your meeting space.
If you’d like to go further, we can support you with AV systems built around your business, from equipment hire for your meeting room and conference AV to fully-installed Microsoft Teams meeting rooms.
At Spartan Audio Visual, we’re a Cardiff-based team working across the UK, from Newport and Bristol to Glasgow.
Learn more about AV installation here and contact our team to get started.