Polycom Sound Station conference phone remains meeting room icon for 25 years

As Polycom, the global leader in voice and video collaboration solutions, celebrates its 25th year, so too does the triangular-shaped HD audio solution for which the company is renowned for.

The Polycom Soundstation remains a standard feature in small- to mid-size conference rooms globally, whether using analog lines or Voice over IP (VoIP) telephony.

For over a century, voice communication has been one of the most critical elements of conferencing across borders.

With the continuing growth of globalisation and remote work teams, enterprises are demanding more out of their communication tools to ensure that group conversations remain clear, productive, and uninterrupted by background noise. Incorporating patented Polycom technology such as HD Voice Polycom Acoustic Clarityand Dynamic Noise Reduction, the SoundStation series of audio conferencing solutions enable lifelike high-fidelity conversations, delivering twice the clarity of ordinary phone calls.

Polycom’s co-founder and Chief Evangelist, Jeff Rodman, explained that the difference HD Voice brings to an audio conference is that it brings more of the human voice to communications than that traditionally carried over a standard telephone or speakerphone.

“For a century, traditional telephones have carried sound in only a very narrow range, from only 3/10 kHz to 3.3 kHz. But the range of the human voice is far beyond this. Speech is important from 1/10 kHz to about 14 kHz, a span of 140 times instead of 11 times. That’s very significant because it is in these wider ranges that you find a lot– more enunciation, making sense of accented speech, separating out background noise, and being able to distinguish between similar words like ‘sailing’ and ‘failing,’ for example. This range is outside of that which a standard telephone can carry and this is why people will often have to huddle around a speakerphone to work out what the person on the other end is saying," Rodman said.

Considering its technical excellence, the Polycom SoundStation originated from humble beginnings; Polycom co-founders Jeff Rodman and Brian Hinman conceived the design in a San Francisco basement, to begin implementing their vision for effortless human collaboration in video, audio, and content, across great distances with this first step: transparent speech collaboration from anywhere.

Sue Day, Senior Director of Marketing, Polycom Asia Pacific states that the SoundStation’s status in meeting rooms across the world goes far beyond its extraordinary performance and iconic shape. “In my 12 year tenure at Polycom, I have received a lot of positive feedback from customers who refer to Polycom's SoundStation solution simply as ‘the Polycom’.  The SoundStation is a familiar, trusted conferencing tool our customers rely on and feel comfortable operating.”