"HI Kriss,

I'm all for technology not getting in the way. They guy was probably thinking on his feet, bursting to talk, and so didn't want to wait for a microphone before replying and losing his train of thought. If you start telling people to stop and wait until the online sound quality is good, they'll wonder if they're at a conference or a TV broadcast.

On the other hand if you tell people that the microphone is needed for those in the room who are hard of hearing, they probably would accept that. So happily, our online audio needs can piggy back on the back of a local need transparently. This is much better, and similar to our transparent way of recording screen activity by piggy backing on the screen output being sent to the data projector. The presenter's didn't need to do anything special on their PCs/Macs for the screen recording to work, and that's how it should be.

I don't know whether V/045 has a "hearing loop" - a system feeding in-room audio specially to hearing aids - but that is used in some lectures in York (Rob Stone mentioned it once.) Ideally all large lecture theatres should have this though.

Anthony."