Muting background noises was the thing just some months ago. While in office or public places you needed to cushion yourself with a headset to keep the focus while working.
Now, we have the opposite issue. It’s so silent in remote work that you start to miss the chatter and casual talks that were ever permanent in workplaces.
Voice chat applications are coming plenty. Twitch is a classic choice gaining a foothold outside of gaming.
Watercooler is still in beta as well as Voicehup.app. Geneva, Chalk, Storm, TTYL and Mornin were others that came up with a quick search.
It’s interesting to see how we will use these tools and learn to utilise their benefits and go around the shortcomings. For example, when recording podcasts to separate tracks remotely having a lively back-and-forth discussion differs from a live or in the same physical space situations.
Audio lag makes the conversation a bit more awkward for quick comebacks. Another thing is the audio level. Separate tracks have volumes optimised for the single speaker. You add them up in the post-production and it’s a cacophony.
How do you have a group chat where it actually feels like a group talk and not individual people talking over each other?
Persistent voice talk might be the thing in this decade. The next one may have the persistent virtual video experience. Push-to-talk anyone?
