What your room needs

Most rooms already have everything. Here is the list, in the order it matters.

Sound

What you want is a clean feed of whoever is speaking.

• A spare output from your mixer is the best option. Any output you can assign the microphones to will do.
• The computer’s own microphone works for a small room where the speaker is close by and the room is quiet.
• A microphone in the ceiling or at the back is the one to avoid. It picks up the room as much as the speaker.

Leave out effects and music if you can. Speech on its own is what you want to send.

See Choosing your sound source and Setting the level.

A computer at the sound position

Windows, with the desk app installed. It needs to stay awake and logged in for the whole event, so turn off sleep and screen lock before the first one. The app does not keep the computer awake on its own.

The desk app is the best way to take sound from the desk, but it is not the only way. A laptop, tablet or phone with a browser can send the room’s sound from its own microphone, with nothing installed. The difference is the sound it hears: a feed from the desk gives better recognition than a microphone in the room. See The computer at the desk and Streaming from a browser.

Internet

A wired connection if you have one. Wi-Fi is fine when it is steady. If the connection drops, the app reconnects on its own and carries on.

The people reading use their own phones on the venue’s Wi-Fi or on mobile data. See Internet and connections.

A screen, only if you want one

If you want the text visible in the room rather than only on phones, any display or projector with a browser will do. You open one page on it and leave it running. It shows one language, the one set for the venue, with your logo and colours if you want them. See Captions on the room screen.

If you stream video, the same text can sit over your picture as a caption band. See Captions over your video stream.

Phones

Nothing to install. People open a link and choose a language. If they want to listen rather than read, they can, with earphones in their own phone.

A headphone system, if you already own one

A venue that already hands out wireless receivers can send one language into the transmitter and keep using them. It takes one spare phone, tablet or laptop per language. See Feeding your headphone system.

Before the day: Run a short event with nobody in the room, watch the meter move, and open the link on your own phone. See Test before the day.