As useful as high definition audio is for person-to-person calls, it would be great to have this type of option for conference calls as well.  Vapps provides this type of service, called high-definition conferencing, to Skype.  In the Tools menu of the Windows version of Skype, there’s a Do-More button that launches the Vapps-powered conferencing solution.  Within this interface, you can start an instant meeting or schedule one in the future.  Meeting attendees are notified either by a Skype IM message or an email. Meetings can consist of up to 500 attendees.

While using Vapps, meeting facilitators can see who joins and leaves the meeting, mute and unmute participants, and record the conference as well.  The Skype Do More menu is available in English, Mandarin Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Polish, and Spanish.  This conferencing service, with its use of pure VoIP, is popular with international teams who need to conduct conference calls.

Why does Vapps sound so much better than a traditional phone call?  It’s all about wideband connectivity.  That is, a normal copper phone wire transmission only uses about a third of the fidelity the human ear can hear.  High definition conferencing uses 16KHz and you can definitely hear the difference as audio quality is theoretically 4-times better using this metric.

For Skype conference calling, Vapps Service is free.  Packages begin at $25/month and go up to $75/month.  It is possible to have a mix of landlines and Skype participants, where traditional phone users will call in via a toll-free phone number or local number.  For more information, check out Vapps’ website.

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