Now, this is significant. MVP Matt Landis and his merry band of mavens is getting their contact center out to the world. This is a happy event for those of us looking for just a bit more than nested RGS.
https://www.landistechnologies.com/office365contactcenter/
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This review is going to cover the “Sennheiser SC 75 USB MS Binaural UC Headset USB 3.5mm” (there is a serious product title) and the Sennheiser SD Pro 2 ML DECT Wireless Binaural Headset (a shorter title but still a mouthful).
The 75 is a wired (USB via an inline module adapter thingy). The SD Pro2 is a DECT wireless. Both have a place, and both are very nice units. Both are Binaural. I tend to run to binaural when at all possible due to my hearing loss. And music sounds way better. Two ears are better than one. Trust me.
But, wired v wireless is a big differentiator. For the center mass of your office workers, a wired headset will work just fine. But some people (like me) like the flexibility of the BT or DECT modality so they can walk and talk. I know several customers who routinely go to the server room and you would never know they are not at their desk. DECT has a range (projected/published) of 300 feet. Whether or not you get all of its range is problematical and depends on perfect conditions.
Coming out of the box the SC 75 is in two pieces – the cable that plugs into the inline module, and the overall headset. Pretty basic. However, that basic stuff is good. Plug it in and it works. Simple as that. SfB picked it right up and I was operational. Teams required that I tell Teams to use it. After that, seamless.
The SC 75 audio quality that is a solid 9.5 on the Tsoorad Goodness Scale. Build quality seems very nice. Materials are typical Sennheiser. No ANC, but that is a personal preference.
The SD Pro 2
Now this is my type of device. Wireless. DECT. Comfort. Great quality, both build and audio. ANC. A superior piece of gear. My SfB client loved it…it did not have to do anything but tell it to be the preferred device one time, and after that, all was golden. I suspect that the “one time” thing has to do with me having like 12 headsets currently going through testing.
Of the two, I spend most of my testing time with the SD Pro 2. It meets my personal needs better than the wired headset. Having said that, I need a travel headset also, and the SC 75 does meet that need. So, the bottom line is, you can’t go wrong with either!
You can get the SC 75 right here, and the SD Pro 2 ML right here – and both worked equally as well with Microsoft Teams as they did with SfB.
YMMV
Unbeknownst to me, Yamaha, a firm who I thought made great motorcycles and my mother’s piano, is also making a very nice, Skype certified, medium/large conference room audio solution. Comes OOBE ready to be a speakerphone for the SfB client. The nice folks at Yamaha let me play with one for a few days.
Here is what the Yamaha marketing mavens have to say:
“Ideal for medium and large spaces, this intuitive communications system features separate microphone and speaker units for flexibility during audio, web, and video conferencing. Designed to support 2 external speakers and 5 daisy-chained microphones, it’s the perfect scalable solution for accommodating larger meeting rooms and additional participants. Adaptive echo cancellation and human voice activity detection (HVAD) minimize background noise, facilitating natural, stress-free conversation during every call.”
If you poke around their website, Yamaha also has the obligatory case studies.
Ya…. well, OK, it’s good for them to say it, quite another for us lowly consumer types to actually realize it. Let’s break open the box and see what is what.
Out of the box, you get a main unit, wires/cables to match, and an external microphone. There is also a small pamphlet of instructions which I did not read until afterwards. Does anyone read those things first?
One of the first things I noticed was the build quality. We got good stuff here. Solid. Construction on par with what I expected from a musical instrument manufacture (based on mommy’s piano). And that theme carried through acoustically also.
Controls are easy to see and use. The connections are clear and sturdy – no cheap shortcuts here.
Quality sonic delivery – at least according to the Tsoorad Test Lab Standard Ear Device. Great volume as the timbre of the delivery carries the audio track farther than some rinky-dink speaker system does. Or at least it sure seems that way to me. At any rate, audio quality in this unit is now my measuring stick.
The YVC-1000MS is essentially treated as a speaker phone device. This is the comparison between the two versions, with the right side being the SfB certified. I connected to it with USB and BT. Both modalities were treated as you would expect SfB to treat them. Seamless.
Yamaha provides a zippy tear sheet.
You can get your very own YVC-1000MS right here.
A great piece of kit. I am not sure that this is a center-mass market thing. But, for a mid-to-high-end conference room need, and in a place that does not need/want/use video (there is a ton of that BTW), this is where I will look first. There might be other solutions out there, but this one clearly sounds the best, is seamless with a variety of platforms, and has the build quality to outlast the competition.
YMMV
