If you’ve ever tried to get your whole family in one place for a video call—for your regular weekend family call, maybe it’s Grandma’s birthday, or a holiday gathering—you’ve probably run into some frustrating moments. One person is too far away from the microphone, so you can’t quite make out what they’re saying. Another person speaks at the same time as someone else, but people can’t hear them, and everyone’s voices garble into a distorted mess. Someone shouts, “Can you hear me now?” Everyone leans in closer to the phone or laptop, but it doesn’t really help much. By the end, you’re left with that feeling: Why is this so difficult?

The truth is, using your personal devices—like your phone, tablet, or laptop—for group video calls often leads to subpar sound for a number of very real (and fascinating) technical reasons. And these issues are not random design flaws; they’re often intentional, because phones, tablets, and laptops are built for one person to use at a time, not for a circle of people gathered around in a noisy living room. In this article, we’ll look at these real reasons, and what you can do about them. We’ll look at:

1. Microphone design and beamforming—why devices are built to pick up only nearby voices.

2. Echo cancellation—how trying to avoid echoes can lead to muffled group conversations.

3. General-purpose vs. specialized—why personal devices simply aren’t optimized for family or multi-person calls.

4. What you can do about it—the features to look for in a solution that’s truly designed for group calling.

By the end, you’ll understand the root causes of those awkward moments: the muffled voices, why when you’re responding you seem momentarily muted and no one can hear you, the accidental talk-overs, and the “Wait, are you still there?” confusion. And you’ll see that there really is a better way to manage these bigger gatherings—one that doesn’t require everyone to crowd around in awkward poses, shouting at a tiny microphone in the corner of the room.

Picture This: The Multi-Person Call

Let’s set the stage with a typical scenario. You gather your family in the living room to catch up with relatives who live on the other side of the country, maybe back in the “Home Country”. Parents and kids on this side, and you’re calling another household that has a similar crowd, or the grand parents. Because your phone’s camera is so narrow, you have to move the phone a few feet away to fit everyone into the shot. Now the screen is a bit small, but at least you can see everyone.

The conversation starts, but it quickly becomes confusing:

• People on the far side of the couch start talking, but their voices are faint or muffled.

• If two people speak at once, there’s a bizarre audio “ducking” effect—like one voice suddenly disappears so the other can be heard. So as you try and interrupt someone they just can’t hear you, like you’re muted.

• Sometimes the microphone and speakers create a small echo, making it challenging to figure out who’s talking.

• Because of the distance, the volume is turned all the way up, trying to let everyone in the room hear the other side. But this high speaker volume can cause feedback or echo cancellation problems.

It’s not a great user experience. You might wonder: “If my phone’s microphone can capture my voice so clearly when I’m holding it for a personal call, why can’t it do the same when it’s on the table a few feet away? And why is the audio going weird every time someone else speaks?”

To get to the bottom of these questions, we need to dive into how phone and laptop audio hardware and software are actually designed.

Microphone Design and Beamforming: Why the Device Only Wants to Hear You

Modern phones, tablets, and laptops usually come packed with multiple microphones. You might look at your smartphone and see only one little dot, but behind the scenes, there’s often an array of tiny mics set up to do something called beamforming.

What is beamforming?
In simple terms, beamforming is a technique that focuses a device’s “listening” capability on the direction of the primary speaker—generally the person holding or sitting directly in front of the phone or laptop. The device’s software analyzes the signals from multiple mics, filters out background noise, and zeroes in on the main voice. The goal is to make that voice as clear as possible while suppressing unwanted noise, like traffic outside or chatter from across the room.

In a one-on-one call, this is brilliant. If you’re sitting about half a meter from your laptop, that’s the location the beamforming setup has been optimised for, it picks up your voice crisply and reduces any other distractions. But in a group call setting, it becomes a liability. The array is trying to find a single, close voice, so if you place the laptop on the coffee table four or five feet away—because you want everyone in frame—suddenly you’re outside that optimized range. The device’s mics treat everything else (including your voices) as background noise.

In other words, your phone or laptop can be quite good at ignoring voices it thinks are not the primary speaker. Which is exactly what happens when everyone is sprawled out across the sofa, each person at a different distance from the device. The hardware is simply not designed with multiple equally important voices in mind.

Echo Cancellation: Why talking at the same time doesn’t work

Now let’s talk about echo cancellation—another advanced technology that works wonders for a single person talking into a device, but tends to break down when multiple people are speaking or when the device is placed farther away.

How Echo Cancellation Works

When you talk on speakerphone, the device’s microphone is picking up sound from your voice and from the device speaker itself (the remote caller’s voice). To avoid creating that horrible feedback loop—where the remote caller’s voice blasts out of your speaker and gets re-picked up by your microphone and sent back to them (and people hear themselves)—audio engineers developed algorithms for echo cancellation.

In essence, the phone or laptop “listens” to what it’s sending out through the speaker and tries to remove that same signal from what the microphone picks up. That way, the other side doesn’t hear their own voice echoed back at them. For a single person speaking at a normal volume, at a short distance, this works quite well.

Even in one-to-one settings, people are encouraged to wear headphones, since that helps with this problem even more, since the remote persons voice no longer comes out on the speaker, and the microphone just needs to pick up your voice, and does a great job of this, without any loud remote speaker sounds.

The Group-Call Challenge

But problems arise when:

1. You turn the volume up high: Because the speaker is blasting sound so everyone in the room can hear, the microphone picks up more of the remote caller’s voice in the background. The echo canceller has to work overtime.

2. You speak from a distance: Now your voice level is lower, while the speaker’s output is relatively louder in comparison. The algorithm might “think” your voice is part of the speaker output it’s trying to cancel.

3. You can’t hear headphones: It’s not practical for the whole family to be wearing synchronised headphones to hear the remote person.

What often happens is that your device’s software tries to simplify the situation by focusing on whoever is “dominant” in the sound environment. If the other side is talking, your microphone might drop out or go very quiet. So when you try to interrupt or jump in with a quick comment, you end up getting muted or heavily attenuated. The remote family members might see your mouth moving, but can’t hear a word.

If you’ve ever wondered why you can’t have a natural back-and-forth conversation during a big speakerphone call, this is a huge reason. It’s not that the technology is “broken”; it’s simply optimizing for a single speaker at a time, trying to avoid that dreaded feedback loop.

It’s Not Just About Microphones—Volume Matters, Too

Although the microphone design and echo cancellation do most of the heavy lifting (or cause most of the headaches, depending on your perspective), volume levels also play a big role in group calls.

Speaker Volume and Distance
When you use a phone, tablet, or laptop on a personal call—say, FaceTime or WhatApp or even a Zoom call for work—you’re sitting maybe a foot away. The volume needed is minimal, and you can hear it clearly. But in a group call, you might place the device several feet away to fit everyone in view. Naturally, the sound is quieter by the time it reaches the group. So you turn up the volume to compensate.

Why This Creates Problems

1. Distortion at max volume: Small speakers in phones or laptops can’t always handle very loud audio without distortion, so clarity suffers.

2. Uneven listening experience: People nearest the device might be blasted by sound, while those on the far side can barely make out the conversation.

3. Output power limitation on Device: Phone and laptops are not designed to playback especially human voice at very loud levels, so they max out, and they’re still not loud enough

But let’s be honest: even if you have a fancy laptop or a newer tablet with decent speakers, these devices still aren’t meant to fill an entire living room with crystal-clear sound. They do fine for personal, up-close use, but not so well for a group of five to ten people spread around a space.

The Root Problem: General-Purpose Devices Optimized for One Person

All of these factors come back to one core reality: your phone, tablet, or laptop is a general-purpose device designed primarily for individual use. Sure, they can do video calls, watch movies, or play music. But they’re not design for a family to use at the same time, to for example do group-calls.

This is intentional. Most of these devices are engineered to be used by one person, and in the context of calling so you can have private, one-to-one conversations at close range—exactly the scenario of a typical Zoom meeting, or a personal phone call. By focusing on noise reduction, beamforming toward a single voice, and echo cancellation, the device does a pretty good job in that single-user context.

But once you add multiple people, more distance, and the requirement that each side hear each other clearly and possibly talk over each other, the limitations become crystal clear. The same features that help you when you’re alone (like directional mics and echo reduction) work against you in a group.

So, What’s the Solution for Better Group Calls?

If you’re regularly doing family calls, or would like to do more family calls—which is pretty normal these days—you might be wondering how to do it better. While you can’t magically turn your phone or laptop into a top-notch group calling system, there are some clear design features you can look for in a device built specifically for group calling:

1. Wide-Angle or Long-Field Camera: So you don’t have to place the device too far away to fit everyone in the frame. A wide-angle camera reduces the distance between you and the microphone.

2. Multiple, Dynamic Microphone Arrays: Instead of focusing on a single nearby voice, a group device has an array of mics designed to pick up multiple voices from different distances. This kind of “long-field beamforming” can intelligently switch or mix voices without cutting anyone off.

3. Advanced Echo Cancellation: Specialized hardware and software that can handle higher speaker output volumes while still cancelling out echoes, and can recognize multiple voices so it doesn’t accidentally mute them.

4. Higher Quality Speakers (Why not use the TV): For group calls, you want ample volume without distortion. Many group-calling solutions leverage the TV’s speakers—the largest, loudest speakers in most homes—to ensure everyone hears properly.

Such systems are built from the ground up to handle these group scenarios. They’re not as constrained by the design compromises found in tablets or laptops, which must be small, portable, battery-efficient, and tailored for a single user.

An Example of a Purpose-Built Solution

One emerging option to solve these group-calling pain points comes from a company called Higlo. While we won’t turn this article into an advertisement, it’s worth noting that Higlo is developing a solution that aims to check all the boxes we just talked about. The idea is to:

• Pick up voices across the living room with dynamic, long-field beamforming microphones.

• Minimize echoes even with loud TV playback, so multiple people can speak comfortably at once.

• Integrate with your TV so you get a wide-angle camera shot plus the louder speaker system your TV already has.

If you like the sound of that approach, you can check out Higlo’s website and sign up for the waiting list. But the bigger point here is the type of features you should be looking for when you want a true group-calling experience. You want something that’s been designed specifically for the challenges of multiple people in a single room, rather than relying on a single-user phone or laptop to handle that job.

What Can You Do Right Now with the Devices You Already Have?

You may still want to make group calls on your existing phone or laptop while you wait for a better solution. Although you can’t fully solve the inherent design limitations, here are a few tips that might help:

1. Use a Stand or Tripod Close to the Group: If you can find a way to place the phone or laptop closer to the group (maybe on a coffee table), you won’t need the volume to be as high, and the microphones can pick up voices more clearly.

2. Try an External Speaker or Soundbar: Sometimes connecting your phone or laptop to a Bluetooth speaker or a home sound system can improve volume clarity for the local room. Just watch out for echoes—be mindful of the potential for feedback.

3. Use a Conference Microphone: External “conference” mics, designed for speakerphone use, can help capture multiple voices more consistently. Although these aren’t as common for casual family calls, they can be quite handy if you do this frequently.

4. Use an external wide-angled Webcam: Different cameras have different field of view, if you choose one with 90-degrees or higher viewing angle, you won’t need to place the device as far away.

5. Encourage a “One Speaker at a Time” Rule: As unnatural as it might feel, if you let one person speak, then let the other side respond, you can mitigate that talk-over effect where your device mutes one side accidentally.

The Bottom Line

The frustration you feel on these multi-person video calls is not your imagination, and it’s not just bad luck. It’s a direct consequence of using a device built for individual, close-range use in a scenario that demands multi-person, long-range pickup and playback.

• Phones, tablets, and laptops rely heavily on directional mics, beamforming, and strong echo cancellation to optimize a single user’s voice.

• In a group call, those same features become obstacles to hearing multiple voices clearly and speaking at the same time.

• Volume constraints also force the device to either not be loud enough or to push its small speakers to the limit, creating more echo issues.

Fortunately, the industry recognizes these issues. New products and solutions are emerging to address them, especially as more people realize how valuable it is to have a smoother group-calling experience. If this is something you find yourself doing often—connecting with big groups of family or friends across the miles—it might be worth seeking out a system that’s actually built for the task.

A Glimpse of the Future—and How to Get It

Imagine a scenario where your family is spread comfortably around the living room, no one is leaning awkwardly into the camera, and everyone can speak at a normal volume without drowning each other out. The people on the other side of the call hear you loud and clear, and you hear them just as well. There’s no weird echo, no “Wait, can you say that again?” repeating cycle. You can even talk over each other a little, like in a normal in-person conversation, without the audio going haywire.

That’s the promise of a device that’s designed from the ground up for group calls. It means bigger (or external) speakers, advanced echo cancellation, and microphone arrays that can pick up people across an entire room. It means the software is smart enough to figure out who’s speaking, who just chipped in a quick comment, and how to blend everyone’s voices naturally.

A company called Higlo is one example of a team working on precisely these challenges. Their solution plans to use your TV’s screen and speakers, pair them with specialized microphones and camera technology, and handle the complexities of echo cancellation. The end result a device made from the ground-up for families, to use together, that eliminates many of the problems we’ve talked about. If you’re interested in a solution like that, you can head to their website to learn more or sign up for a waiting list.

Final Thoughts

Family-to-family video calls should bring people closer, not make them shout at a tablet in frustration. But as we’ve seen, it’s not that your devices are poorly made; it’s that they’re built for something else—for one person’s use, at one time, in close proximity. Once you realize the multi-microphone design and echo cancellation were never intended for group gatherings, you can see why the problems arise and persist.

Now that you know the technical reasons behind those awkward calls, you can decide how best to address them. Maybe, in the short term, you’ll place your laptop a little closer and encourage everyone to take turns speaking. Longer term, you might invest in a system purpose-built for family gatherings and multi-person chats—so you can finally focus on catching up with loved ones, instead of fumbling with volume controls or repeating, “Can you hear me now?” every few minutes.

Video calls shouldn’t feel like a struggle. When you choose technology designed for groups rather than individuals, you’ll be able to enjoy clear, natural conversations—just the way they’re meant to be.

Interested in a more seamless family-calling experience?

Keep your eyes open for group-focused solutions that offer long-field beamforming, advanced echo cancellation, and robust integration with your TV’s speakers. Companies like Higlo are developing just that, and if you’d like a sneak peek or want to join the waitlist, you can visit their website for more information.

Until then, at least you’ll know why your phone or laptop might be letting you down—and what to do when you’re ready for something better. Happy calling!