## Conferencing

Speak Freely's conference mode provides a rudimentary mechanism for conducting conferences with multiple users. One user is designated as the host of the conference. That user places Speak Freely in conference mode with the Connection/Conference menu item. (Note: conference, broadcast, and remote echo modes are mutually exclusive; only one may be selected at a time.)

The other participants in the conference then connect to the host as they would for a normal point to point call. With conference mode active, however, audio from the host is sent automatically to all participants connected to the host's machine, and audio sent to the host not only plays there, but is reflected back to all other participants (other the the one who originated it, of course).

All participants in a conference should run in push-to-talk mode or with voice activation, as transmitting continuously creates a flood of packets which will cause audio from the currently-speaking person to break up and will lead to congestion for any conference participant with a limited bandwidth connection. All conference participants should select Speak Freely's native protocol (the default), and a compression mode suitable to all participants' computers and Internet connections, such as the default GSM mode.