Michael Moore Explains the MXA-MUTE Network Mute Button

The Shure Ecosystem for Conferencing covers the complete audio signal chain from microphone to DSP to loudspeaker, providing networked audio solutions for environments of all types, from small meeting rooms to large conference spaces.  I was able to chat with Michael Moore, Senior Market Development Specialist, about how the MXA-MUTE Network Mute Button fits into a meeting room.  

Chris Lyons:  Now, Michael, when you put microphones on the ceiling, as is popular these days, like the MXA910 Ceiling Array microphone, now that the microphones out of reach, the question comes up, "Well, what if I want to mute the audio?"  Do I have to use a room control system to do that?

Michael Moore:  Chris, you can use a room control system to do that, but if you really are just looking to mute the microphone on a very streamlined audio system, the MXA-MUTE Network Mute Button allows you to mute Shure devices within our ecosystem without needing any type of certified programming skills.

Chris:  Well, that's terrific. So I'm trying to imagine exactly what this thing looks like, how this goes together and connects and everything. What are the mechanics of it?

Michael:  Well, Chris, it's a really simple button design, and it fits into any 1 inch hole in a table. So if you do have existing button mics on a table and you want to upgrade your system with our ceiling arrays, this is a quick, simple way to add a basic mute control on your table, utilizing the hole you may already have. It is a capacitive touch-top device that connects to the base, that compresses it to the table, and one single network cable connects it into the Shure ecosystem.

Chris:  That is really efficient and straightforward. What about mounting it? How do I actually connect this to the rest of the system as far as cabling and so forth?

Michael:  You simply connect the RJ45 to the network switch that is connected to your other devices, maybe an MXA910 ceiling array mic or the new MXA710 table array mic, and maybe you're leveraging P300 audio conferencing processor as a certified Zoom platform device and you would like to have this connect.  All of this can be quickly configured by dragging and dropping these devices into our Designer software platform, and then just simply connecting logic ports between the devices. And then the MXA-MUTE buttons automatically recognize the devices that they're controlling.

Chris:  That's really simple. Now, what if I need multiple buttons because I've got a long table and I want to have one button at each end to make it easier for people to reach? How do I do that?

Michael:  The beauty of the Network Mute Button is that it is scalable. We can add multiple buttons if we need a button on each end of the table to control a single MXA910 in a ceiling. Or we can have one mute button that controls multiple MXA910s in the ceiling. The power is there to leverage multiple buttons to multiple mics or a single button to a single mic. And like some of the other Shure ecosystem microphones, like the MXA310 and the MXA910, I also have control over how the LED on the mute button appears depending on the button condition.  So I can choose blue for mic on and red for mute if that’s what the client wants.  And of course the button can be momentary or toggled.

For example, in my situation here, I have the MXA710 linear array 2-foot model. I am utilizing our certified Teams platform with a P300 and I also have an MXA310 table array mic connected with a mute button.  I can press the mute button on my MXA310 and the LED’s on my Network Mute Button and my MXA710 will show the mute status.  Then I can unmute by touching the network mute button and the LED’s on the MXA310 and MXA710 change. So the mute control and status indication is synchronized across all the Shure devices.  As we move towards soft codec platforms where we are streamlining our AV build materials, this is an easy, quick way to add basic mute functionality to a system that is very necessary in every room without adding a lot of additional cost and hardware.

Chris:  Well, that's great. Well, Michael, thanks for talking to us today about the MXA-MUTE Network Mute Button.

Find out more about how the MXA-MUTE network mute button  provides convenient control of audio in your meeting room, and the Shure Ecosystem for Conferencing.