With conference calls, sound quality is extremely important because basically, sound is all you've got. On a business call, or any call for that matter, you need to be able to clearly hear the tones and inflections of your participants. Anything that detracts from good quality sound needs to go.
The first thing to do to ensure good sound quality happens before you even get on a call. Make sure your conference call provider does not use VOIP to transfer audio. VOIP or "Voice Over Internet Protocol" has come a long way, but it still has a ways to go. VOIP can have decent sound quality sometimes, but regardless of performance, the difference between VOIP and a landline is distinct.
A more proactive way to have conference calls with good audio is for you and your participants to get acquainted with the mute button. People breathe, cough, sneeze; kids and dogs run into the room; co-workers stop by to say hi. These things happen and while one instance won't derail your conference call, ten lines with ten things happening at the same time can be a deafening roar. Even if you are occasionally speaking, mute yourself when you are not. If you encourage everyone else to do the same, the current speaker will be heard clearly with no interruptions. If you plan on having only one speaker and a rapt audience, consider using lecture mode. This puts everyone but the speakers and moderators on a mute that they can't reverse. If they have a question, they can hit a star command to let you know. Then you can choose when you want them to be heard.
Another feature you should look out for to have great sounding conference calls is DTMF clamping. When you accidentally hit a number while talking with someone on your phone you hear a loud beep. In a conference call, a lot of commands are used by pressing telephone keypad numbers and you would think the endless beeping would be too much. Well it is, and that is why you need to have DTMF clamping. You won't hear the tones, or the beeps and your conference calls -- and their recordings -- will be uninterrupted.
