Massive echoing issue

Okay, so let me set up the situation... I am running a game with myself and 5 players. 2 of them play on their computers with headphone/mic sets. I play with open mic, no headset. My wife is on her laptop across the table, her mic/sound off, just using my sound. Everything is fine. Now in comes the next 2, another husband/wife team. They originally tried with separate laptops, but ran into feedback and echoing. They moved to sharing 1 laptop (like my wife and I), but still massive echoing. They actually just left last game. this was unfortunate, but it did clear up any sound issues. We cannot play with them muted constantly, and we cannot play with the echoes... but I don't want to lose them. As far as I know they play only using their laptop speakers, like I do. They are going to try headphones, on separate laptops but if I remember correctly this didn't work our first try. Not knowing they official tech set up, does nayone have a suggestion? For the record we play through G+.  Thanks guys and gals!

My only suggestion is to use headsets. Echo is an inherent problem with a mic + speaker setup. Perhaps you can get a program to filter the echo before it goes to Roll20. I've always used headsets to prevent this issue but perhaps someone else may know something that could help.  - Gauss

If they have skype running also there might be echo from it also. I ran into that when we were trying to use the built in voice while some of us had skype running in the background. Why it caused out echoes we never could figure out but once we chose one or the other completely the echo dissappeared.

Echo problems are basically a hardware issue. If you've got an open mic and no headphones, there will likely be issues. Reducing the volume of the speakers, increasing the distance between the speakers and mic or altering the orientation between the speakers and mic, and fancy microphones can all reduce or possibly eliminate the problem. (I use a Yeti microphone with TV speakers and no echo problems on my end, but a Yeti will cost in the neighborhood of $100-150.) Another option may be using something like TeamSpeak or Ventrillo which has push-to-talk built in.