I compared the AKG system with a Clear One and a Polycom system, and the AKG system did not have as much gain-before-feedback in the conference room as the others.
The reason my cost estimate was higher than the others you have seen, is that for best gain-before-feedback and best echo cancellation performance (critical for phone and videoconferences) you really need distributed echo cancellation, and while a simple matrix solution will switch mics on and off, the echo cancellation circuitry needs to have a constant room reference at each mic input to give you the best rejection of echo. With distributed cancellation, the reference is already taken at each mic input, and awaits a gate to open it. Without distributed echo cancellation, you have to wait for the echo cancellation unit to establish a new reference (the sonic snapshot of the room, taken at the location of the microphone gated on) each time the gate opens, before the echo is cancelled. And even when your unit has a fast convergence time, those partial seconds can seem like forever when impatient executives are waiting for the echo to go away before they can participate in the conversation. Properly set up, the far site will never hear echo from your room, no matter how many mics are on-and videoconferencing is so often a blame-shifting game, that if you never bless the far site with echo (and its ugly sister, feedback) you are far ahead in credibility when the connections are a little flaky.
Regards,
Dan Timon