The first is probably obvious -- headphones made a big difference. Still, though, things sounded quite muddled. We then took a look at iChat -> Preferences -> Video, and found the real key to success. In the "Bandwidth Limit" drop-down, the initial setting is "none." When we lowered it to 100K, audio quality went up dramatically, but, of course, video quality suffered. After some epxerimentation, it seems that (between two cable modem connections, anyway), the 500K rate gives the best balance between video and audio quality. Your experience may differ, of course, but it's worth trying the different bandwidth limits to find one that strikes a good balance between audio and video quality.

