Disclaimer: I super don’t work for Owl, nor have they given me or my company any discounts or perks.
Simply having the camera in the middle of the table at eye level gives more of a sense that the people in office are having a conversation that’s inclusive of the people remote, or so the remote folks feel. All of the remote folks have stated that the 360 view that’s displayed at the top of the video feed is something they ignore other than to see overall who’s in the room, mostly they appreciate that it can quickly focus in on who’s talking. Since people generally people talk towards the middle of the table, eye contact is mostly maintained.
Before getting the Owl, we tried pulling the webcam for the room off the top of the TV (that’s wall mounted with the top being at about 6ft up off the ground) and either placing stuck to the bottom of the TV (about eye height when someone is sitting down at a table), or on a tripod with the camera directly in front of the TV at about where the remote person’s chin would be. The experience with the Owl beats both.
Regarding the microphones, the spatial audio is only used to figure out what part of the room someone is speaking. I believe mono audio is still what’s transmitted down through USB along with the already processed video feed. The computer the Owl is transmitted to only see it as another webcam device and doesn’t need to do any additionally processing.
Anyhow, if you’ve got a number of people in your company who are remote and attend a few meetings a day that include around 3 - 8 people in office, I highly recommend trying out the Owl, or some other 360 video conference solution when they start to exist. I know Microsoft has a thing in the works that does a whole lot more bells and whistles but without the zooming in on the current person speaking feature. I don’ think they’ve announced a release date. The Verge had a good summary, if you can stand to deal with the 30 second add there’s even a good demo…
Hope that answers your question.