A distributed intelligence conferencing system having a plurality of conferencing nodes to connect groups of participants to a conference. Each of the conferencing nodes provides for the connection of one or more participants to the conference. Each node includes a DSP for distributed signal processing. The nodes DSP includes: A signal measuring device for measuring features of the signals from each of the participants. A single core speaker tracking algorithm identifies the active speaker on a local node based upon the relative signal features of each of the number of participant input signals. A communication device communicates the measured signal features for the active local participant input signals only to all other conferencing nodes. A multi core speaker tracking algorithm compares the features of the signals from the speakers on the local node with the features of the signals from the speakers on other nodes. A final determination is made to identify the active speakers for the entire conference so that only the signals from a limited number of speakers transmitted across the system bus.