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Voice Quality on Smart Phones Still Sucks (2014)

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Re: Voice Quality on Smart Phones Still Sucks (2014)

#31

Post by rcthompson »

pak wrote: post #30
rcthompson wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't really explain why smartphones (and cell phones in general) sound so much worse than landlines, does it?

It's the combination of wireless packets dropping and the audio having to be degraded to 8bit/8kHz to pass between carriers that really brings on the terrible. It's kind of like TCP over TCP [1] -- works well enough a lot of the time, but when it fails, it fails badly because of how the two layers aren't really built for each other. [1]: http://sites.inka.de/bigred/devel/tcp-tcp.html

Ah, ok, that makes more sense.

Re: Voice Quality on Smart Phones Still Sucks (2014)

#32

Post by thaumasiotes »

pak wrote: post #27
jfountain2015 wrote: post #3

Cell quality of GSM/CDMA or others isn't good but the article ignores all the Wi-fi calling, FaceTime Audio and VOIP type calls you can make on a smart phone now. I've found that those are substantially better quality than any landline or cell.

If you want to know the real reason for this, it's because normal cell calls still have to go over POTS ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_old_telephone_service ) on the backend, which typically uses 8-bit mu-law companding of audio at 8kHz. This compresses the typical frequency range for phone calls to 300-3000Hz, which is a lot smaller than the real range of human hearing, although it covers the range used by hu…

> This compresses the typical frequency range for phone calls to 300-3000Hz, which is a lot smaller than the real range of human hearing, although it covers the range used by human speech so it was considered totally acceptable before unreliable wireless packeting became the typical last leg.

But... landline telephones have always mangled human speech. They're awful.

Re: Voice Quality on Smart Phones Still Sucks (2014)

#33

Post by Aloha »

rcthompson wrote: post #28
pak wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to know the real reason for this, it's because normal cell calls still have to go over POTS ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_old_telephone_service ) on the backend, which typically uses 8-bit mu-law companding of audio at 8kHz. This compresses the typical frequency range for phone calls to 300-3000Hz, which is a lot smaller than the real range of human hearing, although it covers the range used by hu…

That doesn't really explain why smartphones (and cell phones in general) sound so much worse than landlines, does it?

Compression largely, EVRC and GSM (CDMA and GSM respectively) are pretty heavily compressed, while I prefer the sound of EVRC, both are compressed - another thing to point out is most smartphones are pretty lousy telephones, bad earpieces, poor microphones, and so on. If you want to see how cellular handset can perform, use a good communications grade handset.

Re: Voice Quality on Smart Phones Still Sucks (2014)

#34

Post by Aloha »

pak wrote: post #30
rcthompson wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't really explain why smartphones (and cell phones in general) sound so much worse than landlines, does it?

It's the combination of wireless packets dropping and the audio having to be degraded to 8bit/8kHz to pass between carriers that really brings on the terrible. It's kind of like TCP over TCP [1] -- works well enough a lot of the time, but when it fails, it fails badly because of how the two layers aren't really built for each other. [1]: http://sites.inka.de/bigred/devel/tcp-tcp.html

POTS lines do not carry more audio bandwidth than a cell phone. All of them are 64kbit PCM uncompressed audio.

Re: Voice Quality on Smart Phones Still Sucks (2014)

#35

Post by Aloha »

pak wrote: post #27
jfountain2015 wrote: post #3

Cell quality of GSM/CDMA or others isn't good but the article ignores all the Wi-fi calling, FaceTime Audio and VOIP type calls you can make on a smart phone now. I've found that those are substantially better quality than any landline or cell.

If you want to know the real reason for this, it's because normal cell calls still have to go over POTS ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_old_telephone_service ) on the backend, which typically uses 8-bit mu-law companding of audio at 8kHz. This compresses the typical frequency range for phone calls to 300-3000Hz, which is a lot smaller than the real range of human hearing, although it covers the range used by hu…

I'd argue that 64 kbit PCM performs significantly better than most compressed codecs in high noise situations, I don't consider it a benefit to include audio up to CD quality for a conversation on the phone, because much of what you do include is unwanted/unneeded noise.

Re: Voice Quality on Smart Phones Still Sucks (2014)

#36

Post by smackfu »

feld wrote: post #15
smackfu wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like if you are calling another network, your network should be able to terminate your HD voice call at the edge, and you would still get at least wired telephone quality.

That's what you get, and it's bad. It's so bad these days I can't stand talking on the phone to anyone who isn't using data (facetime, etc) or HD Voice. I literally cannot understand what people are saying half the time. And company support phone numbers? The worst. Their callcenters are using terrible voip with overloaded trunks. It feels like we've spent the last 10 years trying to kill the phone call.

Isn't landline better quality than cell?

Re: Voice Quality on Smart Phones Still Sucks (2014)

#37

Post by tschuy »

cptskippy wrote: post #22

I started playing around with a Lumia 530 on T-Mobile which has HD Voice and the call quality is night and day compared to my Nexus 4. Everyone I've talked to says the calls sound dramatically better and I'm not aware of anyone who has HD Voice capable phones. The noise cancelling seems to be a big thing as most people tell me that they can't tell I'm driving when I have them on speaker phone. I didn't realize it had…

The Nexus 4 also has HD voice, at least on T-Mobile.

Re: Voice Quality on Smart Phones Still Sucks (2014)

#38

Post by explorigin »

cptskippy wrote: post #22

I started playing around with a Lumia 530 on T-Mobile which has HD Voice and the call quality is night and day compared to my Nexus 4. Everyone I've talked to says the calls sound dramatically better and I'm not aware of anyone who has HD Voice capable phones. The noise cancelling seems to be a big thing as most people tell me that they can't tell I'm driving when I have them on speaker phone. I didn't realize it had…

This! HD Voice is amazing and honestly I wish I could have a dumb phone that could do Skype calls and HD Voice. Honestly the only reason I like having a smartphone is the better call quality for (some) voice comms.

Re: Voice Quality on Smart Phones Still Sucks (2014)

#39

Post by Aloha »

smackfu wrote: post #10
feld wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that there is no cross-carrier HD voice or VoLTE. If you call someone on another carrier your call quality will be flushed down the toilet. These idiots refuse to inter-operate. This is why data calling (Facetime audio, Google Hangouts(?), Skype, Whatsapp, etc) is going to crush the cellular industry. It's going to be fragmented and ugly, but at least the call quality won't suck.

It seems like if you are calling another network, your network should be able to terminate your HD voice call at the edge, and you would still get at least wired telephone quality.

I don't think the carriers would want to, a traditional voice call is 'less expensive' than a HD Voice call.

Re: Voice Quality on Smart Phones Still Sucks (2014)

#40

Post by feld »

smackfu wrote: post #36
feld wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what you get, and it's bad. It's so bad these days I can't stand talking on the phone to anyone who isn't using data (facetime, etc) or HD Voice. I literally cannot understand what people are saying half the time. And company support phone numbers? The worst. Their callcenters are using terrible voip with overloaded trunks. It feels like we've spent the last 10 years trying to kill the phone call.

Isn't landline better quality than cell?

Landlines are limited to whatever quality 100 year old degrading copper lines can carry. It's the bare minimum. I had thought for a long time 3G and better had wider bandwidth. I'm not certain though.
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