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Voice Calls: Secure, Crystal-Clear, AI-Powered

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Re: Voice Calls: Secure, Crystal-Clear, AI-Powered

#121

Post by torrent-of-ions »

I will definitely try this because I have trouble with all other voice chat services including Skype, WhatsApp and Hangouts. Often one of those three will work but not always.

But the most annoying problem with any internet voice chat is not so much the quality but the latency. Landline phones have noticeably lower voice quality but one can still enjoy a conversation perfectly well. High latency, on the other hand, absolutely ruins the experience.

I always see these services talking about "crystal clear quality", but never latency, which is a shame. Maybe there is simply nothing they can do about it. I've noticed latency get worse and worse on the Internet since I started using it in the 90s and nobody seems to talk about it.

There are so many more sources of latency on every layer on the modern internet and it's a damn shame. I remember when interleaving got enabled on my ADSL and latency to everything doubled overnight. Then there are NATs, and all kinds of filtering shit that ISPs insist on. Sigh...

Re: Voice Calls: Secure, Crystal-Clear, AI-Powered

#122

Post by owlmirror »

r1ch wrote: post #113
jsheard wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funny thing is that Qt apps used to be derided for bloat (15MB of DLLs! 15MB! ) but the rise of Electron has made Qt seem featherweight by comparison.

I've been involved in a project that went from standard Win32 controls to Qt, and while I was very much against Qt at the time (such bloat!), I can't deny how easy it has made cross platform UI work. With many apps being written in HTML/JS, a C++ Qt framework is still magnitudes faster than a JS interpreter.

I have zero experience with Qt but have heard that it has problems with High DPI presentations. Now It seems that they did something in that regard in Qt 5.6, but do you have anything to say or an idea about the maturity of it?

Re: Voice Calls: Secure, Crystal-Clear, AI-Powered

#124

Post by abalashov »

skrebbel wrote: post #117
bpicolo wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't make it a non-native app. They're still just leveraging direct platform APIs under the hood. Native these days seems to mean "without a web browser under the hood".

Not even that. I've seen plenty Electron and Cordova apps billed as "native". The word has lost meaning as to nontechnical users, it's mostly about "can i install it directly on my device". We need better terms.

Indeed. Wrapping a browser control is not "native".

Re: Voice Calls: Secure, Crystal-Clear, AI-Powered

#125

Post by garettmd »

always_good wrote: post #94
incogitomode wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a beautiful native macOS app as well. Also, excellent support for groups, including group URLs you can stick on a github page. Great program all around.

I use the OSX app, too. But there was a downgrade going from the App Store version to the recent "Desktop Telegram" version. The latter lost bindings like ctrl-a, ctrl-u. If I could be bothered, I'd delete the "Desktop" release and go back to the App Store version.

When you say "desktop" version, do you mean the cross-platform one that offers downloads for Win/Mac/nix, or the specifically Mac version that has a whole lot less features (at this point) than the cross-platform version?

Re: Voice Calls: Secure, Crystal-Clear, AI-Powered

#126

Post by Arathorn »

xemoka wrote: post #87
unicornporn wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How come https://riot.im (Matrix) manages to sync between devices AND have E2E, while also being federated? How come I can use both WhatsApp and Signal on both my computer and phone (and they stay in sync)?

It looks like in [1] that each device registered to a user has a device_key and when an encrypted message is sent, they user's public devices keys are requested and the message is encrypted for each device. New devices can't see old messages. [1] https://matrix.org/docs/guides/e2e_implementation.html

The message isn't encrypted for each device; the message is encrypted once for the room, as part of a 'session' of messages - and then the key data for that session is shared with the devices who are allowed to read it. Thus you can share old session key data with other devices if you want, meaning that new devices /can/ see old messages, although we're still working through the UX for that. (Currently the only way to do it is by import/export session key data in settings and transferring it between devices).

Re: Voice Calls: Secure, Crystal-Clear, AI-Powered

#128

Post by boterock »

torrent-of-ions wrote: post #121

I will definitely try this because I have trouble with all other voice chat services including Skype, WhatsApp and Hangouts. Often one of those three will work but not always. But the most annoying problem with any internet voice chat is not so much the quality but the latency. Landline phones have noticeably lower voice quality but one can still enjoy a conversation perfectly well. High latency, on the other hand, a…

Can relate, I remember enjoying more talking with friends in TeamSpeak than with my girlfriend via skype/hangouts/facebook call... now with a discord server, talking with friends is so much easier, but quality is not as good as TS... but still convenience beats quality, and the loss is not that bad.

Re: Voice Calls: Secure, Crystal-Clear, AI-Powered

#129

Post by ReverseCold »

kevingrahl wrote: post #5
phillc73 wrote: post #2

I've managed to setup Telegram for most of my (non-technical) family - wife, siblings, mother (she doesn't even have a smart phone and just uses Telegram as a message client on her desktop. It's a very convenient way to share family related pictures). Voice calls are an excellent addition. If these could now also be extended to video calls, I could likely ditch Skype forever.

A client of mine once explicitly asked to communicate via Wire [1] which is pretty similar to Skype but E2E encrypted. It was launched by a Skype co-founder, is easy to use and has a pleasant interface. And it's open source. I can't really tell if the product really does what it's advertising, perhaps someone with more expertise could chime in on that. I got stuck on it and I'm considering ditching Skype altogether f…

It's great, but they went JS for all their clients.

The desktop client is electron, and there's no way their Android app is native, it feels like a WebView.

Native apps really do make the experience that much better.

Re: Voice Calls: Secure, Crystal-Clear, AI-Powered

#130

Post by drakenot »

JshWright wrote: post #116
CodeMichael wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like marketing speech for variable bitrate encoding and/or adjusting compression aggressiveness.

> variable bitrate encoding I hope not... VBR can easily leak all sorts of information (including the actual content of the conversation)

Whoa, I had never thought of monitoring VBR as an attack vector for recovering audio.

Do you have a link discussing this?

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