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Lyra audio codec enables high-quality voice calls at 3 kbps bitrate

cnx-software.com

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Re: Lyra audio codec enables high-quality voice calls at 3 kbps bitrate

#51

Post by walrus01 »

londons_explore wrote: post #41
walrus01 wrote: post #30

the 3kbps example here with the 'bread with chocolate filling inside' video is frankly amazing, how good it is compared to the original. https://ai.googleblog.com/2021/02/lyra-new-very-low-bitrate-... It is unfortunate that for now this appears to be proprietary, closed source and being treated as a google competitive advantage over others, unlike opus which is fully open.

If they add it to WebRTC as they suggest, it will get auto-included in nearly all videoconferencing applications (most use webrtc under the covers, and a simple git pull will get it included in the next release).

They briefly mention the existence and current role of the webrtc codecs, but I don't see where they suggest they intend to contribute it or open it up as a library others can use.

Re: Lyra audio codec enables high-quality voice calls at 3 kbps bitrate

#52

Post by kixiQu »

rectang wrote: post #39

What I want to know is whether Lyra takes any longer to encode than the alternatives. Because as far as I can tell, nobody cares in the slightest about latency. Phone calls are getting to be like writing postcards to each other. Speak in a whole paragraph. Wait several seconds for the latency to clear. Then the other party responds with a whole paragraph, waits several seconds for the latency to clear... Improvements…

In the article,

> This trick enables Lyra to not only run on cloud servers, but also on-device on mid-range phones in real time (with a processing latency of 90ms, which is in line with other traditional speech codecs).

Does that not cover it?

Re: Lyra audio codec enables high-quality voice calls at 3 kbps bitrate

#53

Post by rectang »

reaperducer wrote: post #45
rectang wrote: post #39

What I want to know is whether Lyra takes any longer to encode than the alternatives. Because as far as I can tell, nobody cares in the slightest about latency. Phone calls are getting to be like writing postcards to each other. Speak in a whole paragraph. Wait several seconds for the latency to clear. Then the other party responds with a whole paragraph, waits several seconds for the latency to clear... Improvements…

I had the pleasure of using a real landline just before the pandemic. Honest wire-to-wire connection between two ranches, so no silly VOIP steps between. It was fantastic. You don't appreciate how much latency is destroying our ability to communicate verbally until you go back to the old way. One example is arguing. It's no wonder people used to be able to argue with one another on a telephone. You could raise your v…

Between miserable latency, not-so-great fidelity, and the fecklessness of phone companies in the face of the robocall epidemic, I have come to hate phone calls.

I'm rooting for something to replace phone communications. Any chance that Matrix can do better on any of those fronts? Especially on fidelity and latency since they're germane to the high-level subject of this discussion.

Re: Lyra audio codec enables high-quality voice calls at 3 kbps bitrate

#54

Post by regularfry »

kixiQu wrote: post #52
rectang wrote: post #39

What I want to know is whether Lyra takes any longer to encode than the alternatives. Because as far as I can tell, nobody cares in the slightest about latency. Phone calls are getting to be like writing postcards to each other. Speak in a whole paragraph. Wait several seconds for the latency to clear. Then the other party responds with a whole paragraph, waits several seconds for the latency to clear... Improvements…

In the article, > This trick enables Lyra to not only run on cloud servers, but also on-device on mid-range phones in real time (with a processing latency of 90ms, which is in line with other traditional speech codecs). Does that not cover it?

It covers it, but it's not exactly brilliant. 200ms is the point at which conversation breaks down. If half that budget has gone on the codec, not much has to happen on the wire for it to be noticeable.

Re: Lyra audio codec enables high-quality voice calls at 3 kbps bitrate

#55

Post by Aloha »

reaperducer wrote: post #45
rectang wrote: post #39

What I want to know is whether Lyra takes any longer to encode than the alternatives. Because as far as I can tell, nobody cares in the slightest about latency. Phone calls are getting to be like writing postcards to each other. Speak in a whole paragraph. Wait several seconds for the latency to clear. Then the other party responds with a whole paragraph, waits several seconds for the latency to clear... Improvements…

I had the pleasure of using a real landline just before the pandemic. Honest wire-to-wire connection between two ranches, so no silly VOIP steps between. It was fantastic. You don't appreciate how much latency is destroying our ability to communicate verbally until you go back to the old way. One example is arguing. It's no wonder people used to be able to argue with one another on a telephone. You could raise your v…

A cell phone tbh, is about the same latency as a landline in most end to end call circumstances. Latency only really is noticeable when better than 600ms. (And only a real problem over 1000)

Re: Lyra audio codec enables high-quality voice calls at 3 kbps bitrate

#56

Post by est31 »

scotty79 wrote: post #24
temp-dude-87844 wrote: post #10

When Google's announcement [1] was posted a few days ago, I listened to their samples and heard an odd effect in the "chocolate bread" sample (the video chat example) [1], which is not mirrored in this article. On that sample, I felt [2] that the Lyra version exaggerates the pronunciation of the phrase 'with chocolate' in a way that meaningfully differs from the speaker's original. It weakens the voiced 'th' to nothi…

"When a man looks for something beyond his reach ..." The word "looks" sounds completely wrong for me with Lyra. To the point of completely not understanding what this word is supposed to be (first example with your [1] link).

For me "looks" sounds fine but the word before, "Man", sounds like "Lan". So to me the opus sample sounds more understandable. Even though the "quality" of Lyra is better, that shouldn't be the score to optimize for, but fidelity of the compression. It's not helpful if the compression algorithm generates a beautiful flower from a flower image but it's a red flower instead of a blue one like the original. Gives me Xerox vibes...

Re: Lyra audio codec enables high-quality voice calls at 3 kbps bitrate

#57

Post by jtsiskin »

kixiQu wrote: post #52
rectang wrote: post #39

What I want to know is whether Lyra takes any longer to encode than the alternatives. Because as far as I can tell, nobody cares in the slightest about latency. Phone calls are getting to be like writing postcards to each other. Speak in a whole paragraph. Wait several seconds for the latency to clear. Then the other party responds with a whole paragraph, waits several seconds for the latency to clear... Improvements…

In the article, > This trick enables Lyra to not only run on cloud servers, but also on-device on mid-range phones in real time (with a processing latency of 90ms, which is in line with other traditional speech codecs). Does that not cover it?

The “mid-range phones” has me suspicious, I wish they defined that better. And 90ms is much higher than what Opus is supposed to achieve

Re: Lyra audio codec enables high-quality voice calls at 3 kbps bitrate

#58

Post by bscphil »

boneitis wrote: post #23

I found the Lyra codecs in both examples easily the most difficult to comprehend, even compared against the scratchy Speex. Am I the only one? It is a little odd to me to see the praise here and on the previous discussion. To be fair, I am convinced I have APD (and, to be fair again, I have never got it checked out). E: Just realized there is a third example. Perhaps it is not as strong a statement due to Opus' doubl…

I personally wouldn't say "difficult to comprehend". I would say that the Lyra audio is "cleaner" but that the artifacts that there are, are louder and more annoying in Lyra. There's a very bad ringing effect and some flutter. If you personally find these artifacts distracting or confusing, I could very easily see the Lyra examples being harder to understand.

I'm almost certain that Lyra has increased the volume on the first sample too. It's quite audible, although I haven't confirmed this with Audacity.

Through good quality headphones, I actually find the Lyra artifacts rather piercing and think I'd pretty quickly get fatigued through having it in my ears over a long conversation. Maybe they would handle this better with a bit of a lowpass filter added.

Re: Lyra audio codec enables high-quality voice calls at 3 kbps bitrate

#59

Post by kreetx »

motiejus wrote: post #8

Nothing about licensing or patents. I assume the worst (read: unusable for small businesses)? 10+ years ago I worked in a small voip shop, where we had very high quality (low jitter), but low bandwidth connection. I researched many codecs of the time (2010-ish). We liked speex, because it can be used "without strings attached". Also, I can choose the quality depending on the bandwidth. Although for low bandwidth g729…

What are the current choices for "CD quality" speech compression (lossy but indiscernible) at the moment? Just had a discussion with a friend of keeping an always-on speech recorder on and wondered about disk space consumption.

Re: Lyra audio codec enables high-quality voice calls at 3 kbps bitrate

#60

Post by Aloha »

motiejus wrote: post #8

Nothing about licensing or patents. I assume the worst (read: unusable for small businesses)? 10+ years ago I worked in a small voip shop, where we had very high quality (low jitter), but low bandwidth connection. I researched many codecs of the time (2010-ish). We liked speex, because it can be used "without strings attached". Also, I can choose the quality depending on the bandwidth. Although for low bandwidth g729…

I'm over here preferring g711/ulaw because I prefer the hard roll off at 4kc.
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