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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

#81

Post by dkjaudyeqooe »

bscphil wrote: post #79

I've just taken a minute to confirm what my ears told me in Audacity. Please have a look at this screenshot: https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/Qma41RMzieQ6ZGdGem9rLxnxEL1... The Lyra version is clearly much louder. This is a serious problem and it borders on being reasonable to call it "cheating". It's well known in the audio biz that if you ask people to compare two experiences, and one of them is a bit louder than t…

Isn't that due to audio (frequency) compression coming out of the generative model?

I guess that can be tweaked either way but they're going to tend towards that exactly because it sounds louder and thus clearer.

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

#82

Post by rectang »

bscphil wrote: post #79

I've just taken a minute to confirm what my ears told me in Audacity. Please have a look at this screenshot: https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/Qma41RMzieQ6ZGdGem9rLxnxEL1... The Lyra version is clearly much louder. This is a serious problem and it borders on being reasonable to call it "cheating". It's well known in the audio biz that if you ask people to compare two experiences, and one of them is a bit louder than t…

Excellent catch. To be precise you need a measure of perceptual loudness rather than raw waveform excursion, but I would expect the results to be in line with what you've found.

> It's well known in the audio biz that if you ask people to compare two experiences, and one of them is a bit louder than the other, people will say that the louder one was better, or came through more clearly, or whatever it is you're trying to market for.

As a former mastering engineer, you're absolutely right that this is well understood in the audio industry. I used to present my clients with level-matched comparisons of source audio vs. processed so they would understand exactly what was being done, aesthetically.

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

#83

Post by dkjaudyeqooe »

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…

Depending on your accent and the model there is a fine line between "can't" and "cunt" or "six" and "sex".

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

#84

Post by fireattack »

bscphil wrote: post #79

I've just taken a minute to confirm what my ears told me in Audacity. Please have a look at this screenshot: https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/Qma41RMzieQ6ZGdGem9rLxnxEL1... The Lyra version is clearly much louder. This is a serious problem and it borders on being reasonable to call it "cheating". It's well known in the audio biz that if you ask people to compare two experiences, and one of them is a bit louder than t…

Just as a reference

    Title                   RMS     Peak    Diff
    clean_p257_011_lyra     -20.07  -1.13   18.93
    clean_p257_011_opus     -26.07  -6.65   19.41
    clean_p257_011_refer    -25.77  -6.15   19.63
PSD (Welch's method, window=213)

https://i.imgur.com/Y8A4kkx.png

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

#85

Post by contravariant »

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…

It sounds 'clean' but the remaining artefacts are quite weird. Somehow the intonation/timing feels off, which is just sounds plain odd. The compression artefacts are 'ugly' but at least recogniseable as compression artefacts.

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

#86

Post by ekelsen »

ddevault wrote: post #21
hatsunearu wrote: post #9

http://www.rowetel.com/wordpress/?page_id=452 Take a look at this too. Also runnable on low power devices. And there was some work of using AI to enhance the codec2 encoded bits too.

Yeah, with Codec 2 setting the gold standard, I don't find this very impressive. I find this more intelligible at one-third of the Lyra bitrate: http://www.rowetel.com/downloads/codec2/hts2a_1300.wav Codec 2 does a better job of isolating the parts of sound which are most necessary to intelligible speech, without necessarily caring too much about preserving the original qualities of the speaker's voice or environment…

Could not understand that sample at all, I don't think this makes your point.

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

#87

Post by dkjaudyeqooe »

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…

A fair point if you're evaluating actual usage rather than just quality, but Google isn't going to be only one with this sort of codec. We can expect better free versions to come along in time.

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

#88

Post by bscphil »

rectang wrote: post #82
bscphil wrote: post #79

I've just taken a minute to confirm what my ears told me in Audacity. Please have a look at this screenshot: https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/Qma41RMzieQ6ZGdGem9rLxnxEL1... The Lyra version is clearly much louder. This is a serious problem and it borders on being reasonable to call it "cheating". It's well known in the audio biz that if you ask people to compare two experiences, and one of them is a bit louder than t…

Excellent catch. To be precise you need a measure of perceptual loudness rather than raw waveform excursion, but I would expect the results to be in line with what you've found. > It's well known in the audio biz that if you ask people to compare two experiences, and one of them is a bit louder than the other, people will say that the louder one was better, or came through more clearly, or whatever it is you're tryin…

Here's an EBU R 128 measure using r128gain:

    File 'reference.flac': loudness = -25.7 LUFS, sample peak = -9.2 dBFS
    File 'lyra.flac': loudness = -19.9 LUFS, sample peak = -4.1 dBFS
    File 'opus.flac': loudness = -25.9 LUFS, sample peak = -9.7 dBFS
So that also matches pretty closely what my ears heard.

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

#89

Post by hackmiester »

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…

VoIP is definitely not the issue here. Codecs can be, and are, fast. I have no idea what cellular providers are doing to mangle the voice path so bad, but it certainly isn’t inherent to VoIP.

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

#90

Post by TheRealSteel »

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 spent the last year and a half living about as far from my home city as possible (Melbourne > Edinburgh) (Currently in quarantine) and the latency of phone calls drives me nuts.

The huge gaps between people speaking, and the complete change in conversation flow since you have to speak in huge continuous paragraphs. The constant "go ahead" , "no you go" etc... Ugh.

But I agree with you... nobody seems to care except me.

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