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VoRS: Vo(IP) Simple Alternative to Mumble

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Re: VoRS: Vo(IP) Simple Alternative to Mumble

#31

Post by ekr____ »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #6
speps wrote: post #2

It mentions WebRTC but this project wouldn't work in browsers as it's a Go CLI tool. Is there any alternative to WebRTC nowadays? How far along is WebTransport? Anything else that could rely on older web tech?

The project just mentions WebRTC as bloated, it's not WebRTC compatible at all. WebTransport isn't there yet so browsers are hamstrung by not having access to real sockets.

Of course, WebTransport also isn't real sockets. It's more like WebSockets but with more modern transport semantics such as unreliable data and multiplexing without head of line blocking (as long as it's run over QUIC).

For security reasons, browsers don't allow Web sites access to raw TCP or UDP sockets.

Re: VoRS: Vo(IP) Simple Alternative to Mumble

#32

Post by squarefoot »

jacknews wrote: post #3

This is great but would need to run on windows for the typical mumble use-case of gaming. It would also be great to have this running on ESP32 or similar, so you could make dedicated IP desk intercoms - I envisage a star-trek style intercom, with each button being a channel that you can join by pushing it in (can join multiple simultaneously).

> It would also be great to have this running on ESP32 or similar

ESP32 has its own port of the Codec2 library, which allows intelligible communications using very low bandwidth (a few kb/s). It could make the ideal solution for creating small cheap intercoms scattered around a small area using WiFi, or employing very low bandwidth radio connection such as LoRa for wider coverage. I still didn't see any real application, beside a few simple proof of concept videos on YouTube, though.

More info:

http://www.rowetel.com/?page_id=452

https://www.arduino.cc/reference/en/libraries/esp32_codec2/

Re: VoRS: Vo(IP) Simple Alternative to Mumble

#33

Post by j45 »

lhamil64 wrote: post #29
thaumasiotes wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm old enough to have spoken to people on analogue land lines: the sound was crisp You're old enough to have forgotten what land lines sounded like. They intentionally dropped frequencies from the audio signal so that they wouldn't have to carry the data contained at those frequencies. This is why nobody ever sounded like themselves over the phone.

I wonder if it was more of an issue with the mic and/or mic placement on phones? Old landline phones had a large mic right by your mouth, whereas cell phones have little pinhole mics near the bottom of the phone. I feel like I've actually noticed the opposite. My parents still have a landline, although it's basically VoIP (through their cable company) but it's connected to the analog lines in their house. I've notice…

It’s different audio codecs and data connections which can be changed and adjusted.

Voice over mobile data will benefit from a different type of data compression relative to how data packets are handled in a cellular radio vs a wired internet.

The landline service could be as clear or clearer than mobile data, it just isn’t configured to do so in your case. I have seen VoIP setups using a high quality codec and a handset that can use those frequencies.

Phone companies use different setups that compress to their advantage for many more callers.

Re: VoRS: Vo(IP) Simple Alternative to Mumble

#34

Post by slackwaredragon »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #28
cies wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They intentionally dropped frequencies from the audio signal so that they wouldn't have to carry the data contained at those frequencies. This is why nobody ever sounded like themselves over the phone. I remember switching from early GSM phone to a landline because I like to hear my love breathe

Remember what you like. The facts are that sound over landlines was not crisp, and in fact was a train wreck. It's particularly ridiculous that you're complaining about digital lines having a low frequency range . Whatever you remember, it isn't reality.

I remember landlines fondly, it felt like I could hear people better back then. At the same time, I also remember the 4khz cutoff. It was the reason music sucked over landlines. Like if you were listening to music with a friend from highschool over the phone, it'd have no depth and you couldn't understand half of it from lyrics to beats. Hold music was a lot worse back then, these days it doesn't sound near as bad.

I think for a lot of us later Gen-X and older Millennials, as we age our ears don't work as well as they used to. Especially those of us like me that didn't heed good ear protection. I can't speak for everyone, but I suspect if today me tried to talk to someone on a landline back in the early 90s it'd still suck as bad as it feels like it does with cellphones today. We get more range with our phones now but our ears have a harder time processing it.

Just a thought.

Re: VoRS: Vo(IP) Simple Alternative to Mumble

#35

Post by thfuran »

lhamil64 wrote: post #29
thaumasiotes wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm old enough to have spoken to people on analogue land lines: the sound was crisp You're old enough to have forgotten what land lines sounded like. They intentionally dropped frequencies from the audio signal so that they wouldn't have to carry the data contained at those frequencies. This is why nobody ever sounded like themselves over the phone.

I wonder if it was more of an issue with the mic and/or mic placement on phones? Old landline phones had a large mic right by your mouth, whereas cell phones have little pinhole mics near the bottom of the phone. I feel like I've actually noticed the opposite. My parents still have a landline, although it's basically VoIP (through their cable company) but it's connected to the analog lines in their house. I've notice…

Cell phone audio traditionally only covered 300Hz-3.4kHz before being lossily compressed down to 4kbps (or sometimes higher, depending on network, load in that service area, etc). That is complete shit. Recently, there have been other protocols adopted with greater bandwidth (all the way up to 7kHz, which is still several khz short of covering all the content of speech, but considerably less terrible) and less compression, but if you have audio that's actually good and not merely passable, it's probably because your phone is actually transmitting audio as voip, with a much better codec then is used for cellphone audio transmitted over the standard channel.

Re: VoRS: Vo(IP) Simple Alternative to Mumble

#36

Post by account42 »

mtndew4brkfst wrote: post #21
account42 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is great but would need to run on windows for the typical mumble use-case of gaming. You can game on Linux just fine.

You can certainly play a number of popular and/or high quality games on Linux, but it's hardly ubiquitous. If you're interested in a given specific game I would say your odds of it having a viable Linux experience are worse than 50/50 yet, and if it's a AAA title I'd say it's closer to 10-25% IME. If not for Valve/SteamDeck this would be even more dire, and many of those experiences are still emulation-based i.e. Pro…

This is simply not true. As someone who has been gaming exclusively on Linux for over a decade I don't even bother checking for support before getting new games anymore because almost all of them just work with Wine/Proton or only need minor workarounds.

The only things that do give problems (besides new releases which are promply fixes) are some multiplayer games with anti-cheat that intentionally breaks under Linux. But if you support those kinds of games then you reap what you sow.

Proton is also not really magic - it's mostly just Wine + DXVK and while Valve has improved both they didn't start either of them and weren't involved before they became viable. SteamDick is entirely irrelevant here - if anything it has caused developers to not release native Linux builds because of the way Valve does certification (or unfounded fears on the devs side).

> If you want to be able to play any given computer game

Moving goalpoasts much? This is like saying you need to be an american in order to use computers because there are some computer models that were never exported. There are more games than you will ever be able to play which work under Linux, for any genre. For older games it is often even easier to get them to work under Wine/Proton compared to native Windows.

Re: VoRS: Vo(IP) Simple Alternative to Mumble

#37

Post by lxgr »

> WebRTC-based solutions are insane bloated incredible monsters [...] They work mainly only if you use the same kind of software and codecs, for example Chromium[...]

That's just not true anymore these days. I've used WebRTC between Firefox, Safari, and Chrome without any issues.

> only if you use the same kind of software and codecs, for example Chromium, that requires dozens of gigabytes of disk space and much RAM, CPU time to build it.

There seem to be non-browser implementations [1] [2], although I can't vouch for their quality.

[1] https://liburtc.org/

[2] https://github.com/awslabs/amazon-kinesis-video-streams-webr...

Re: VoRS: Vo(IP) Simple Alternative to Mumble

#38

Post by lxgr »

cies wrote: post #13

This is REALLY important software nowadays imho. I'm old enough to have spoken to people on analogue land lines: the sound was crisp, you could hear small background noises, you could hear someone breathe. Nowadays we usually speak to people on digital lines that are highly compressed (to the extend that is messes with the sound quality), low freq range (no bass, very high sounds) and cut up (without enough sound or…

How old of a landline are you talking about here?

Anything newer than (heavily depending on the country, probably) the 70s or 80s or so would have been very likely PCM u-law or a-law at 64 kbps (i.e. 4 kHz audio bandwidth at 8 bit), which is literally a mandatory codec in WebRTC.

It would have to be a really old, purely analog baseband line without filters (maybe a local call between offices), frequency modulation etc. to preserve more than the typical 4 kHz of audio bandwidth you'd get on these. Inter-trunk connections were often frequency multiplexed to fit more channels onto a physical wire, which also limited them to 4 kHz.

Today, 64 kbps gets you much farther using a modern codec like Opus. WhatsApp sounds better than any landline or native mobile phone connection I've ever used in my life.

> (or centralized chat servers e.g. whatsapp) trying to save some data/money

WhatsApp uses P2P for (non-group) calls if at all possible.

There's also a "save data for calls" option in the settings which is off by default.

Modern codecs are so good, adding even more data would literally not make any discernible difference. A sizable fraction of all data transmitted/received by modern VoIP is IP and UDP framing overhead.

Re: VoRS: Vo(IP) Simple Alternative to Mumble

#39

Post by lxgr »

cies wrote: post #22
thaumasiotes wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm old enough to have spoken to people on analogue land lines: the sound was crisp You're old enough to have forgotten what land lines sounded like. They intentionally dropped frequencies from the audio signal so that they wouldn't have to carry the data contained at those frequencies. This is why nobody ever sounded like themselves over the phone.

> They intentionally dropped frequencies from the audio signal so that they wouldn't have to carry the data contained at those frequencies. This is why nobody ever sounded like themselves over the phone. I remember switching from early GSM phone to a landline because I like to hear my love breathe

GSM was indeed heavily compressed (voice channels were only around 12 kbit/s, compared to 56-64 kbit/s on landline), but comparing a modern VoIP codec like Opus (which is what almost every VoIP solution uses these days) to GSM FR or even EFR compression is like complaining about 64 kbps MP3 compressed by an early 2000s codec sounding bad and going back to vinyl for quality.

Re: VoRS: Vo(IP) Simple Alternative to Mumble

#40

Post by [deleted] »

slackwaredragon wrote: post #34
thaumasiotes wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember what you like. The facts are that sound over landlines was not crisp, and in fact was a train wreck. It's particularly ridiculous that you're complaining about digital lines having a low frequency range . Whatever you remember, it isn't reality.

I remember landlines fondly, it felt like I could hear people better back then. At the same time, I also remember the 4khz cutoff. It was the reason music sucked over landlines. Like if you were listening to music with a friend from highschool over the phone, it'd have no depth and you couldn't understand half of it from lyrics to beats. Hold music was a lot worse back then, these days it doesn't sound near as bad. I…

[deleted]
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