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Slack Calls: Now with video

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Re: Slack Calls: Now with video

#61

Post by rayvd »

tormeh wrote: post #52
xpaulbettsx wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're using RHEL, you've got a version of GLIBC that's too old, we're trying to figure out what to do about this without asking users to install a bunch of crazy stuff

I know dynamically linking to libraries is the Linux way, but wouldn't just bundling the correct version of glibc with the Slack app solve the problem? Sure, the app gets bigger, but a missing feature is worse than that, I would imagine.

Then Slack has to start tracking glibc updates and security fixes rather than relying on the OS.

Might be acceptable overhead.

Re: Slack Calls: Now with video

#62

Post by heywire »

nkw wrote: post #38
aluminussoma wrote: post #14

Has anyone else noticed how pristine the audio quality of a Slack call sounds? I wonder how they optimized it. My company's voip, and Lync, and Skype all fail to deliver the same kind of call quality. I've only noticed / admired better call quality when making a call within Cisco to another employee. I don't use video much but I hope they've done as good of a job as they did with audio.

Probably a wide band or at least mid-band codec. One thing I learned working with VOIP is people perceive quality based on what they have been using recently, which for most people is the absolutely horribly stepped on audio of skype, cheap voip, or the cellphone network. Carriers have pretty much let their baseline audio quality go to \ \ \ \ because no one cares anymore. (Remember the Sprint pin-drop campaign?) Now…

Yeah, every once in a while when my wife calls me, we get what I'm assuming is an LTE voice call and the audio is great (AT&T HD voice, I believe). Outside of that, it is amazing how bad the call quality can be. You really notice it when listening to hold music. It is like the audio version of one of those old jpegs that looks like it has been recompressed each time the email was forwarded.

Re: Slack Calls: Now with video

#63

Post by lobster_johnson »

Sebguer wrote: post #51
lobster_johnson wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slack's audio quality is on par with GoToMeeting, I think. Of all the different solutions I've visited (Google Hangouts, Skype, Slack, Zoom, Join.me etc.), G2M has been the most reliable and best-sounding one that I've found. It's got things like native Mac app, screen sharing (just one presenter, unfortunately), audio/video recording, telephone dial-in, calendar scheduling, and persistence (i.e. you can reuse the sa…

You can generally do this in your computer's sound settings by specifying that you want to listen to your recording device.

Not on macOS, I believe. According to the other commenter, this is called sidetone, and requires external hardware [1].

[1] https://www.citrix.com/blogs/2016/03/22/gotomeeting-audio-ha...

Re: Slack Calls: Now with video

#64

Post by geofft »

siminsayz wrote: post #59

I had two colleagues suddenly have the chat text field filled with Chinese characters and emojis today so they were told to clean their pcs. Different environments and location but both using slack... heard of this ?

Note that Chinese characters are the vast majority of characters, so (at least from your description) my guess would be "random bytes being interpreted as Unicode" instead of "Chinese hackers who like using emoji". If it's only Chinese characters and emoji, that's different.

Re: Slack Calls: Now with video

#65

Post by codebeaker »

xpaulbettsx wrote: post #43
vkjv wrote: post #28

Slack calls have been broken in linux for a while--even though they worked when calling first launched. Is a fix for that on the horizon?

If you're using RHEL, you've got a version of GLIBC that's too old, we're trying to figure out what to do about this without asking users to install a bunch of crazy stuff

Got any info on what "too old" means here, I thought that glibc was supposed to claim ABI compatibility pretty broadly, or is there some specific regression/bug you're working around?

Edit: reading my message back I came off as impolite, sorry - genuinely curious, I've had the same breakage myself, and we started using Skype in lieu.

Re: Slack Calls: Now with video

#66

Post by taurath »

nkw wrote: post #38
aluminussoma wrote: post #14

Has anyone else noticed how pristine the audio quality of a Slack call sounds? I wonder how they optimized it. My company's voip, and Lync, and Skype all fail to deliver the same kind of call quality. I've only noticed / admired better call quality when making a call within Cisco to another employee. I don't use video much but I hope they've done as good of a job as they did with audio.

Probably a wide band or at least mid-band codec. One thing I learned working with VOIP is people perceive quality based on what they have been using recently, which for most people is the absolutely horribly stepped on audio of skype, cheap voip, or the cellphone network. Carriers have pretty much let their baseline audio quality go to \ \ \ \ because no one cares anymore. (Remember the Sprint pin-drop campaign?) Now…

Their dropped packet handling is far far better than Skypes as well - in a dodgy wifi situation linq and skype are all but unusable while slack is crisp.

Re: Slack Calls: Now with video

#67

Post by xeromal »

taurath wrote: post #66
nkw wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably a wide band or at least mid-band codec. One thing I learned working with VOIP is people perceive quality based on what they have been using recently, which for most people is the absolutely horribly stepped on audio of skype, cheap voip, or the cellphone network. Carriers have pretty much let their baseline audio quality go to \ \ \ \ because no one cares anymore. (Remember the Sprint pin-drop campaign?) Now…

Their dropped packet handling is far far better than Skypes as well - in a dodgy wifi situation linq and skype are all but unusable while slack is crisp.

No hate towards you at all, but describing technical things as crisp drives me crazy. Can anyone enlighten me as to why that would bother my brain?

Does a certain region use this or its usage widespread?

Re: Slack Calls: Now with video

#68

Post by parent5446 »

Klathmon wrote: post #55
fpgaminer wrote: post #46

Does Slack have a phone bridge for voice calls? Would be helpful for participants who can't use Slack. If not, I wonder if their APIs allow a bot to join a voice call and get access to the audio...

This is the last thing we require before moving our team over from hangouts (which is the only thing we use even though we pay for the whole g-suite). Either a way to call-out, have external people call-in, or just allowing a connection of a 3rd party service (paid or otherwise) that lets us connect a phone line.

Why don't you just use normal Hangouts? G Suite isn't required.

Re: Slack Calls: Now with video

#69

Post by hrayr »

xeromal wrote: post #67
taurath wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their dropped packet handling is far far better than Skypes as well - in a dodgy wifi situation linq and skype are all but unusable while slack is crisp.

No hate towards you at all, but describing technical things as crisp drives me crazy. Can anyone enlighten me as to why that would bother my brain? Does a certain region use this or its usage widespread?

It's probably because you have not heard it often enough to just not think about it. If I were to describe a sound as being rectangle, it just doesn't make sense and I have to think about it and try to interpret it. The extra effort in trying to decode the meaning is just annoying. In contrast, you've probably heard the phrase sharp sound. It's equally as technically meaningless as crisp sound, but you probably get it and aren't annoyed by it.
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