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Google open-sources the Lyra audio codec

opensource.googleblog.com

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Re: Google open-sources the Lyra audio codec

#61

Post by londons_explore »

Google misses the mark here...

Bad internet connectivity in the developing world isn't "only 56kbps" as some people think.

It's "random bursts of fast with random 30 second gaps of no connectivity at all". It's routed through 3 layers of proxies and firewalls which block random stuff and not others, while disconnecting long running connections.

Oh, and it'll be expensive per MB.

To that end, Lyra helps with the expense of a data connection, but is unusable for long voice calls. What would help more is a text chat system like WhatsApp.

Oh right - WhatsApp is already wildly popular in most of the developing world for mostly this reason.

Re: Google open-sources the Lyra audio codec

#62

Post by villasv »

londons_explore wrote: post #61

Google misses the mark here... Bad internet connectivity in the developing world isn't "only 56kbps" as some people think. It's "random bursts of fast with random 30 second gaps of no connectivity at all". It's routed through 3 layers of proxies and firewalls which block random stuff and not others, while disconnecting long running connections. Oh, and it'll be expensive per MB. To that end, Lyra helps with the expen…

> Oh right - WhatsApp is already wildly popular in most of the developing world for mostly this reason.

Not only that, but carriers will often advertise plans with "unlimited Internet for Facebook and WhatsApp" (a punch in the face of net neutrality).

So not only WhatsApp has more impact with audio messages when audio calls are too unstable, audio calls already substitute the bulk of phone calls even for people who have shitty data plans.

This is what my carrier says on their most basic offering:

> What does WhatsApp Unlimited mean?

> The benefit is granted automatically, without the need for activation. And the use of the app is unlimited to send messages, audios, photos, videos, in addition to making voice calls. Only video calls that are discounted from the internet package, as well as access to external links.

Re: Google open-sources the Lyra audio codec

#63

Post by tyingq »

dqv wrote: post #26
pjc50 wrote: post #14

One thing I'm slightly worried about "machine learning" in compression rather than conventional everything-is-sines mathematical approaches is the possibility of odd nonlinear errors. Remember the photocopier that worked by OCR and would occasionally mis-transcribe numbers? I don't mind compressing a phoneme to as much as I would mind it compressing it to a clearly audible different phoneme.

This already happens with existing compression algorithms. Certain vowel sounds get collapsed, so someone will say, for example, "66" and it will come out on the other side as "6". Very annoying because you can't exactly coach a layperson on how to talk "the right way" to not trigger this vowel collapse.

> how to talk "the right way"

Not suggesting it as a fix, but this did remind me of the military phonetic alphabet, which includes numbers too.

3 is "tree", 4 is "fow er", 5 is "fife", 9 is "niner". The rest of the numbers are mostly as-is, but you'll hear very deliberate enunciation, like "Zee Row" for 0.

Re: Google open-sources the Lyra audio codec

#65

Post by 1-6 »

pjc50 wrote: post #14

One thing I'm slightly worried about "machine learning" in compression rather than conventional everything-is-sines mathematical approaches is the possibility of odd nonlinear errors. Remember the photocopier that worked by OCR and would occasionally mis-transcribe numbers? I don't mind compressing a phoneme to as much as I would mind it compressing it to a clearly audible different phoneme.

One day, voice cloning may become so powerful that only word data and intonations will become part of the datastream. There could be various 'layers' in which encodes/decodes can occur. Voice Cloning would be at the very top of the stack.

Re: Google open-sources the Lyra audio codec

#66

Post by rektide »

There's huge wins but the grandiosity of "enabling voice calls" is grating. I don't think this will open many users to voice communication. It will reduce data-costs in a way that has an impact on a significant amount of people's bottom line. But I feel manipulated with the current headline, and by the long extended lack of ability to mix the very real hope with some measure of humility.

Re: Google open-sources the Lyra audio codec

#67

Post by ksec »

blendergeek wrote: post #59
tymekpavel wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Satellite links are orders of magnitude slower than fiber.

> Satellite links are orders of magnitude slower than fiber. Minimum end-to-end latency for communications from opposite points of the earth is much lower for Starlink style LEO satellites than for fiber.

Which is only in the case of "opposite points of the earth", otherwise you are just adding ~700KM of distance between two point. The point is even if we have perfect Speed of light Data Transfer over a direct line, we are fundamentally limited by it and nothing can be done. But Encoding, Decoding, Time Slots and quality are everything that we have control of and should be look into more seriously.

Re: Google open-sources the Lyra audio codec

#69

Post by rektide »

levosmetalo wrote: post #2

I hope this never takes off. This whole machine learning, optimization etc, story, but the end goal is that Google can easily transcribe your voice calls and store it as text. Then it can apply all shady practices that it previously was too expensive to do because storing voice and extracting information from it required huge storage costs and actual human labour. Or worst, just imagine what some government you don't…

This will make voices radically more correlatable, most likely. It's a more effective model for voice, it has run endless regressions & found better patterns to model human sounds upon. That could well make processing & comparing pieces of speech data less computationally expensive.

I don't see much relation to surveillance & transcription issues. This technology does not, would not change the field of battle significantly, if such a battle were about. Which it probably is, in some countries, perhaps even applying to Google-touched, -relayed, or Google-held data.

Re: Google open-sources the Lyra audio codec

#70

Post by tyingq »

pjc50 wrote: post #14

One thing I'm slightly worried about "machine learning" in compression rather than conventional everything-is-sines mathematical approaches is the possibility of odd nonlinear errors. Remember the photocopier that worked by OCR and would occasionally mis-transcribe numbers? I don't mind compressing a phoneme to as much as I would mind it compressing it to a clearly audible different phoneme.

>photocopier that worked by OCR

The interesting bit was that it wasn't supposed to work by OCR...that had been deliberately turned off. The compression was too clever.

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