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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

#71

Post by tymekpavel »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #60
tymekpavel wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Satellite links are orders of magnitude slower than fiber.

Aren't they still heavily expected to feature in connecting that "next billion" ?

Yes, because they are convenient for other reasons (don't require infrastructure over land) which makes them suitable for connecting rural areas where it doesn't make sense to run fiber. But fiber will always be the fastest you can get, and if you get fiber in a vacuum, you could theoretically achieve near-speed of light communication. Satellites won't get you anywhere close to that, even if you use lasers, because there is always atmospheric disturbances that introduce latency.

Re: Google open-sources the Lyra audio codec

#72

Post by WaitWaitWha »

tyingq wrote: post #63
dqv wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

whiskey hotel yankee delta oscar india hotel alpha victor echo tango oscar sierra papa echo alpha kilo tango hotel echo lima alpha november golf uniform alpha golf echo oscar foxtrot tango hotel echo mike alpha charlie hotel india november echo ? tango hotel alpha tango india sierra india november sierra alpha november echo!

Re: Google open-sources the Lyra audio codec

#73

Post by herodoturtle »

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…

Heya, please could you unpack your reasoning a little bit more?

You said:

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

I can't speak for the majority of the developing world, but here in South Africa, WhatsApp is indeed the predominant communications app.

That being said, WhatsApp voice calls are also used here quite a bit.

So with that in mind, and reading from the article:

> Lyra compresses raw audio down to 3kbps for quality that compares favourably to other codecs

To me 3kbps sounds pretty great, and might actually work out cheaper / better than one might imagine.

So I'm just wondering, how does WhatsApp voice call data usage compare to Lyra?

Also whilst South Africa is indeed a developing country (where, among other things, the price of data is proportionately high relative to average household income), the cellular network infrastructure is excellent.

So I don't think the random bursts of connectivity you describe are as big of an issue here, whereas the price of data most certainly is.

In which case, I can definitely see a market for Lyra (assuming the 3kbps is indeed vastly superior to WhatsApp's data usage for a voice call).

Hope that makes sense but I'd be happy to extrapolate a little further :-)

Re: Google open-sources the Lyra audio codec

#74

Post by toast0 »

WaitWaitWha wrote: post #72
tyingq wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

whiskey hotel yankee delta oscar india hotel alpha victor echo tango oscar sierra papa echo alpha kilo tango hotel echo lima alpha november golf uniform alpha golf echo oscar foxtrot tango hotel echo mike alpha charlie hotel india november echo ? tango hotel alpha tango india sierra india november sierra alpha november echo!

Humans adapt a whole hell of a lot easier than machines.

Sure, it would be nice to have clean high bandwidth, low latency voice channels to everywhere so you could drop pins and expect the other side to hear it. Unfortunately, high bandwidth never really happened, and some places never ran land lines to everyone's home, and nobody wants to pay the high price of circuit switched voice when packet switched voice mostly works good enough and is enormously cheaper.

Re: Google open-sources the Lyra audio codec

#75

Post by setr »

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…

In the middle east I noticed a baffling-to-me usage of whatsapp: people were simply exchanging voice messages back and forth instead of calling. [0]

Presumably for exactly the reason you've stated.

[0] I later tried it myself with a friend, but you end up losing the benefits of both worlds -- you can't search or review old messages effectively (as you would text), and its significantly slower than calling.

Re: Google open-sources the Lyra audio codec

#76

Post by tyingq »

WaitWaitWha wrote: post #72
tyingq wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

whiskey hotel yankee delta oscar india hotel alpha victor echo tango oscar sierra papa echo alpha kilo tango hotel echo lima alpha november golf uniform alpha golf echo oscar foxtrot tango hotel echo mike alpha charlie hotel india november echo ? tango hotel alpha tango india sierra india november sierra alpha november echo!

| perl -pe 's/(\w)\w+/\1/g'

Re: Google open-sources the Lyra audio codec

#77

Post by dang »

Recent past threads on this:

Lyra audio codec enables high-quality voice calls at 3 kbps bitrate - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26300229 - March 2021 (198 comments)

Lyra: A New Very Low-Bitrate Codec for Speech Compression - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26279891 - Feb 2021 (25 comments)

Is there significant new information here? https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

Edit: it seems the SNI is the open-sourcing. I've changed the title to say that now. Corporate press releases are generally an exception to HN's rules about titles and original sources: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor....

Re: Google open-sources the Lyra audio codec

#80

Post by ProAm »

mgraczyk wrote: post #68
ProAm wrote: post #53

Isn't Lyra the name of Facebook's cryptocurrency as well? I cannot remember if that project was shelved.

Are you thinking of Libra, now called Diem? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diem_(digital_currency)

Yes I was. Thanks, I had them mixed up.
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