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I work remotely, and I'm always on the lookout for a video chat system with fewer audio problems than Skype. Anyone know of a website that maintains a ranking

I work remotely, and I'm always on the lookout for a video chat system with fewer audio problems than Skype. Anyone know of a website that maintains a ranking of video chat services, in terms of audio quality?

cjalmeida 9y ago
I'm on the same boat. I find Google Hangouts very effective. So far, my experiences in Linux Chrome have been flawless.
molszanski 9y ago
IMO WebRTC based systems work best. My favorite is: appear.in
- sourceless 9y ago
  I liked appear.in for smaller meetings, but when we got to 4+ clients it was really struggling, and my team at the time switched to google meet instead. Otherwise I just use zoom.us
  - rectang 9y ago
    Anybody here who can explain whether this limitation is specific to appear.in, or whether it's an inevitable consequence of WebRTC's design? Do the audio streams get mixed client-side under WebRTC? I use appear.in all the time for small meetings and love it. :)
    - Shoothe 9y ago
      WebRTC is inherently peer to peer (except the initial phase of signaling) so it (audio streams) can't be any other way. Conferences in WebRTC are just multiple peer to peer connections.
      - vidarh 9y ago
        You can proxy WebRTC just fine, so of course it can be another way.
athenot 9y ago
This will be hard to do because it depends on your definition of quality. There are many factors that affect call quality and you can optimize for resillience against some while getting bitten by others. Lately I've noticed web browers being a bit on the aggressive side when setting up connections and that disturbs the flow of packets for some video/audio connections. I work in the Cisco Spark team so I'm not unbiased when it comes to Skype but you might have a quality problem on your network connection (and the other participants' connections too) if you're seeing consistent audio issues. Real-time media (audio/video) is very sensitive to delay, jitter, congestion and all the network stuff that normally goes un-noticed with web browsing, and there are still plenty of cases that just can't be covered by error correction. (This is where having the ability to fall back to PSTN to join a call comes in very handy: if I'm in a coffee shop with a crappy connection, there's a strong chance that my call will be of poor quality so I join with my cell phone instead.)
stfnfhrmnn 9y ago
I don't know of a website that compares audio quality specifically, but I feel this still is the greatest impediment when it comes to ANY video or audio conference system. I get the impression that there is no system out there that allows for decent 'full duplex' audio, equivalent to a normal conversation where both sides might interrupt each other at times. I think this comes down to a) background noise reduction b) echo/feedback cancellation c) input latency I assume input latency may not be such a big issue anymore, with ultra low latency codecs (presumably) being widespread now. Feedback cancellation is a problem if any side of the conversation is using speakers, rather than headphones. I guess chat services meet at the lowest common denominator, making fairly conservative assumptions and often cutting audio aggressively. My personal list, best to worst, in respect to my requirements above: Google Hangouts Jitsi WhatsApp audio call Skype
- DoofusOfDeath 9y ago
  I'm curious how the PSTN makes it work so well compared to the IP-based architectures. It makes me wonder if the best system would marry PSTN for audio with IP for video and/or screen-sharing.
  - manishsharan 9y ago
    I think WebEx does that already. Our organization uses Microsoft Lync for screen sharing with phone conference lines.
  - briankwest 9y ago
    You use FreeSWITCH to marry video to PSTN. WebRTC Screen Share works with FreeSWITCH Video conferencing too.
- dorfsmay 9y ago
  I'd add Slack zoom.us Both very good with different advantages for different use.
  - ryanianian 9y ago
vojant 9y ago
At my company https://voicefox.com https://voicefox.com, our bot attends a meeting on Google Meet, GoToMeeting and others. We connect to them meeting using Linux-based Chrome and capture the recording server side. From our experience so far, Google Meet (new hangouts version) has the best quality of video

cjalmeida 9y ago

I'm on the same boat. I find Google Hangouts very effective. So far, my experiences in Linux Chrome have been flawless.

molszanski 9y ago

IMO WebRTC based systems work best. My favorite is: appear.in

sourceless 9y ago
I liked appear.in for smaller meetings, but when we got to 4+ clients it was really struggling, and my team at the time switched to google meet instead. Otherwise I just use zoom.us
- rectang 9y ago
  Anybody here who can explain whether this limitation is specific to appear.in, or whether it's an inevitable consequence of WebRTC's design? Do the audio streams get mixed client-side under WebRTC? I use appear.in all the time for small meetings and love it. :)
  - Shoothe 9y ago
    WebRTC is inherently peer to peer (except the initial phase of signaling) so it (audio streams) can't be any other way. Conferences in WebRTC are just multiple peer to peer connections.
    - vidarh 9y ago
      You can proxy WebRTC just fine, so of course it can be another way.

athenot 9y ago

This will be hard to do because it depends on your definition of quality. There are many factors that affect call quality and you can optimize for resillience against some while getting bitten by others. Lately I've noticed web browers being a bit on the aggressive side when setting up connections and that disturbs the flow of packets for some video/audio connections. I work in the Cisco Spark team so I'm not unbiased when it comes to Skype but you might have a quality problem on your network connection (and the other participants' connections too) if you're seeing consistent audio issues. Real-time media (audio/video) is very sensitive to delay, jitter, congestion and all the network stuff that normally goes un-noticed with web browsing, and there are still plenty of cases that just can't be covered by error correction. (This is where having the ability to fall back to PSTN to join a call comes in very handy: if I'm in a coffee shop with a crappy connection, there's a strong chance that my call will be of poor quality so I join with my cell phone instead.)

stfnfhrmnn 9y ago

I don't know of a website that compares audio quality specifically, but I feel this still is the greatest impediment when it comes to ANY video or audio conference system. I get the impression that there is no system out there that allows for decent 'full duplex' audio, equivalent to a normal conversation where both sides might interrupt each other at times. I think this comes down to a) background noise reduction b) echo/feedback cancellation c) input latency I assume input latency may not be such a big issue anymore, with ultra low latency codecs (presumably) being widespread now. Feedback cancellation is a problem if any side of the conversation is using speakers, rather than headphones. I guess chat services meet at the lowest common denominator, making fairly conservative assumptions and often cutting audio aggressively. My personal list, best to worst, in respect to my requirements above: Google Hangouts Jitsi WhatsApp audio call Skype

DoofusOfDeath 9y ago
I'm curious how the PSTN makes it work so well compared to the IP-based architectures. It makes me wonder if the best system would marry PSTN for audio with IP for video and/or screen-sharing.
- manishsharan 9y ago
  I think WebEx does that already. Our organization uses Microsoft Lync for screen sharing with phone conference lines.
- briankwest 9y ago
  You use FreeSWITCH to marry video to PSTN. WebRTC Screen Share works with FreeSWITCH Video conferencing too.
dorfsmay 9y ago
I'd add Slack zoom.us Both very good with different advantages for different use.
- ryanianian 9y ago

vojant 9y ago

At my company https://voicefox.com https://voicefox.com, our bot attends a meeting on Google Meet, GoToMeeting and others. We connect to them meeting using Linux-based Chrome and capture the recording server side. From our experience so far, Google Meet (new hangouts version) has the best quality of video