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Money isn't a fix all for AEC, frankly Google's WebRTC AEC is the best commercially available AEC. You can see it in action when on a call over Signal Private M

Money isn't a fix all for AEC, frankly Google's WebRTC AEC is the best commercially available AEC. You can see it in action when on a call over Signal Private Messenger, it knocks out background noise (eg: loud car noises if your walking down the street) like a champ.

holy_city 7y ago
Like as a standalone product or integrated into conferencing systems? Because there are plenty of solutions made by audio companies with more institutional knowledge and time invested than Google.
- metildaa 7y ago
  WebRTC's AEC is integrated into most browsers, PulseAudio (https://www.freedesktop.org/software/pulseaudio/webrtc-audio-processing/ https://www.freedesktop.org/software/pulseaudio/webrtc-audio...) and a variety of other systems. Google, Mozilla and all the organizations that have collaborated on WebRTC have spent 7+ years tuning this component. Much like Opus versus AMR-WB, I doubt there is anything notably better in the proprietary software/hardware world. The orgs that develop the WebRTC standard have spent years implementing and experimenting with nearly every algorithm that is available for each of the various components (resulting in Opus, AV1, WebRTC AEC, etc), combing research papers daily and often working with researchers directly.
  - holy_city 7y ago
    Personally, I've heard (and been used for testing) proprietary AEC and it is way better than anything using WebRTC. The artifacting can be really bad, enough so that it's worth disabling (although noise reduction is quite good, it's the echo cancellation that kinda sucks and harms voice quality, giving you the classic garbling sound). Stuff like WebRTC/OPUS is limited by the fact it runs in the browser or consumer hardware. It's not bad, it's just a different problem domain than commercial audio, and has different constraints. High quality conferencing equipment runs on a dedicated unit that your A/V integrator installs either in the room, or in a server closet and connects over Dante to the analog front end in the room, and usually is a package deal with good microphones (which could be wireless, or the hot thing now is to use beamforming).

holy_city 7y ago

Like as a standalone product or integrated into conferencing systems? Because there are plenty of solutions made by audio companies with more institutional knowledge and time invested than Google.

metildaa 7y ago
WebRTC's AEC is integrated into most browsers, PulseAudio (https://www.freedesktop.org/software/pulseaudio/webrtc-audio-processing/ https://www.freedesktop.org/software/pulseaudio/webrtc-audio...) and a variety of other systems. Google, Mozilla and all the organizations that have collaborated on WebRTC have spent 7+ years tuning this component. Much like Opus versus AMR-WB, I doubt there is anything notably better in the proprietary software/hardware world. The orgs that develop the WebRTC standard have spent years implementing and experimenting with nearly every algorithm that is available for each of the various components (resulting in Opus, AV1, WebRTC AEC, etc), combing research papers daily and often working with researchers directly.
- holy_city 7y ago
  Personally, I've heard (and been used for testing) proprietary AEC and it is way better than anything using WebRTC. The artifacting can be really bad, enough so that it's worth disabling (although noise reduction is quite good, it's the echo cancellation that kinda sucks and harms voice quality, giving you the classic garbling sound). Stuff like WebRTC/OPUS is limited by the fact it runs in the browser or consumer hardware. It's not bad, it's just a different problem domain than commercial audio, and has different constraints. High quality conferencing equipment runs on a dedicated unit that your A/V integrator installs either in the room, or in a server closet and connects over Dante to the analog front end in the room, and usually is a package deal with good microphones (which could be wireless, or the hot thing now is to use beamforming).