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> For those of you old enough to remember landlines, it reminds me of those [...] When we all switched to cell service audio quality took a huge hit As a blind

> For those of you old enough to remember landlines, it reminds me of those [...] When we all switched to cell service audio quality took a huge hit As a blind person with a lot of friends in different corners of the world, audio quality is very important to me. Surprisingly enough, I've seen side projects that took a weekend to develop that had much better quality than what mainstream services offer. Part of it is probably because of bandwidth costs, but I guess effects (like cancelling echos from participants who use speakers instead of headphones, or reducing noise from crappy mics) also play a role. Facetime's quality is good, but nowhere near what your devices are actually capable of. The only mainstream solution that is actually good is Zoom, when you enable original sound, stereo audio, high fidelity mode and disable a few annoying filters. To do this, the app needs much more fine-grained control of your microphone than you can get from a web browser, so the native client is essential. Discord with Nitro is pretty decent too, but really niche, obscure, non-mainstream solutions work best. TeamTalk[1] is one great example. [1] https://bearware.dk/?page_id=327 https://bearware.dk/?page_id=327

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
I actually don't think bandwidth costs are responsible, nor DSP effects. I suspect the lousy audio quality in modern voice conferencing software is to compensate for people with lousy internet connections or underpowered devices: someone using an older phone in the car on 3G cell service with cell tower handoffs, or a crusty laptop using lousy coffee shop WiFi, etc. It's a tough problem to solve. Everyone on a call can be affected by one person with a lousy connection if the software isn't very sophisticated. People are generally willing to tolerate lower bitrate audio if it means less dropouts, and lowering the bitrate for everyone is easy to do (if a bit lazy), and solves many problems.
- dr-detroit 5y ago
  Sorry, no. I am an IT janitor and my brother is a audio solutions engineer for major companies so we have discussed where it breaks down. Someone who is a demonstrable idiot decides to put a wimpy cheap processor in these devices and have them do a bunch of digital processing on the audio to "improve it" and so you get very very bad quality. Idiots literally rule our society I could go on but its basically like that Kurt Vonnegut book where the rich elites are sitting around listening to Beethoven records at the wrong RPM and nobody can convince them its wrong. These audio engineering guys can do almost anything. Their requirements these days are bonkers.
- darth_avocado 5y ago
  I don't know if this is common, but I have a lot more missed audio bits in Facetime than I do in other apps when I talk to my family in a third world country. I suspect what you are saying is correct. Modern apps are built for the weakest link while Facetime is built for the strongest.
- Const-me 5y ago
  I’ve opened facebook.com with browser dev.tools open. The 3 largest java script files are using 1 megabyte to download. Facebook is able to do that because even globally, vast majority of people have internet way faster than 64 kbit/sec. 1 megabyte takes more than 2 minutes to download at 64 kbit/sec. It’s similar story with CPUs. Modern CPUs are insanely fast these days, smart phones included. What once required purposedly-designed ASICs (e.g. Sony Minidisk had one for ATRAC3) is now borderline free in terms of compute power. A cheap Android phone sold 10 years ago gonna have at least 500MHz CPU, and at least 256MB RAM. 96 Kbps AAC audio works on 10-15MHz CPUs, and 64 Kbps HE-AAC works on 50-60 MHz CPUs, both from 2005: https://www.helixcommunity.org/projects/datatype/2005/aacfixptdec https://www.helixcommunity.org/projects/datatype/2005/aacfix...
  - miki123211 5y ago
    There's much more to an internet connection than the average speed per second. If we're talking about downloading files (and loading websites), you're mostly correct. However, temporary slowdowns, disruptions in wireless connectivity and wireless-specific packet loss affect audio quality a lot, while not having much impact on your download speed. Even when streaming audio or video, you don't feel them as much, as your device usually keeps at least 10 seconds of buffer that it can rely on. When in a call, though, 10 seconds of buffer would mean 10 seconds of latency, which is simply unacceptable. You can have a 1.2 mb/s connection that sometimes goes down to 64kb/s for two to three seconds. Even if your download speed is still 1 mb/s, you can't really receive more than 64 kb/s when in a call, or you will get dropouts.
slownews45 5y ago
I'm actually also very sensitive to audio quality. Oddly, I also landed on zoom has above the rest in terms of quality. Everyone on my team uses headsets, this avoids need for echo cancellation and the weird muting effectings that generates - so I HIGHLY recommend this - two people can talk at once comfortably so you pick up the little cues of interjections etc. Facetime audio only is good in quality in my experience, but not so great in latency (may be for reasons outside apple's control obviously).
Cu3PO42 5y ago
While I am having trouble finding a source for this right now, I am quite certain that Discord intends to add a setting enabling all audio processing for those with good audio gear. Or at least that's what they said they would do.
tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
> but I guess effects (like cancelling echos from participants who use speakers instead of headphones, or reducing noise from crappy mics) also play a role. I wonder if there is a market for a meeting app that has the best quality of them all, by not trying to poorly work around bad environments, but simply booting people out of meetings until they fix their setup. Yes, it would suck if you or someone you really need something from get booted, but after a few weeks everyone's setup would likely be fixed so this would no longer be a frequent issue, and in exchange, you wouldn't have 20+ people get driven mad by someone giving a hour-long presentation over Bluetooth audio. I feel like shitty audio quality is responsible for at least 80% of the 'zoom brain' effect.
- frutiger 5y ago
  > I wonder if there is a market for a meeting app that has the best quality of them all, by not trying to poorly work around bad environments, but simply booting people out of meetings until they fix their setup. There are so many situational things involved when making a call that I would estimate the size of this market to be approximately $0/yr. P.S. I'm sure this comment will come back to bite me 10 years down the line just like that Dropbox comment.
- fitzroy 5y ago
  I wonder if a motivator would be requiring push-to-talk from those people. Better yet: disallowing any beautification filters.
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  I spend 70% of Zoom meetings with "Original Sound" enabled. I have a good microphone and I want to be as easy to hear as possible. However, I also have an air conditioner. You can hear it. I try to keep it turned off during meetings, but sometimes it's just too hot. and so Original Sound goes off and the air conditioner goes on. What else am I supposed to do? Leave the meeting?
  - FireBeyond 5y ago
    Try Krisp. Local ML noise reduction. Cancels out my AC, mechanical keyboard and even my dog, while people say my audio sounds amazing.
junon 5y ago
Have you tried Signal? Say what you want about the philosophies and the deteriorating app quality but the call audio quality has always been superb (assuming the connection holds).

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago

I actually don't think bandwidth costs are responsible, nor DSP effects. I suspect the lousy audio quality in modern voice conferencing software is to compensate for people with lousy internet connections or underpowered devices: someone using an older phone in the car on 3G cell service with cell tower handoffs, or a crusty laptop using lousy coffee shop WiFi, etc. It's a tough problem to solve. Everyone on a call can be affected by one person with a lousy connection if the software isn't very sophisticated. People are generally willing to tolerate lower bitrate audio if it means less dropouts, and lowering the bitrate for everyone is easy to do (if a bit lazy), and solves many problems.

dr-detroit 5y ago
Sorry, no. I am an IT janitor and my brother is a audio solutions engineer for major companies so we have discussed where it breaks down. Someone who is a demonstrable idiot decides to put a wimpy cheap processor in these devices and have them do a bunch of digital processing on the audio to "improve it" and so you get very very bad quality. Idiots literally rule our society I could go on but its basically like that Kurt Vonnegut book where the rich elites are sitting around listening to Beethoven records at the wrong RPM and nobody can convince them its wrong. These audio engineering guys can do almost anything. Their requirements these days are bonkers.
darth_avocado 5y ago
I don't know if this is common, but I have a lot more missed audio bits in Facetime than I do in other apps when I talk to my family in a third world country. I suspect what you are saying is correct. Modern apps are built for the weakest link while Facetime is built for the strongest.
Const-me 5y ago
I’ve opened facebook.com with browser dev.tools open. The 3 largest java script files are using 1 megabyte to download. Facebook is able to do that because even globally, vast majority of people have internet way faster than 64 kbit/sec. 1 megabyte takes more than 2 minutes to download at 64 kbit/sec. It’s similar story with CPUs. Modern CPUs are insanely fast these days, smart phones included. What once required purposedly-designed ASICs (e.g. Sony Minidisk had one for ATRAC3) is now borderline free in terms of compute power. A cheap Android phone sold 10 years ago gonna have at least 500MHz CPU, and at least 256MB RAM. 96 Kbps AAC audio works on 10-15MHz CPUs, and 64 Kbps HE-AAC works on 50-60 MHz CPUs, both from 2005: https://www.helixcommunity.org/projects/datatype/2005/aacfixptdec https://www.helixcommunity.org/projects/datatype/2005/aacfix...
- miki123211 5y ago
  There's much more to an internet connection than the average speed per second. If we're talking about downloading files (and loading websites), you're mostly correct. However, temporary slowdowns, disruptions in wireless connectivity and wireless-specific packet loss affect audio quality a lot, while not having much impact on your download speed. Even when streaming audio or video, you don't feel them as much, as your device usually keeps at least 10 seconds of buffer that it can rely on. When in a call, though, 10 seconds of buffer would mean 10 seconds of latency, which is simply unacceptable. You can have a 1.2 mb/s connection that sometimes goes down to 64kb/s for two to three seconds. Even if your download speed is still 1 mb/s, you can't really receive more than 64 kb/s when in a call, or you will get dropouts.

slownews45 5y ago

I'm actually also very sensitive to audio quality. Oddly, I also landed on zoom has above the rest in terms of quality. Everyone on my team uses headsets, this avoids need for echo cancellation and the weird muting effectings that generates - so I HIGHLY recommend this - two people can talk at once comfortably so you pick up the little cues of interjections etc. Facetime audio only is good in quality in my experience, but not so great in latency (may be for reasons outside apple's control obviously).

Cu3PO42 5y ago

While I am having trouble finding a source for this right now, I am quite certain that Discord intends to add a setting enabling all audio processing for those with good audio gear. Or at least that's what they said they would do.

tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago

> but I guess effects (like cancelling echos from participants who use speakers instead of headphones, or reducing noise from crappy mics) also play a role. I wonder if there is a market for a meeting app that has the best quality of them all, by not trying to poorly work around bad environments, but simply booting people out of meetings until they fix their setup. Yes, it would suck if you or someone you really need something from get booted, but after a few weeks everyone's setup would likely be fixed so this would no longer be a frequent issue, and in exchange, you wouldn't have 20+ people get driven mad by someone giving a hour-long presentation over Bluetooth audio. I feel like shitty audio quality is responsible for at least 80% of the 'zoom brain' effect.

frutiger 5y ago
> I wonder if there is a market for a meeting app that has the best quality of them all, by not trying to poorly work around bad environments, but simply booting people out of meetings until they fix their setup. There are so many situational things involved when making a call that I would estimate the size of this market to be approximately $0/yr. P.S. I'm sure this comment will come back to bite me 10 years down the line just like that Dropbox comment.
fitzroy 5y ago
I wonder if a motivator would be requiring push-to-talk from those people. Better yet: disallowing any beautification filters.
Wowfunhappy 5y ago
I spend 70% of Zoom meetings with "Original Sound" enabled. I have a good microphone and I want to be as easy to hear as possible. However, I also have an air conditioner. You can hear it. I try to keep it turned off during meetings, but sometimes it's just too hot. and so Original Sound goes off and the air conditioner goes on. What else am I supposed to do? Leave the meeting?
- FireBeyond 5y ago
  Try Krisp. Local ML noise reduction. Cancels out my AC, mechanical keyboard and even my dog, while people say my audio sounds amazing.

junon 5y ago

Have you tried Signal? Say what you want about the philosophies and the deteriorating app quality but the call audio quality has always been superb (assuming the connection holds).