3 ms·

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 compensa

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.

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.