4 ms·

The next disruptive iPhone feature? High definition audio call

15 points by davidedicillo 15y ago

kalleboo 15y ago
It would be nice if instead of creating another proprietary protocol, they'd just use something that's already in place http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wideband_audio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wideband_audio
- GiraffeNecktie 15y ago
  Exactly. Telecom is basic infrastructure like the highway system. If Apple were building cars they'd want to have special super smooth tastefully designed toll roads that only Apple cars could run on.
mortenjorck 15y ago
Apple had enough clout to leave the carriers silent for iMessage, but this could be the straw that breaks the innovation-fearing camel's back. I'm almost certain they're planning it.
breckinloggins 15y ago
Subpar telephone audio quality is one of those things that is so pervasive that most people are probably only vaguely aware it's a problem. I'm convinced that if you brought an engineer from the 1940s to today and showed him an iPhone, he'd be absolutely overwhelmed and ecstatic that technology has progressed so far. That is until you let him make a call. Then he'd ask you why the girl on the other end sounds the same as she did in 1940.
jtchang 15y ago
I was thinking about this the other day. The voice quality on the majority of networks suck. I don't know a better way to put it. We can have HD video streaming to a phone but I can't have crystal clear audio? Don't even get me started on conference calls and volume. Am I the only one that wishes the volume on my damn phone could go about 10x higher than the preprogrammed setting?
jaylevitt 15y ago
I'm sure that's part of the evolution of FaceTime technology, but the article's author doesn't seem to really understand the technology he's touting. If cell phone antennas result in poor audio quality, they will also result in poor data quality, and thus poor audio-over-data quality. Either the antenna works well or it doesn't. Similarly, ALAC would be a horrible way to send voice calls over wireless. Lossy codecs will require less bandwidth and thus be less susceptible to dropouts on poor-quality connections. And while I know almost nothing about codecs, I'm pretty sure you have to design one specifically for streaming - you can't just take a write-to-disk format like ALAC or FLAC and decide to stream it wirelessly.
- fleitz 15y ago
  Audio and video codecs are generally stream/packet based. You'd really have to screw up the container format to make a codec completely incapable of streaming. (Like putting the last frame of video at the start and the first frame at the end of the file) If you use a player like VLC you can generally watch videos while they are downloading.
  - Scaevolus 15y ago
    Low-latency is required for realtime applications, which many codecs are incapable of.
  - colanderman 15y ago
    The issue is more so whether the codec can handle dropped packets. It wouldn't surprise me if FLAC could not recover in such a case; usually lossless codecs employ something like Huffmann coding which places a large dictionary at the start of the file.
- BSeward 15y ago
  I doubt phone antennas are the bottleneck, they're a pretty minor part of a huge, lumbering voice-transmission infrastructure. Much of that infrastructure is presumably expensively, archaic, and built assuming that audio traveling through it is compressed all to heck. You can stream tunes in real time over data with quality far in excess of what a high-def voice call would need. There's bandwidth to spare on the data side of things. This is a meandering article. Marco Arment's response at http://www.marco.org/2011/10/27/high-definition-audio http://www.marco.org/2011/10/27/high-definition-audio conveys the point much more clearly and succinctly.
jfb 15y ago
I fully expect this to happen. iMessage is a clear shot across the carrier's bows -- in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they'd have preferred that Apple go after voice first before the obscenely marked up texting market. They're getting gutted from the inside out, and I can only imagine the frantic rent-seeking that's going on even as we speak to get this sort of thing "sorted out".
- Hyena 15y ago
  I don't see this. Carriers already compete with messaging services like AIM creating AppleTalk-for-mobile doesn't seem that disruptive considering. The article's evidence looks more like ATT responding to a bifurcating market with no-text and text-heavy users. It's profitable for them to fold mid-level users into unlimited plans and attract more people who'd rather have the $15.
marquis 15y ago
With HD audio you can hear absolutely everything in the background. We need signal compression in the frequency range to hear just our voice signals in the range we want to hear. You can't speak over HD audio in busy traffic or where there is significant ambient noise.
beej71 15y ago
"How are you going to send high quality data, Mr. Anderson, when you can't even get signal?" AGENT SMITH LOOKS AMUSED.

15 points by davidedicillo 15y ago

It would be nice if instead of creating another proprietary protocol, they'd just use something that's already in place http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wideband_audio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wideband_audio

GiraffeNecktie 15y ago
Exactly. Telecom is basic infrastructure like the highway system. If Apple were building cars they'd want to have special super smooth tastefully designed toll roads that only Apple cars could run on.

mortenjorck 15y ago

Apple had enough clout to leave the carriers silent for iMessage, but this could be the straw that breaks the innovation-fearing camel's back. I'm almost certain they're planning it.

breckinloggins 15y ago

Subpar telephone audio quality is one of those things that is so pervasive that most people are probably only vaguely aware it's a problem. I'm convinced that if you brought an engineer from the 1940s to today and showed him an iPhone, he'd be absolutely overwhelmed and ecstatic that technology has progressed so far. That is until you let him make a call. Then he'd ask you why the girl on the other end sounds the same as she did in 1940.

jtchang 15y ago

I was thinking about this the other day. The voice quality on the majority of networks suck. I don't know a better way to put it. We can have HD video streaming to a phone but I can't have crystal clear audio? Don't even get me started on conference calls and volume. Am I the only one that wishes the volume on my damn phone could go about 10x higher than the preprogrammed setting?

jaylevitt 15y ago

I'm sure that's part of the evolution of FaceTime technology, but the article's author doesn't seem to really understand the technology he's touting. If cell phone antennas result in poor audio quality, they will also result in poor data quality, and thus poor audio-over-data quality. Either the antenna works well or it doesn't. Similarly, ALAC would be a horrible way to send voice calls over wireless. Lossy codecs will require less bandwidth and thus be less susceptible to dropouts on poor-quality connections. And while I know almost nothing about codecs, I'm pretty sure you have to design one specifically for streaming - you can't just take a write-to-disk format like ALAC or FLAC and decide to stream it wirelessly.

fleitz 15y ago
Audio and video codecs are generally stream/packet based. You'd really have to screw up the container format to make a codec completely incapable of streaming. (Like putting the last frame of video at the start and the first frame at the end of the file) If you use a player like VLC you can generally watch videos while they are downloading.
- Scaevolus 15y ago
  Low-latency is required for realtime applications, which many codecs are incapable of.
- colanderman 15y ago
  The issue is more so whether the codec can handle dropped packets. It wouldn't surprise me if FLAC could not recover in such a case; usually lossless codecs employ something like Huffmann coding which places a large dictionary at the start of the file.
BSeward 15y ago
I doubt phone antennas are the bottleneck, they're a pretty minor part of a huge, lumbering voice-transmission infrastructure. Much of that infrastructure is presumably expensively, archaic, and built assuming that audio traveling through it is compressed all to heck. You can stream tunes in real time over data with quality far in excess of what a high-def voice call would need. There's bandwidth to spare on the data side of things. This is a meandering article. Marco Arment's response at http://www.marco.org/2011/10/27/high-definition-audio http://www.marco.org/2011/10/27/high-definition-audio conveys the point much more clearly and succinctly.

jfb 15y ago

I fully expect this to happen. iMessage is a clear shot across the carrier's bows -- in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they'd have preferred that Apple go after voice first before the obscenely marked up texting market. They're getting gutted from the inside out, and I can only imagine the frantic rent-seeking that's going on even as we speak to get this sort of thing "sorted out".

Hyena 15y ago
I don't see this. Carriers already compete with messaging services like AIM creating AppleTalk-for-mobile doesn't seem that disruptive considering. The article's evidence looks more like ATT responding to a bifurcating market with no-text and text-heavy users. It's profitable for them to fold mid-level users into unlimited plans and attract more people who'd rather have the $15.

marquis 15y ago

With HD audio you can hear absolutely everything in the background. We need signal compression in the frequency range to hear just our voice signals in the range we want to hear. You can't speak over HD audio in busy traffic or where there is significant ambient noise.

beej71 15y ago

"How are you going to send high quality data, Mr. Anderson, when you can't even get signal?" AGENT SMITH LOOKS AMUSED.