4 ms·

The article makes a great point early on: hearing voices over VOIP is markedly different than over analog phone lines. The robotic voice and the weird compressi

by rchaud 4y ago

The article makes a great point early on: hearing voices over VOIP is markedly different than over analog phone lines. The robotic voice and the weird compression when your connection isn't good are common for me. Worst of all is the 0.5-1 second delay I still sometimes hear, on local calls no less! If the same call was being had over a phone line and we were in the same country, the audio fidelity would be excellent.

thewebcount 4y ago
I agree about the delay that sometimes (way more often than it should) occurs in digital calls, but the voice quality of analog calls was shit. It was band limited to something like 8kHz (so maximum of 4kHz signal making it to your ear). That seems like a lot, but it really isn't. There's a significant amount of high end that gets lost and makes everything seem muddled. I remember making calls over 22kHz audio codecs in the late 90s and the quality of even that (maximum frequency transmitted being 11kHz) was way better than an analog phone call.
chiph 4y ago
If you want to see an example of cellphone latency, watch your local news. When they send a reporter to cover a remote story these days, they nearly always use a cellphone as a camera (cheap, ubiquitous, good image quality, and they don't need to pay a separate camera operator). When the anchor in the studio says "And now over to Lester, who is reporting from the scene" - there's a 1-2 second delay before we hear and see Lester respond.
chrisseaton 4y ago
That's funny - my experience is digital is much clearer than an old analog line.
- IshKebab 4y ago
  Yeah definitely. Well we haven't had analogue phone lines for decades but compared to landlines, mobile can be much better - especially now we have HD Voice which landlines (and call centres apparently) can't access. Maybe it's the extra echo cancellation that's the real problem.
- myself248 4y ago
  Clarity and latency are at odds here. Digital can, with enough bitrate, encode more clarity than your ear can hear. Radio stations use two-channel ISDN for remote studio links so it sounds like the interviewer and interviewee are in the same room, sometimes you'd never know they aren't unless they announce it. But ISDN is all but gone, and all other digital voice systems are packetized and suffer awful, terrible, excruciating, reflex-fumbling latency. No matter how clear they are, I'm forever tripping on — no you go — okay as I was — go ahead — um okay — aaaaaaaaaaaaargh!
  - zinekeller 4y ago
    > ISDN-BRI never gained popularity as a general use telephone access technology in Canada and the US, and remains a niche product. The service was seen as "a solution in search of a problem", and the extensive array of options and features were difficult for customers to understand and use. ISDN has long been known by derogatory backronyms highlighting these issues, such as It Still Does Nothing, Innovations Subscribers Don't Need, and I Still Don't kNow, or, from the supposed standpoint of telephone companies, I Smell Dollars Now. Wow, that explains everything why Americans insist that analog is the way. I will always miss ISDN, but the march of technology insist on IP I guess.
- ryandrake 4y ago
  My observations, in order of decreasing quality: Analog Land Line local call > WiFi Calling through cellphone > Analog long distance call > 3G/4G/5G Cell > Home VOIP service > Zoom/Meet/etc. With the first two pretty close to identically high quality.
  - mmcnl 4y ago
    VoLTE is far superior to 3G calling and deserves its own category here imo. Night and day difference.
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    Zoom is entirely dependent on whatever hardware the participants are using. My team switched to using cardioid mics and the audio quality is stellar. It's just when you get that one guy dialing in on his mobile phone with an old pair of wired earbuds with the cord mic that's not anywhere near his mouth. Usually from India, with horns in the background...
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  That can certainly be true, I've lived places that had problems maintaining a moisture-free analog network and it could be irritating.
kibwen 4y ago
The key word there being analog phone lines. Cell phone lines, which account for 99.99999% of all phone communication these days, are IMO worse than VOIP for sound quality (though better at latency). It's weird that kids growing up in the post-landline era will never realize how clear and amazingly low-latency phone calls used to be. If two people were seated across a table talking on a landline, they'd hear the signal from the phone before they heard it over the air.
- Animats 4y ago
  "The key word there being analog phone lines." No, the key words are uncompressed and non-packetized. The best telephone voice quality ever was ISDN from handset to handset. Digital end to end, 64Kb/s without compression, and rigidly clocked at the bit level. No noise. No jitter. Switzerland had ISDN to the home for years. Also, in Europe, there was power over ISDN, so the phone didn't need AC power or batteries. A friend there was annoyed when they forced him to convert to inferior VoIP, which, even over fiber, is worse.
  - rsynnott 4y ago
    In Ireland, until _weirdly recently_, after ISDN had died out for pretty much all other purposes, every government minister got an ISDN phone installed in their house, to make them easier to interview in the radio.
  - mikewarot 4y ago
    Cellular phones used to sound good back when they were FM and not packetized, as well.
- jaywalk 4y ago
  Audio quality on cellular is widely variable. If both ends support VoLTE/HD Voice, the audio quality is actually superior to analog.
  - xhkkffbf 4y ago
    I have to agree. People forget how many frequencies made it through the Bell System and the wire lines. Maybe long ago it was 100% analog, but somewhere along the way they started adding in digital compression and that usually meant stripping out all but the most important frequencies. There were several decades when a dial phone to dial phone call produced pretty horrible accoustics.
2rsf 4y ago
I'm not sure about the exact year but many phone lines stopped being analog in the early 70's and almost completely by the 90's

by rchaud 4y ago

thewebcount 4y ago

I agree about the delay that sometimes (way more often than it should) occurs in digital calls, but the voice quality of analog calls was shit. It was band limited to something like 8kHz (so maximum of 4kHz signal making it to your ear). That seems like a lot, but it really isn't. There's a significant amount of high end that gets lost and makes everything seem muddled. I remember making calls over 22kHz audio codecs in the late 90s and the quality of even that (maximum frequency transmitted being 11kHz) was way better than an analog phone call.

chiph 4y ago

If you want to see an example of cellphone latency, watch your local news. When they send a reporter to cover a remote story these days, they nearly always use a cellphone as a camera (cheap, ubiquitous, good image quality, and they don't need to pay a separate camera operator). When the anchor in the studio says "And now over to Lester, who is reporting from the scene" - there's a 1-2 second delay before we hear and see Lester respond.

chrisseaton 4y ago

That's funny - my experience is digital is much clearer than an old analog line.

IshKebab 4y ago
Yeah definitely. Well we haven't had analogue phone lines for decades but compared to landlines, mobile can be much better - especially now we have HD Voice which landlines (and call centres apparently) can't access. Maybe it's the extra echo cancellation that's the real problem.
myself248 4y ago
Clarity and latency are at odds here. Digital can, with enough bitrate, encode more clarity than your ear can hear. Radio stations use two-channel ISDN for remote studio links so it sounds like the interviewer and interviewee are in the same room, sometimes you'd never know they aren't unless they announce it. But ISDN is all but gone, and all other digital voice systems are packetized and suffer awful, terrible, excruciating, reflex-fumbling latency. No matter how clear they are, I'm forever tripping on — no you go — okay as I was — go ahead — um okay — aaaaaaaaaaaaargh!
- zinekeller 4y ago
  > ISDN-BRI never gained popularity as a general use telephone access technology in Canada and the US, and remains a niche product. The service was seen as "a solution in search of a problem", and the extensive array of options and features were difficult for customers to understand and use. ISDN has long been known by derogatory backronyms highlighting these issues, such as It Still Does Nothing, Innovations Subscribers Don't Need, and I Still Don't kNow, or, from the supposed standpoint of telephone companies, I Smell Dollars Now. Wow, that explains everything why Americans insist that analog is the way. I will always miss ISDN, but the march of technology insist on IP I guess.
ryandrake 4y ago
My observations, in order of decreasing quality: Analog Land Line local call > WiFi Calling through cellphone > Analog long distance call > 3G/4G/5G Cell > Home VOIP service > Zoom/Meet/etc. With the first two pretty close to identically high quality.
- mmcnl 4y ago
  VoLTE is far superior to 3G calling and deserves its own category here imo. Night and day difference.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  Zoom is entirely dependent on whatever hardware the participants are using. My team switched to using cardioid mics and the audio quality is stellar. It's just when you get that one guy dialing in on his mobile phone with an old pair of wired earbuds with the cord mic that's not anywhere near his mouth. Usually from India, with horns in the background...
rootusrootus 4y ago
That can certainly be true, I've lived places that had problems maintaining a moisture-free analog network and it could be irritating.

kibwen 4y ago

The key word there being analog phone lines. Cell phone lines, which account for 99.99999% of all phone communication these days, are IMO worse than VOIP for sound quality (though better at latency). It's weird that kids growing up in the post-landline era will never realize how clear and amazingly low-latency phone calls used to be. If two people were seated across a table talking on a landline, they'd hear the signal from the phone before they heard it over the air.

Animats 4y ago
"The key word there being analog phone lines." No, the key words are uncompressed and non-packetized. The best telephone voice quality ever was ISDN from handset to handset. Digital end to end, 64Kb/s without compression, and rigidly clocked at the bit level. No noise. No jitter. Switzerland had ISDN to the home for years. Also, in Europe, there was power over ISDN, so the phone didn't need AC power or batteries. A friend there was annoyed when they forced him to convert to inferior VoIP, which, even over fiber, is worse.
- rsynnott 4y ago
  In Ireland, until _weirdly recently_, after ISDN had died out for pretty much all other purposes, every government minister got an ISDN phone installed in their house, to make them easier to interview in the radio.
- mikewarot 4y ago
  Cellular phones used to sound good back when they were FM and not packetized, as well.
jaywalk 4y ago
Audio quality on cellular is widely variable. If both ends support VoLTE/HD Voice, the audio quality is actually superior to analog.
- xhkkffbf 4y ago
  I have to agree. People forget how many frequencies made it through the Bell System and the wire lines. Maybe long ago it was 100% analog, but somewhere along the way they started adding in digital compression and that usually meant stripping out all but the most important frequencies. There were several decades when a dial phone to dial phone call produced pretty horrible accoustics.

2rsf 4y ago

I'm not sure about the exact year but many phone lines stopped being analog in the early 70's and almost completely by the 90's