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> I'm old enough to have spoken to people on analogue land lines: the sound was crisp You're old enough to have forgotten what land lines sounded like. They i

> I'm old enough to have spoken to people on analogue land lines: the sound was crisp You're old enough to have forgotten what land lines sounded like. They intentionally dropped frequencies from the audio signal so that they wouldn't have to carry the data contained at those frequencies. This is why nobody ever sounded like themselves over the phone.

cies 3y ago
> They intentionally dropped frequencies from the audio signal so that they wouldn't have to carry the data contained at those frequencies. This is why nobody ever sounded like themselves over the phone. I remember switching from early GSM phone to a landline because I like to hear my love breathe
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  Remember what you like. The facts are that sound over landlines was not crisp, and in fact was a train wreck. It's particularly ridiculous that you're complaining about digital lines having a low frequency range. Whatever you remember, it isn't reality.
  - slackwaredragon 3y ago
    I remember landlines fondly, it felt like I could hear people better back then. At the same time, I also remember the 4khz cutoff. It was the reason music sucked over landlines. Like if you were listening to music with a friend from highschool over the phone, it'd have no depth and you couldn't understand half of it from lyrics to beats. Hold music was a lot worse back then, these days it doesn't sound near as bad. I think for a lot of us later Gen-X and older Millennials, as we age our ears don't work as well as they used to. Especially those of us like me that didn't heed good ear protection. I can't speak for everyone, but I suspect if today me tried to talk to someone on a landline back in the early 90s it'd still suck as bad as it feels like it does with cellphones today. We get more range with our phones now but our ears have a harder time processing it. Just a thought.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - lxgr 3y ago
      Very good point – the "landline generation's" ears have aged considerably since the 90s. On top of that, I think many remember "landline quality" in terms of a relative comparison with potato-quality early mobile phone codecs, analog mobile phones, heavily compressed discounted long-distance calling circuits etc. of the time. Yes, landlines were better than any of that, but it doesn't mean that they were actually good by today's standards.
      - cies 3y ago
        > by today's standards. Which? Whatsapp call sound shit. Mobile phone calls sound shit. I did Mumble to get some acceptable quality.
        vel0city 3y ago
        WhatsApp uses opus for its voice functionality. The default codec configuration for Mumble is opus.
        lxgr 3y ago
        > Whatsapp call sound shit. Not for me; it's way better than any landline I've ever used. Not sure what we're doing differently – are you sure it's not your or the other party's speaker or microphone? > Mobile phone calls sound shit. Not for me either, at least not when EVS ("HD voice") is used, which is more often than not these days when calling friends/family. 2G connections used to sound quite bad, but since 4G, the limiting factor for me has been the other side being on a landline (mostly for business calls), which usually doesn't support wideband audio.
  - cies 3y ago
    Maybe i dont live near you.
- lxgr 3y ago
  GSM was indeed heavily compressed (voice channels were only around 12 kbit/s, compared to 56-64 kbit/s on landline), but comparing a modern VoIP codec like Opus (which is what almost every VoIP solution uses these days) to GSM FR or even EFR compression is like complaining about 64 kbps MP3 compressed by an early 2000s codec sounding bad and going back to vinyl for quality.
Sammi 3y ago
Old phone signals (Plain old telephone service or POTS) cut off frequencies above 4 khz. You cannot hear the difference between f and s, as these are higher frequency sounds at around 8 to 12 khz. You'd have to say f like in Fred or s like in Steve? Cause you literally could not hear the difference. This is the reason broadband internet (ADSL) is called broadband. Because dial up internet used the POTS frequency band below 4 khz, and broadband used the (broad) frequencies above. It's also the reason you'd have to get a technician out to your house in order to get ADSL. They would install a frequency cutoff filter on the phone line into your house, and hookup the landline to the below 4 khz side and the ADSL modem to the above 4 khz side, so the POTS signal would not interfere with the ADSL signal.
- lxgr 3y ago
  Pet peeve: This is why we use "broadband" as a synonym for "fast internet", but we should stop using it like that, since it completely neglects the symbol rate in that equation :)
lhamil64 3y ago
I wonder if it was more of an issue with the mic and/or mic placement on phones? Old landline phones had a large mic right by your mouth, whereas cell phones have little pinhole mics near the bottom of the phone. I feel like I've actually noticed the opposite. My parents still have a landline, although it's basically VoIP (through their cable company) but it's connected to the analog lines in their house. I've noticed they generally sound clearer on their cell phones than they do on the landline.
- j45 3y ago
  It’s different audio codecs and data connections which can be changed and adjusted. Voice over mobile data will benefit from a different type of data compression relative to how data packets are handled in a cellular radio vs a wired internet. The landline service could be as clear or clearer than mobile data, it just isn’t configured to do so in your case. I have seen VoIP setups using a high quality codec and a handset that can use those frequencies. Phone companies use different setups that compress to their advantage for many more callers.
  - lxgr 3y ago
    I'd not really call it different packet handling (except for some of the earlier, mostly 2G ones not providing FEC at lower layers and delegating some level of error concealing to the codec, as far as I remember): The main difference is that the bandwidth available was just much lower, so mobile codecs are compressed more. (Satellite phones take this to the extreme – 2.4 kbps is a typical data rate after compression there!) But so were e.g. international trunk lines; they squeezed a lot more than one voice channel into 64 kbps using compression, silence suppression etc. > The landline service could be as clear or clearer than mobile data, it just isn’t configured to do so in your case. An analog landline has relatively little chance of ever gaining wideband support, since that would require swapping out line cards at the provider, and the trend seems to be to get rid of these entirely (in favor of a VoIP adapter in the CPE). I think I've once used "HD voice" on a "landline" when calling a mobile phone, but that only worked because my home router was actually doing SIP in the background.
- thfuran 3y ago

cies 3y ago

> They intentionally dropped frequencies from the audio signal so that they wouldn't have to carry the data contained at those frequencies. This is why nobody ever sounded like themselves over the phone. I remember switching from early GSM phone to a landline because I like to hear my love breathe

thaumasiotes 3y ago
Remember what you like. The facts are that sound over landlines was not crisp, and in fact was a train wreck. It's particularly ridiculous that you're complaining about digital lines having a low frequency range. Whatever you remember, it isn't reality.
- slackwaredragon 3y ago
  I remember landlines fondly, it felt like I could hear people better back then. At the same time, I also remember the 4khz cutoff. It was the reason music sucked over landlines. Like if you were listening to music with a friend from highschool over the phone, it'd have no depth and you couldn't understand half of it from lyrics to beats. Hold music was a lot worse back then, these days it doesn't sound near as bad. I think for a lot of us later Gen-X and older Millennials, as we age our ears don't work as well as they used to. Especially those of us like me that didn't heed good ear protection. I can't speak for everyone, but I suspect if today me tried to talk to someone on a landline back in the early 90s it'd still suck as bad as it feels like it does with cellphones today. We get more range with our phones now but our ears have a harder time processing it. Just a thought.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - lxgr 3y ago
    Very good point – the "landline generation's" ears have aged considerably since the 90s. On top of that, I think many remember "landline quality" in terms of a relative comparison with potato-quality early mobile phone codecs, analog mobile phones, heavily compressed discounted long-distance calling circuits etc. of the time. Yes, landlines were better than any of that, but it doesn't mean that they were actually good by today's standards.
    - cies 3y ago
      > by today's standards. Which? Whatsapp call sound shit. Mobile phone calls sound shit. I did Mumble to get some acceptable quality.
      - vel0city 3y ago
        WhatsApp uses opus for its voice functionality. The default codec configuration for Mumble is opus.
      - lxgr 3y ago
        > Whatsapp call sound shit. Not for me; it's way better than any landline I've ever used. Not sure what we're doing differently – are you sure it's not your or the other party's speaker or microphone? > Mobile phone calls sound shit. Not for me either, at least not when EVS ("HD voice") is used, which is more often than not these days when calling friends/family. 2G connections used to sound quite bad, but since 4G, the limiting factor for me has been the other side being on a landline (mostly for business calls), which usually doesn't support wideband audio.
- cies 3y ago
  Maybe i dont live near you.
lxgr 3y ago
GSM was indeed heavily compressed (voice channels were only around 12 kbit/s, compared to 56-64 kbit/s on landline), but comparing a modern VoIP codec like Opus (which is what almost every VoIP solution uses these days) to GSM FR or even EFR compression is like complaining about 64 kbps MP3 compressed by an early 2000s codec sounding bad and going back to vinyl for quality.

Sammi 3y ago

Old phone signals (Plain old telephone service or POTS) cut off frequencies above 4 khz. You cannot hear the difference between f and s, as these are higher frequency sounds at around 8 to 12 khz. You'd have to say f like in Fred or s like in Steve? Cause you literally could not hear the difference. This is the reason broadband internet (ADSL) is called broadband. Because dial up internet used the POTS frequency band below 4 khz, and broadband used the (broad) frequencies above. It's also the reason you'd have to get a technician out to your house in order to get ADSL. They would install a frequency cutoff filter on the phone line into your house, and hookup the landline to the below 4 khz side and the ADSL modem to the above 4 khz side, so the POTS signal would not interfere with the ADSL signal.

lxgr 3y ago
Pet peeve: This is why we use "broadband" as a synonym for "fast internet", but we should stop using it like that, since it completely neglects the symbol rate in that equation :)

lhamil64 3y ago

I wonder if it was more of an issue with the mic and/or mic placement on phones? Old landline phones had a large mic right by your mouth, whereas cell phones have little pinhole mics near the bottom of the phone. I feel like I've actually noticed the opposite. My parents still have a landline, although it's basically VoIP (through their cable company) but it's connected to the analog lines in their house. I've noticed they generally sound clearer on their cell phones than they do on the landline.

j45 3y ago
It’s different audio codecs and data connections which can be changed and adjusted. Voice over mobile data will benefit from a different type of data compression relative to how data packets are handled in a cellular radio vs a wired internet. The landline service could be as clear or clearer than mobile data, it just isn’t configured to do so in your case. I have seen VoIP setups using a high quality codec and a handset that can use those frequencies. Phone companies use different setups that compress to their advantage for many more callers.
- lxgr 3y ago
  I'd not really call it different packet handling (except for some of the earlier, mostly 2G ones not providing FEC at lower layers and delegating some level of error concealing to the codec, as far as I remember): The main difference is that the bandwidth available was just much lower, so mobile codecs are compressed more. (Satellite phones take this to the extreme – 2.4 kbps is a typical data rate after compression there!) But so were e.g. international trunk lines; they squeezed a lot more than one voice channel into 64 kbps using compression, silence suppression etc. > The landline service could be as clear or clearer than mobile data, it just isn’t configured to do so in your case. An analog landline has relatively little chance of ever gaining wideband support, since that would require swapping out line cards at the provider, and the trend seems to be to get rid of these entirely (in favor of a VoIP adapter in the CPE). I think I've once used "HD voice" on a "landline" when calling a mobile phone, but that only worked because my home router was actually doing SIP in the background.
thfuran 3y ago