Improving my audio.

Greenman

I'm using Voipbuster, happy enough but I do get remarks on the audio ie not great and sometimes reduced to switching of and picking the normal phone up.

Any suggestions welcome!!!

Thanks!!!

murrayj

VOIP uses a high level of compression compared to normal telephony. This means that your voice is being crammed into a narrower bandwidth. Also the algorithm to do this cramming takes time to run, so that introduces a degree of latency.

VOIP is never as good as a normal fixed line telephone - but under ideal circumstances it can be about the same as a mobile. Some mobile operators -eg Vodafone also use a lot of compression.

The real problems with VOIP come if you, or the person at the other end have poor Broadband connections with high latency, jitter or poor up-link bandwidth.

If you want to use VOIP you need a good quality Broadband connection. Avoid satellite or any of the dodgy wireless providers that everyone complains about on these boards. Also avoid cable or DSL Operators whose base is in UK, as this intoduces further latency.

You should choose a DSL operator who has all their infrastructure based in Ireland. You should also look for a Broadband product that offers low interleaving. Not every operator offers this. I read somewhere that the eircom consumer products are aimed at gamers etc and offer low interleaving, but their business products are tweaked for high interleaving which reduces error rate at the expense of latency.

Alternatively, after considering all these requirements - you might just decide to use the phone instead!

Greenman

Thank you murrayj,
i'm here in my Belgium, I'm on cable, I have 10 Mbps downstream en 256 Kbps upstream. I started with a Logitech headset but I found it didn't drive the level bars on Voipbuster, I then moved over to a old type white stick mic. I must get the wife to ring me when I'm in another location and then I can see what I have to do.
I appreciate your comments!!!
JD!!!!

murrayj

Sorry - I didnt realise you were in Belgium. Not sure what the networks are like there. Try it on a DSL connection instead of Cable.

Cable networks generally deteriorate when there are large numbers of users sharing them. DSL is better, because each user has their own cable to the exchange. It's not really a problem yet in Ireland, because almost everyone uses DSL and most of the cable networks don't support Broadband at all. However, I know that Belgium has huge numbers of users on Cable - so you may be sufferering from contention with other users? While you mightn't notice the problem for data, this is a real problem for VOIP as it introduces jitter.

Greenman

Good point. Been on the cable broadband over six years but only got into voip in the last year.

Will ask a pal here who is on DSL.

Thanks again JD!!!!

Solair

If you've got the bandwidth, you can just use aLog just like a European phone line or uLog (US/Canada line [poorer quality])