Hi Def Voice: Cool Sounding, But Do You Care?

Who doesn’t hate a bad phone connection, but just how bad does a connection have to be before you’re willing to pay for a really good one? That’s the question telephony vendors are wondering, as they deliver hi-def telephones. Unlike conventional VoIP phones, hi-def telephones use wideband codecs that encode their signals on audio frequencies from 100 Hz to 7 KHz. Conventional VoIP phones encode their signal on 200 Hz to 3.4 KHz.  The greater range gives hi-def phones a far richer sound than conventional phones.  Skype’s great voice quality is because of its high-def codec, but it’s not the only one vendor with a hi-def play. Most enterprise  telephony vendors are now introducing hi-def phones. (See list below.) But as Michael Stanford points out

”...the uptake of wideband codecs in PBX systems has been glacial, for several reasons, one of which is the network (or fax machine) effect — a wideband phone is no help unless the phone at the other end is wideband, too. Plus they have to support a common wideband codec, the connection between them has to have adequate bandwidth and reliability, and it has to be IP all the way, with no hops on the PSTN. Supporting a common wideband codec is more of a challenge than one might expect. The standard codec that will prevail in the future, AMR-WB (also known as G.722.2) is impeded by complicated and costly licensing; the most widely deployed wideband codecs are proprietary: Microsoft ( News - Alert) RTAudio which is included with Windows, and Skype’s SVOPC (Sinusoidal Voice Over Packet Coder).

Rob Arnold, enterprise communications analyst at Current Analysis, is equally skeptical. “I think the use case is suspect,” he wrote in an IM. “I’m wondering if it has more to do with hands-free usage than anything else.”  I think Arnold has a point. Sounding better on a regular phone is nice, but it’s not critical. What is critical though are those voice applications where today’s audio just isn’t good enough.  Hands-free use is one example that can greatly benefit from a wideband codec. Other use cases where current codecs  probably won’t be good enough are:

• the lifelike user experience needed for telepresence systems.
• online group interactions.  Individual participants might like to speak with one another on a conference call when there are other chatting away on the call. Wideband codecs help by treating voice signals individually and then attenuating  some of them but not others creating the effect that some participants are closer than others.  This is important in conference calls but also in virtual worlds or any virtual gathering.
• Speech to Text system.  A high-quality voice channel is needed to do Speech to Text (STT) for applications such as transcription or traversing an IVR system through voice prompts.

In short, the applications are out there and when people hear the difference between a wideband and regular phone call then there’s no turning back. Getting them to that point, however, will be another matter. What will it take for you to adopt hi-def voice in your organization?

IP Phones with the G.722 Codec
Cisco 7975/7965/7945	150Hz - 7kHz Handset, speakerphone
Mitel 5330/5340	7kHz Handset
Grandstream Budgetone BT-101 & 102 & 200	?
Grandstream Budgetone GXP-2000 & 2010 & 2020	?
Polycom SoundPoint IP 650 & 550	150Hz - 7kHz for handset, headset, speakerphone
Snom 300, 320, 360, 370	needs Replacement "KlarVoice" Handset
Avaya 9610, 9620, 9630, 9650	?
Siemens S675IP/S685IP	DECT with CAT-IQ support

(Source: www.Voip-Info.org)