Why internet telephony is pants
Humour bypass
MAKING PHONE CALLS over the Internet can ruin your sense of humour, an IT expert has claimed. Telecoms guru Paul Green, a director of telecoms vendor Vianet, dropped this bombshell when theInq interviewed him about security.
IP phones are useless for conference calls involving traditional landlines, he explained. (Some might say that’s a good thing) Worse, he explained, the cutting edge IP telephony bullies will eventually force the rest of us luddites into upgrading, or we won’t be compatible with modern thrusting businesses.
But then he dropped an even bigger bombshell. Internet telephony doesn’t support humour.
The problem is, you see, the range of frequencies used by conventional land line telephones was far wider. The top and bottom end of the spectrums are cut off, and there’s far less variation in tone available on Internet telephony systems.
Thing is, it’s the variation in vocal tones that gives human communication its many nuances. You can call someone a buffoon, and make it sound like you’re joking, by raising the pitch of your voice. “When we joke, we go to a higher pitch,” explains Green. “and the human voice has a frequency spectrum from 20 hertz to 20 kilohertz. With IP telephony, a lot of that range is lost.”
So if you employ even the most harmless dig at your colleague on an IP telephony call, all human warmth is excluded, and you end up delivering the gravest insult possible, in a flat sneery sarcastic tone. So there you have it. Internet telephony: it’s no good for meetings, and it’s bad for communications.
Still you get to save 1p on every call. And that’s what’s important in life, isn’t it?
Imogen Bailey, Skype’s wise-cracking head of global PR, was having none of it. “If there’s a limitation, you can get around it. If you want nuances, haven’t you heard of chat?” she asked, rather evenly. “For example, if I thought you were being a bit silly, I could always send you an emoticon, like a punching fist.”
Er, yeah, good point. µ
Comments
A poor understanding of telephony
Mr. Green clearly isn't familiar with telephony, or audio in general.While it's true that humans can hear the 20-20,000 Hz (approximately) frequency range, in a traditional POTS to digital telephone system, the frequency cutoff is around 3000Hz, less than broadcast radio. This is the same claim he makes about IP telephony.
You're more likely to be hit by dropped packets and lose a "just kidding" comment after a joke than than miss nuances that would be transmitted by a traditional telephone.
Pants?
I don't understand the title, what does pants have to do with this? You guys drink too much!Pure BS
Traditional POTS telephony is actually a 64kbps ITU G.711 digital signal that is bandwidth-limited to 4kHz (8kHz sampling rate), well below the 20kHz limits of teenage hearing.Low bit-rate VoIP codecs like G.729 have less bandwidth than G.711, but other wideband codecs like Global IP Sound's ISAC used by Skype when the connection has enough bitrate to support it (almost always) sound far, far better than POTS. ISAC has a 16kHz sampling rate, thus it supports up to 8kHz audio bandwidth, twice as much as traditional telephony.
The fact VoIP phones are software upgradeable unlike dump phones, and can negotiate the best available codec based on what both sides support and how much IP bandwidth there is in-between means VoIP has the potential for much higher audio quality than traditional telephony where the 4kHz upper limit is insurmountably hardwired throughout the entire system and standards.
IP phone humor is a premium feature
A quote from your interview...“and the human voice has a frequency spectrum from 20 hertz to 20 kilohertz."
No one with even a modicum of audio experience would make that statement. That's the approximate full hearing range of young human ears that have never been near a rock band. The voice has much less range. Perhaps Mr. Green was pulling your leg a bit more than you were able to detect. Were you conducting the interview over one of those humorless IP phone lines?
Phones only use 4KHz
land based phones only use about 4 kHz of the human voice. C/Os then sample that at Nyquist theorem, 2 times the highest frequency, which is 8KHz. So basically, everything he said is a lie, and has no idea what he is talking about. You get the same quality of sound over a land line as you do IP phones. Sorry to burst the bubble, but this is basic knowledge shared by many people in the industry. As far as the conference calling goes, lies as well. you can do everything the same way as land line.This is all... how do you guys say it.... bullux?
20 Hz to 20KHz? You kids have it easy!
Err, the old analog land-line system, back in the days of electromechanical Strowger switches, only passed frequencies from 300 Hz to 3 KHz. Strangely enough phone calls back then did not always end up in tears and fisticuffs.I am going to stop reading INQ because of this
"human voice has a frequency spectrum from 20 hertz to 20 kilohertz"WTF kind of crap is this? are you nuts? we can hear that range doesn't mean we can produce that range.
And POTS doesn't carrier wider frequency band! Why don't you look it up first? I hope you didn't get paid to write this.
I dare say a keck in the knickers!
And speak up like you've got a pair!
Not in NZ
In NZ our land lines use digital exchanges, which from memory, uses 8 KHz bandwidth for speech(once it gets into the exchange). No-one winging about call quality here, and I beleive some of the VOIP stuff can use higher bandwidth, so don't think that is the reasonComplete BS
The high frequency cutoff of voice calls is a well known issue, as anyone who tries to differentiate between an "f" and "s" over a phone can attest. However it seems Mr. Green has his sides mixed up.A traditional analog phone's call quality is limited to 200Hz to 3.4 KHz, sampled at 8 bits. Well short of the spectrum of the human voice and the human ear.
Internet telephony however, can use any number of compression schemes, sampling rates, and frequency response. Narrow band high compression codecs exist for low bandwidth connections, which is perhaps what Mr. Green is referring to. However high fidelity codecs such as G.722, Speex, and Skype's proprietary codec can offer a much larger frequency response and sampling rate. No more mixed "f" and "s", and easy to catch subtle nuances of the other party.
Of course for not so subtle nuances, such Mr. Green pushing his own company's products to combat this nonexistent problem, any telephone will do.
This is simply not the case
Traditional old telephony only transmits audio from 200 to 8000 Hz. All the high frequency components and a lot of low frequencies are lost. On the other hand, Skype in PC-to-PC calls uses wide band audio and transmits 20 to 16000 Hz. Human speech is 20 to 20000 Hz, but most of the adult males cannot hear above 15 KHz, so that Skype call is as close as you can get to actually listening to the person. In any case, if you ever made a Skype PC-to-PC call you would notice better quality the in traditional PSTN call. You should also keep in mind that majority of PSTN calls are compressed and because of that somewhat degraded. I am not talking about cell phone calls at all, since they tend to sound the worst, but still somehow allow callers to use humor.That's quite a vocal range
The human voice has a frequency range from 80-1170 Hz. Human hearing is from 20-20 kHz, but the older you get the high end goes quickly.I guess Mr. Green was trying to make a marketing point where, as I understand, facts are not really necessary.
Audible range = voice range
Human Audible range = up to 20KHzHuman voice range (according to the man interviewed) = Human audible range
Well... I don't think so...
Paul Green is full off it
“The problem is, you see, the range of frequencies used by conventional land line telephones was far wider." Not.Typical phone line allows 300-3,000 Hz to pass through. According to Columbia University Computer Science dept. "Skype codecs allow frequencies between 50-8,000 Hz to pass through."
http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~library/TR-repository/reports/reports-2004/cucs-039-04.pdf
These kind of people make me so angry, I want to club a baby seal ;-)
So called experts
Yeah, right... the human voice goes from 20 Hz to 20 KHz. Jesus, where do you get this kind of "expert"?'sides, IP telephony can only improve on that aspect: you just have to get more bandwidth and/or a more efficient codec. Getting more frequency response on a traditional landline would require an immeasurable amount of money, changing existing infrastructure and all that jazz.
Human vocal range?
Amazing.. I've heard that we can hear (under ideal, near perfect response ears) between 20hz to 20kHz, but to speak it as well! I'm completely shocked. Here i was thinking we only had a limited range of a few thousand kilohertz in the 250-8000Hz range at best. Science must be wrong and this article is obviously brilliantly researched!Give me a break. Yes IP phones do cut the spectrum down, but crappy analogue phones were no better.
Scary
Human life... Hope it will say something for the new generation, as well.At least to the one after the upcoming one. They will just wonder how stupid their parents was with their stupid digital shit. Or will they be even more degenerated?
20KHz?
This guy has clearly confused the frequency response of the human voice with the frequency response of the human ear.You average person can HEAR 20Hz-20KHz, but can only SPEAK at up to 5KHz.
The narrow band of the human voice is what enables the audio to compress to a far lower bitrate than wide-frequency music.
Total BS
Human *hearing* has a range of 20hz to 20khz (or so Sony/Philips wanted you to believe when the CD was invented). The human voice has a much narrower range. A typical singer can cover 2-1/2 to 3 octave range; a really gifted one may get to 4 octaves. With concert A at 440Hz, this typically means only about 110 hz to 1760hz for the useful vocal range. The POTS only has 3khz bandwidth, not 20hz-20khz. Your so-called telecoms guru is either a moron or outright lying.?
“and the human voice has a frequency spectrum from 20 hertz to 20 kilohertz. With IP telephony, a lot of that range is lost.”I think he's getting confused with the general abilities of human Hearing.
Human vocal cords don't really go beyond 100 - 1000Hz, and even then that's for singing - who wants that for a voice call or even conveying humour!
Though they can in fact go much higher then 20kHz, or lower than 20Hz - world record type stuff that the speaker in any regular phone wouldn't be able to play anyway.
Psssh.
A title
Dude, EU POTS landlines go 300 - 3,400 Hz only.Pure BS....
I can't understand how this article is posted on any place, even on the Inquirer...There is so much BS in it.... some made me and my work mates ROTFL!
Shy on you!
Antonio.
Analog vs. Digital
Yep, and the pops, clicks and scratches on my old vinyl record albums provide more of the subtle musical nuances intended by the recording artist than one of those worthless compact disc whoop-de-doos.High Pitched Jokes?
“When we joke, we go to a higher pitch,” explains Green.What? Maybe if you cross-dressed or were kicked in the balls you'd get to a higher pitch.
Comedians have a variety of punchline executions which it involves a lot of comparisons to common sense on the audience's part. If its thrown out of proportion... its a joke.
~The Dude
Comments
I see comments are @#%#'d again, when are you going to give up and let me develop your website?And Fazal is completely right, so I don't have to type anymore.