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Fraunhofer IIS Demos Full-HD Voice Over LTE On Android
MojoKid writes "Fraunhofer IIS has chosen Mobile World Congress as the place to present the world's first Full-HD Voice mobile phone calls over an LTE network. Verizon Wireless has toyed with VoLTE (Voice over LTE) before, but this particular method enables mobile phone calls to sound as clear as talking to another person in the same room. Full-HD Voice is already established in several VoIP, video telephony and conferencing systems. However, this will mark the first time Fraunhofer's Full-HD Voice codec AAC-ELD has been integrated into a mobile communications system. Currently, the majority of phone calls are limited to the 3.5 kHz range, whereas humans are able to perceive audio signals up to 20 kHz. The Full-HD Voice codec AAC-ELD gives access to the full audible audio spectrum."
wow this sounds really cool. I think it's so lame that as technology improved in the past 15 years and we went from landlines to cell phones, we took a huge step back in audio quality. Kind of like the step back from CDs to MP3s. I hope this catches on - do both parties need to use it? Perhaps it will be directly implemented in Skype or something.
It makes every bit as much (or as little) sense here as it does when used to describe a television.
...when the phones have shit sound components.
Handset makers have been so focused on stuffing their handsets with cameras, MP3 playback, video playback, picture messaging and other dumb things in a features race that they only phone-in (pun intended) the basic voice calling capabilities now.
It's worth it, though -- horrible audio is why I don't own an iPhone, just an iPad and an old dumbphone. Cellphone audio quality is simply horrible; whoever decided that the utter crap they call audio was "good enough" deserves to be taken out and shot. And considering how good audio compression is these days, there's very little excuse for it. Yeah, there are several points that have to support it, but we've seen lots of things added to the phone network, decent audio quality could easily have been one of them at just about any time.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
...distribution channel for Full 20Hz - 20kHz music source. Now go figure. Do the maths
I can make phone calls with my phone now!
Only those who have not had high-intensity hoot and thump music piped into their ear canals for the last ten years. Most twentysomethings won't be able distinguish HD audio from a 1940s telephone. They'll buy it anyway, though.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
It's actually a variant of H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, which is the codec on Blu-Ray audio. But not at a high bit rate, as on Blu-Ray discs. It's AAC/ELD v2, at 24Kb/s.
It's already in IOS Facetime, anyway.
This post doesn't make any sense.
There are very few people left alive who listened to something that wasn't 'high-intensity hoot and thump music' in their youth. Sorry about your lawn.
"Once your communication goes beyond one or two sentences, it [voice] quickly becomes inferior to written- or text-based communication of some form."
Any time I get an IM from a coworker and the exchange goes beyond a short response or two, I invariably type "Call me." Voice communication - which is effortless (unlike typing), instantaneous (unlike typing), and nuanced (again, unlike typing) - is dramatically more efficient for discussing anything more complex than "Meet me at the bar at 6."
Never heard somebody using radio procedure over a cell conversation, eh?
I-SPELL INDIA TANGO APOSTROPHE SIERRA SPACE DELTA OSCAR ALPHA BRAVO LIMA ECHO.
I use it instinctively whenever I'm doing something like that over the phone, even if it's a good connection, and I ask the person on the other end to read it back to me phonetically as well. And when it's a bad connection, I'll use "words twice". It just makes sense when it's information like that, and I suspect even with "hd audio", you'll still need to do it, because people can still screw up S and F, D and T, and others like that. Surprisingly, even when you're speaking with somebody who doesn't have radio/military experience, when you start using radio indicators like "Figures", "I Spell", "Say Again", and the phonetic alphabet, people don't seem to have a hard time understanding it.
And yes, a text or an e-mail is better... in theory. On my cell phone, the keyboard is a pain in the backside, and it's very easy to make a typo. And that's one of the rare phones that actually has a keyboard... it's worse with the touchscreen. If I'm in the field, it is usually faster to simply spell it phonetically over the phone, rather than trying to write a text or an e-mail on my phone. And gods help anybody who's stuck using T-9.
Surely, you would be better served by stock in a hearing aid company.
Note to self:
Sell stock in speech recognition company