Graves On SOHO VoIP

thomasat1 post a nice YouTube screencast how-to on using PhonerLite for Windows to call the VoIP Users Conference. This video clip highlights a couple of interesting things.

First, PhonerLite is a nice, reliable, freeware soft phone that’s wideband (G.722) capable. If you stop and consider that about 15 months ago I could not find any working G.722 capable soft phones, the availability of such software is quite a leap forward.

Further, thomasat1 doesn’t even bother setting up the soft phone with any SIP credentials. None are required since the ZipDX bridge will accept incoming calls directly.

Nice work, thomasat1. Thanks for Zeeek for pointing it out.

It’s been a while since I revisited this series on Make Use Of Wideband Voice Right Now! Over the past six months a number of things have changed. Google bought Gizmo5 and has for some time shut down new account sign-ups while they work out how to incorporate Gizmo5 into their voice applications.

With the demise of FWD as a SIP service earlier in 2009 Gizmo5 was probably the most high-profile, publicly available free SIP registrar. Their loss has to be felt as something of a setback to those who want to use HDVoice Right Now! Perhaps over time Google will make up for the current inconvenience.

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Nobody’s perfect, but isn’t it great when a good service keeps getting better? I’ll admit that I completely missed it when way back on January 6th Junction Networks’ issued a press release about the availability of HDVoice in their OnSIP hosted pbx service. I must’ve just overlooked the announcement. Of course OnSIP does HDVoice….I’ve been using them with G.722 capable phones for almost two years.

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Randy Resnick (a.k.a. Zeeek, or more recently Dulo Par) the founder of the VoIP Users Conference, has a guest post over at HDVoice News called, “An “ear opener” to HD voice in conferencing.” Randy details the advantages of wideband voice for large public conference calls. He should know, having produced thousands of hours of podcast based upon such calls over the past few years.

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A few months back I received a sample of a new USB attached personal speakerphone device made by Yamaha. It arrived about the same time that I started looking for a better solution for ad-hoc conference calls in small rooms, like hotel rooms. You may recall that I felt this need after the experience after hearing Zeeek trying to conduct a VUC call from the host hotel at Astricon 2009.

As is my usual strategy, I tossed the little PSG-01s into my suitcase thinking that I make use of it for a while and see how it handles the road. It’s been on the road quite a while now, and doesn’t seem to suffer the travel a bit. The device is a rugged little aluminum tube. It’s built to last.

Yamaha has a long and enviable history in pro audio products, many of which I’ve used in TV and recording studios over the years. The little PSG-01s is a more consumer oriented offering, but it seems like a well-considered design.

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The folks at Junction Networks / OnSIP have recently posted a review of the Aastra 6730i, a recent entry-level offering in the Aastra lineup.

The entire 67xx series features Aastra’s Hi-Q technology. Hi-Q includes the combination of the G.722 wideband codec and software based compensation for the physical properties of the transducers on the device.

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True to their promise Polycom has introduced a new low-end model in the SoundPoint range, the IP335. A sample unit arrived here just before the Christmas holidays and I’ve been using it as my principle desk phone for about a week.

The primary raison d’etre for this new model is extending the reach of their HDVoice offering into the lower-priced, entry level models. Yes, the IP335 is HDVoice capable, supporting the G.722 wideband codec.

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This morning I was told that Gigaset have released some new firmware for their SIP/DECT lineup. Since I have the A580IP in service I decided to have a look at the release notes and give it a try right away. The new release is version 02214.

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