End-user perspective on small office tools & technology

OnSIP Reviews The New Polycom SoundPoint IP335

The nice people over at OnSIP have reviewed the new Polycom SoundPoint IP335. Their reviews are straightforward but well written and address those areas that are likely of concern to OnSIP users. I’m hoping that in a few weeks I’ll get my hands on one of the IP335s to compare it to my IP650. With street prices reported to be in the $120-140 range these are very possibly the most affordable real HDVoice capable desk phones on the market.

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  1. We’re using the Aastra 6730i with onSip… these phones (along with Aastra’s entire line) now support G7.22, have up to 6 line appearances, and cost less than $75. (The 6731i adds an extra ethernet jack and PoE for a marginally higher price.) I really can’t recommend this phone enough, and I’m hoping Aastra gets some good review coverage on it.

    I’m curious though, although it’s clear that we’re getting great wideband audio from the phones, Aastra seems to be careful not to use the “HD Voice” designation (they are calling their offering “HiQ audio”). Are there trademark issues with the name, or does it require more than a wideband codec (or one with wider bandwidth than G7.22)?

    I know that the handset microphone and earpiece also need a compatible audio frequency response, but I have a pretty good ear (as an acoustician) and this phone seems to deliver the paltry 7kHz offered by G7.22.

    Any idea what the hard and fast criteria are for calling something HD Voice? It’s harder than you’d think to find any quantified information out there on how it’s standardized.

    1. Heck, no! HDVoice is a marketing term coined by Polycom. It has no absolute definition. I expect that it means anything capable of delivering 50 Hz – 7 KHz, but other may see it as anything beyond G.711 (300Hz – 3.4 KHz)

      My suspicion re: HiQ vs HDVoice is that HiQ is all about using electronics to compensate for the mechanical properties of the device. In conversation with the Aastra folks at Astricon it came up that they have implemented some functions (likely EQ) in their DSP core to overcome physical limitations of the handset.

      1. Ah, makes sense. My guess is that a modern handset does fine on the high end (up to 7kHz), but faithfully reproducing down to 50Hz would probably take a more substantial earpiece. So, maybe Aastra has just compensated as best they could in EQ, and called it a day. Realistically, the average human voice carries little energy below 300 Hz or so anyhow (with apologies to James Earl Jones).

        Still a huge improvement over G.711… if that is what $75 gets you, I’m fine with it!

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