Randy’s Guest Post At HDVoice News
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.
His experience spans the transition of VUC from Talkshoe’s PSTN based service to the ZipDX wideband conference bridge. When I started sitting in on VUC calls just over two years ago everything was done through Talkshoe, and the resulting podcasts reflected the G.711 nature of the conference service.
In November of 2008 we arranged to have David Frankel of ZipDX appear as a guest and discuss wideband voice. David allowed us to “simulcast” in G.711 and G.722 by providing a handful of soft phone licenses to be distributed to attendees. We cross-connected the two conference bridges and had a great call.
You can still get that podcast from the Talkshoe VUC repository. In fact, we have both G.722 and G.711 recordings to allow you to compare audio quality.
Within a few months of that initial call ZipDX became a de facto sponsor of the VUC, providing their G.722 bridge every week. It’ been a solid year of wideband calls, and many of the VUC regulars have invested in G.722 capable hardware & software.
By the time I attended Jeff Pulver’s first HDVoice Conference in New York in May of 2009 the VUC had become the most regular, publicly accessible example of wideband voice in action.
The VUC calls still use the Talkshoe G.711 bridge in tandem with ZipDX, but Zeeek has been making rumblings about possibly moving away from that service at some future time.
To spin & paraphrase Verizon Wireless’ famous phrase, “Can you hear me now?” It’s not enough to be heard, you must also be understood. HDVoice is a step in that direction. It’s good to read Zeeek’s impression of how wideband has enhanced his podcasting activities.