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Revisiting Algo Solutions

In the recent pre-holiday period we had the usual spike in the number of deliveries. This reminds me of how much I admire that Algo Solutions 8028 SIP Door Phone that graces our gate. It’s a splendid device, the definitive solution to the problem of deliveries to a one-man office. When a courier arrives they push the button. Even in their pre-holiday panic I can be talking to them before they have the opportunity to cut-and-run.

On rare occasions when they arrive and I’m not on the property, the call routes to my cell phone. I can advise them to take the package next door, or try again tomorrow.

There have been a couple of times when I was nearby or on the way home. In those few cases the driver offered to make another run past our gate after making some other deliveries in the neighborhood. The ability to talk to them immediately helped them clear their daily load, and saved me a trip to the not-so-nearby depot. Win-Win!

The 8028 Door Phone has been installed for a while. I noted this week that there was a firmware update for the device. While I was not having any trouble with the device, it only took ten minutes to update the firmware.

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Kranky & Krankier?

Statler and Waldorf

“Statler and Waldorf” by Source. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia

Chris Koehncke (aka Chris Kranky) recently posed a question in a blog post. He asked, “How good is your laptop microphone?” He then laid out an experimental series of recordings using different hardware. As an executive summary he offers, “Your current internal laptop mic is probably fine.” As you might imagine, I disagree…but there’s more to it than that.

In truth, it’s not that he’s wrong, but I think that he was asking the wrong question! The question he should have asked is, “How do I best convey my voice when using this laptop?”

The answer to that question is quite simple…use a high-quality headset, preferably one with a boom-mounted microphone. When participating in any kind of conference call, or video conference nothing can touch the quality of sound delivered by using a good headset. This has long been my belief, although I accept that it may not be a widespread.

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MOS, Podcasting, SIP Reinvites and WebRTC

podcast mic & logosAccording to popular legend, in the early days of talking movies there was a German director working in Hollywood whose pronounced accent skewed his use of English. He would call for another take of a scene, this time without recording sound. He’d yell out “Mit Out Sound!” Over the years industry professionals came to use the acronym MOS as a shorthand for recording a silent take.

Operating MOS may be occasionally useful in film, but it can be disastrous for a podcaster. When producing a podcast reliable audio is a must. Achieving this goal can be complicated when trying to connect to a distributed array of co-hosts & guests via the internet.

Using a SIP service like SIP2SIP.Info allows the use of high-performance audio codecs, like Opus, which makes for superior podcast audio. This is something that I’ve advocated for along time in my series called Making Use of HDVoice Right Now!

This week I had a Twitter exchange with veteran broadcaster and podcaster Mike Phillips about a problem with audio over a SIP connection.

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OnSIP: When the SPIT Hits The Phone

In a recent blog post OnSIP noted that some hosted PBX customers using Polycom SIP phones were receiving phantom calls from an internet source. Such calls are known as Spam-over-Internet-Telephony, aka “SPIT.” They have been a topic of discussion in VoIP…

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