Graves On SOHO Technology

Royalty-Free Is The New Fashion In Codecs

November 12, 2009
Michael Graves
VoIP

It’s only mid-week and it’s already been quite a trip in the audio codec landscape. Broadcom announced that they are releasing into open source under the LGPL their BV16 and BV32 audio codecs. The relevant page on their web site includes documents outlining the techniques implemented in the codecs and C source code.

I’m not familiar with either of the Broadcom codecs. I see that they are available in some versions of Counterpath’s X-Lite and Eyebeam soft phones. Support for these codecs in hardware is something that I’m yet to determine.

Slides From Astricon ’09 Presentation on HDVoice

November 9, 2009
Michael Graves
Asterisk, VoIP

This is one last thing from the Astricon '09 presentation. With this slide set all the material created for that presentation is now online. View more presentations from mjgraves.

Gigaset Firmware Update Released

November 9, 2009
Michael Graves
VoIP

siemens-a580ip-160 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.

USB Speakerphones: An Observation

November 7, 2009
Michael Graves
VoIP

Over a period of years I’ve used quite a number of these portable USB attached speakerphone devices. A while ago I summarized my experienced with them, but as a couple of new models have recently emerged so I find that they have my attention yet again. These new devices, if I should be lucky enough to try them, will be the focus on some future posts. For the moment I have another observation to share based upon a recent experience.

Six USB Speakerphones

All of these portable speakerphones I find well suited to individual use. That is, they work well enough for an individual who sitting at their PC and doesn’t like to wear a headset. They’re also sufficiently portable to please a road warrior. One of the nice things about this kind of device is that they often support HDVoice when paired with a suitable soft phone.

Polycom SoundPoint IP335: HDVoice Hits A New Low

November 5, 2009
Michael Graves
VoIP

polycom 331 …price that is. Polycom used VoiceCon this week as an opportunity to launch their newest low-end HDVoice capable desktop phone, the Polycom SoundPoint IP335. An update of the popular SoundPoint IP330/331 models the major changes in the IP335 include support for HDVoice via hardware upgrades and support for the G.722 codec.

The SoundPoint IP335 is a two-line phone with full duplex speakerphone capability. It also features an RJ-9 connection for a traditional headset, a backlit LCD display and electronic hookswitch (EHS) capability. All of these features are upgrades from the prior model.

Blabbelon In SILKy Wideband Audio

November 5, 2009
Michael Graves
VoIP

blabbelon VUC regular Tim Panton has been very busy lately. He was at Astricon where he gave a splendid presentation on the current state of Skype-For-Asterisk, including a live demo of it integrated with Google Wave. He later gave a similar presentation at eComm in Amsterdam, including a demo to the Google Wave team! Of course, we’ve been using his G.722 capable Java plug-in for web browser access to the ZIPDX wideband conference bridge for several months. That has been a genuinely useful bit of software, allowing anyone with a headset & decent broadband to experience HDVoice first hand.