wideband – Page 25 – Graves On SOHO Technology

Review: Plantronics .Audio 480 Headset

March 29, 2009
Michael Graves
Audio, Video, VoIP

plantronics-audio480usb_cu-120-copy Last Christmas my wife got me one of Plantronics .Audio 480 headsets. I’d seen this model of headset offered for a while, and since I’ve used noise reducing headphones for listening to music for many years, the idea of a similar approach to a VoIP headset was intriguing. She knew that I was searching out a wideband capable SIP soft phone and thought that a suitably capable headset might enhance my traveling arsenal.

My earlier experience with noise reducing headsets started with the venerable Sony MDR-NC10…which I simply loved, and had several sets over the years. I found them both comfortable to wear and very effective. The concept of soft rubber-tipped ear buds that form a noise blocking seal into the ear canal was simply brilliant.

Eating Our Own Dog Food Revisited

March 22, 2009
Michael Graves
VoIP

Ok, this is going to be a rant. Consider yourselves warned. And worse than that, it’s more or less a repeat of a rant from not long ago. The theme is essentially “Eating Our Own Dog Food” and it harkens back to thoughts of the Emperors New Clothes, or perhaps the state of the mechanics own car.

To what I am I referring? Well, in this case it’s the Squawk Box podcast from Feb 29. The topic was, netbooks vs smart phones and was extremely interesting. However the call, and resulting podcast, was also profoundly aggravating.

Wideband Telephony Takes Center Stage At Jeff Pulver’s HD VoIP Summit

March 16, 2009
Michael Graves
VoIP

It’s starting to appear as if wideband telephony is truly going to get some traction in 2009. Jeff Pulver is mounting an event called HD VoIP Summit on New York City on May 21st. There’s a call for speakers at present. The deadline for those who wish to apply to speak is April 3rd.

The call for speakers was prefaced by a Dan Berninger guest post on Jeff Pulver’s blog entitled, “The Promise Of High Definition Voice Beyond Skype.” Of course, Dan is CEO of FWD which is repositioning itself as a champion of wideband voice.

Polycom Introduces VVX-1500 Media Phone

March 14, 2009
Michael Graves
Audio, Video, VoIP

This past week Polycom announced a new device they call the VVX-1500 Business Media Phone. Combining the telephony features of the SoundPoint IP650 with a camera & touchscreen LCD but still in a desktop form factor, it looks to be a true business class desktop videophone.

Michael Stanford On Wideband At TMC

March 11, 2009
Michael Graves
VoIP

Michael Stanford of Wirevolution has an article called Better Sounding Calls in the March issue of Internet Telephony that was today published on TMCs HDVoice Community site. While very general it's nevertheless a nice article. He cites Speex developer Jean-Marc…

Codec Wars vs Serving The Common Good

March 8, 2009
Michael Graves
VoIP

There has been for many years a subtle conflict ongoing in telecom space. Various vendors have created digital encoding techniques (codecs) that target common network issues. Since various network realities exist so too do various approaches to the problems faced. So a range of codecs exist in the marketplace. Typically a high-quality solution comes with an associated cost, reflecting the very fact that the solution has merit.

The poster-child for this is the G.729a codec. Over time this patented codec has become the industry standard low-bitrate codec for voice applications. Who can argue. It works well. It squeezes reasonable voice quality down to under 30 kbps and it’s compute overhead is acceptable on available hardware.