Bug#419182: kiax: sound quality very poor compared to skype

[Mikael Magnusson]

joshua at nirmalvihar.info wrote:
> Package: kiax
> Version: 0.8.51.dfsg-2-1
> Severity: normal
> 
> I can't figure it out. I have skype 1.3.0.53 and the sound quality for a 
> test call is almost crystal clear. When I try to use kiax with 
> iax.fwdnet.net, the sound quality is so bad as to be unusable.
> 
> Initially I suspected that I was getting poor sound quality due to 
> network delay so I registered two computers on my local LAN with FWD. I 
> called from one to the other. Now, if I understand FWD correctly, the 
> audio data is routed directly between the callers (not through FWD) so 
> this test should eliminate all network delay. Still, I found the sound 
> quality unchanged -- very poor. I tried GSM, speex, and ULaw. I turned 
> off all the audio filters and silence detection. It still sounded 
> terrible.
> 
> Any suggestions would be welcome. I loath to use Skype because it is 
> proprietary software and IAX should be superior.
> 

When comparing the sound quality of skype and kiax you should have in 
mind that skype uses a (prioprietary) wideband codec in contrast to kiax 
which uses a sample rate of 8000 samples per second.

You should compare kiax to another softphones using 8k samplerate. For 
example twinkle which also supports wideband speex codecs. IAX doesn't 
support wideband codecs.

Mikael