HD Voice as Fast As Possible
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2016-05-06
·
964 words · ~4 min read
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Some of you might not be old enough to remember this, but there was a time when
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every house had a landline phone with
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almost no features at all. Not even a slot to hold extra answering machine
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tapes. But while modern smartphones have literally thousands of uses, for all the
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ways they've improved on traditional phones, there's one thing that for a
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long time they haven't done any better. Actually making phone calls. So, you
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chumps who shelled out over $500 for a
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flagship smartphone are going to sound like butt when you call your dad to wish
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him a happy Father's Day. So, what's the deal with that? Thanks for asking,
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Jerry. Here's what happened. Reason number one for shoddy voice quality is
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interoperability, which no, it isn't. Which means the powers that be, that is,
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phone manufacturers and mobile service providers wanted to make sure that your
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shiny new handset could communicate with your sister's old low bandwidth brick
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over the network regardless of how they were connected. Number two, and I bet
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you college educated viewers saw this one coming, is cost. To put it simply,
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upgrading for a clearer voice experience was a lower priority than focusing on
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faster data speeds for watching highdefinition video, fewer dead zones
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in their service areas, and of course, massive profits to report to the
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shareholders. Although, arguably a lot of people would agree with at least the
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first two of those things. But you feed people grl for breakfast and Kobe steak
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dinner for long enough and they start to ask why they can't have a whipped cream
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and strawberry crepe in the morning once in a while. So, while LTE networks were
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developed primarily for the purpose of delivering faster data speeds, as
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they've become more common, carriers and handset makers have finally begun making
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serious progress on a new standard called HD voice. What's that, you ask?
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Well, HD voice is a protocol that improves audio quality by capturing more
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of what you're saying. I mean, no, I don't mean that your phone had a short
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attention span before. What I mean to say is that it can capture a wider range
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of frequencies than was possible before. Older phones were good for somewhere in
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the range of 300 to 3,400 hertz. But the
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human voice can actually make sounds from between 75 hertz and 1,400 hertz. A
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huge range that covers the sensual cruning of Barry White all the way to
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that horrible squealing noise I make whenever a new gadget arrives in the
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mail. HD voice uses the greater bandwidth of
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modern cell phone networks to catch everything you say between 50 and 7,000
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hertz, making calls sound much more realistic. There's so much blood. This
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concept is similar to what you see in digital music recording. So if you're
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creating a, you know, wave file, for example, taking more samples of the
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singer or instrument as it's playing per
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second results in more information ending up in the audio file, which up to
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a point means higher perceived quality. So if you're having a conversation over
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HD voice, your phone will actually sample your voice 16,000 times per
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second, slightly more than FM radio. Here's where it gets funny, though.
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Remember those smug pants landline phones from before with their superior
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audio quality? Well, to use HD voice,
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both you and whomever you're chatting with need to be on devices and networks,
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so usually LTE, that support HD voice.
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So that call to your dad might sound crappy unless he's got a spanking new
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smartphone and a great mobile network anyway. But all of this is normal
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growing pains for new technology. And while HD voice isn't universal yet, as
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more users switch to new phones and networks, the day may eventually come
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when your incoming calls don't sound like they're from Alexander Graham Bell
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himself. And no, you didn't, sir.
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pretty much it, guys. Thanks for watching. Like this video if you liked it. Dislike it if you thought it sucked.
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