Comments on Why Do Calls Sound Worse Today? TypePad2016-12-22T19:55:21ZAndy Abramsonhttps://andyabramson.blogs.com/voipwatch/tag:typepad.com,2003:https://andyabramson.blogs.com/voipwatch/2016/12/why-doe-calls-sound-worse-today-/comments/atom.xml/Mjgraves commented on 'Why Do Calls Sound Worse Today? 'tag:typepad.com,2003:6a00d83451b99869e201bb0962ccfe970d2016-12-22T20:18:02Z2016-12-24T18:20:13ZMjgraveshttp://profile.typepad.com/mjgraves1Yep, transcoding is usually bad. There's no such thing as "retranscoding." I suspect you're referring to multiple transcodes, which results...<p>Yep, transcoding is usually bad. There's no such thing as "retranscoding." I suspect you're referring to multiple transcodes, which results in concatenated compression artifacts.</p>
<p>In the bad old days of land-line voip this what what you suffered when your pristine G.711 calls were passed over cheap, grey market routes, that relied upon G.729 (or worse!) to cut the cost of transit.</p>
<p>Back in 2009, when Jeff Pulver was trying to rev up the HDVoice hype machine, there was much talk about "transcode-free operation" (aka TFO) where carriers would exchange traffic over IP sustaining AMR-WB end-to-end.</p>
<p>Maybe someday, but I doubt it. People put up with questionable call quality. Noone make more money via improved call quality. Oh, they trumpet the quality of "The Network" but that's marketecture. Call quality is an afterthought.</p>