Fraunhofer IIS Demos Full-HD Voice Over LTE On Android

MojoKid writes "Fraunhofer IIS has chosen Mobile World Congress as the place to present the world's first Full-HD Voice mobile phone calls over an LTE network. Verizon Wireless has toyed with VoLTE (Voice over LTE) before, but this particular method enables mobile phone calls to sound as clear as talking to another person in the same room. Full-HD Voice is already established in several VoIP, video telephony and conferencing systems. However, this will mark the first time Fraunhofer's Full-HD Voice codec AAC-ELD has been integrated into a mobile communications system. Currently, the majority of phone calls are limited to the 3.5 kHz range, whereas humans are able to perceive audio signals up to 20 kHz. The Full-HD Voice codec AAC-ELD gives access to the full audible audio spectrum."

Re:can you hear me now?

[King InuYasha]

Four parties need to support this for it to work: the caller's handset, the caller's mobile network operator, the recipient's mobile network operator, and the recipient's handset. If all four support the Full HD Voice codec for IMS-Voice (aka VoLTE), then it'll be used. Otherwise, it'll fall back to AMR-WB or AMR-NB.

What good is HD-voice quality...

[SeaFox]

...when the phones have shit sound components.

Handset makers have been so focused on stuffing their handsets with cameras, MP3 playback, video playback, picture messaging and other dumb things in a features race that they only phone-in (pun intended) the basic voice calling capabilities now.

Re:What good is HD-voice quality...

[fluffy99]

The crappy speakers and mics in most phones probably has as much effect as the processing and compression. It is true though that the cellphone frequency range does cut off too much of the lower frequencies. A codec that goes to 20k is pointless when there is no speech frequencies that high, and most people can't hear it anyway. The focus should be better lower frequency coverage, improve the dynamic range, and filter background noise.

It's kind like pushing HD radio, when most people listen to their radios in their noisy cars with stock speakers and can't tell the difference.

Re:can you hear me now?

[masternerdguy]

What's especially funny about mp3 is how all the tools who listen to it don't know or care that there are superior oss codecs. I'm surprised flac or ogg haven't usurbed mp3 tbh.

Re:"Full HD" - right

[SeaFox]

It's actually a variant of H.264/MPEG-4 AVC [wikipedia.org], which is the codec on Blu-Ray audio. But not at a high bit rate, as on Blu-Ray discs. It's AAC/ELD v2, at 24Kb/s.

It's already in IOS Facetime, anyway.

This post doesn't make any sense.

1. H.264 is a video codec, it has nothing to do with the audio on a bluray disc. Blu-ray discs use a wide variety of sound formats, from 24-bit PCM Mono, all the way to 7.1 Lossless codecs.
2. You don't have to use H.264 to be "Full HD". "Full HD" is nothing more than a marketing term to start with, but it only refers to 1080p video. Early Blurays used MPEG2 for video codec and still did 1080p resolution.
3. Facetime doesn't use AAC/ELD, but only AAC/LD, which doesn't go as low in frequency. [fraunhofer.de]

Re:Voice communication is still very ineffective.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Once your communication goes beyond one or two sentences, it [voice] quickly becomes inferior to written- or text-based communication of some form."

Any time I get an IM from a coworker and the exchange goes beyond a short response or two, I invariably type "Call me." Voice communication - which is effortless (unlike typing), instantaneous (unlike typing), and nuanced (again, unlike typing) - is dramatically more efficient for discussing anything more complex than "Meet me at the bar at 6."