Looking forward to 3G/UMTS: better sound!
▼ A long, long time ago, someone decided that an 8 kHz sampling rate was good enough for phone conversations. That's pretty crappy. And cell phones use last century's compression to make it sound even worse. But there is light at the end of the tunnel: AMR-WB on UMTS!
Around 1998/1999 cell phones were cool. At least, to me: I just got my first one, and three new cell networks were being built in the Netherlands. On February 4, 1999, the strangely named mobile operator 'Ben' started, and I signed up with them that day.
In the intervening years I stopped following cellular technology and I only got a new phone in 2004 (or was it 2005?) because I got fed up with the inability to sync contacts between my Mac and my old phone.
But after all the rumors about 3G iPhones I started reading up on 3G (UMTS) a bit, and it turns out that 3G has something really good in store: the AMR-WB codec. Originally, GSM used a pretty pathetic full rate codec, but even its enhanced replacement sounds significantly worse than uncompressed audio. And there's still the issue that all frequencies below 300 and above 3400 Hz are thrown out.
With AMR wide band, the frequency range is from 50 to 7000 Hz, which is a lot better: listen to the samples on this page.
AMR-WB uses only 12 - 13 kbps like HR and EFR, so there's really no reason for UMTS networks not to use it. However, because the higher quality audio obviously doesn't survive conversion to/from standard 8 kHz encoding, you'll only hear the higher quality on calls between AMR-WB capable phones on networks with AMR-WB capable interconnects. So it's going to take a while before the majority of calls will sound better.
But it's a start and I'm now actually looking forward to having a 3G phone. Preferably an iPhone.
Permalink - posted 2008-05-04