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HD voice or other high quality audio on 3G in Canada?

Natsu
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

Dear humans, here is a question Google cannot help me with:

Is there such a thing as HD voice on any of the 3G network in Canada?

Or, more generally, is there any 3G network in Canada with codecs providing better voice quality than G.711 or G.729?

Thanks in advance for relevant information!

 

30 REPLIES 30

I look in the mirror and see a whole lotta air below my hand waving over my head. I'm out. 🙂

Natsu
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

@dust2dust 

You got me confused now with "Which effectively proves that the caller or receiver (which then ends up being both) was not using HD Voice or AMR-WB". If the codec being used is G.711, frequencies above 3,400Hz are no being encoded /transmitted. That means, if you can transmit and receive 6,000Hz, the codec cannot be G.711 but has to be something better, so what would that be in our network if not HD Voice? Codec G.722-2/AMR-WB can encode/transmit up to 7,000 Hz, but if your your phone's mic and speaker cannot handle all the frequencies up to 7,000 Hz, you won't hear all of that.

So my experiment proves objectively and without doubt that it was not G.711 that was being used and by elimination the only thing that is left is HD Voice. Tell me which part of this deduction you don't agree with... 🙂

Understood. Thank you. Which effectively proves that the caller or receiver (which then ends up being both) was not using HD Voice or AMR-WB. This is a great, objective experiment to check on the validity and presence of HD Voice. Get on that will ya? 🙂 Maybe you have friends on top tiers with all those bells and whistles. Or anybody here. Maybe I'll investigate for curiosity. The spouse is on Telus.

Then there's the frequency response capability of the mic pickups and either the ear output or the speakerphone output frequency responses.

Natsu
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

@dust2dust

Not the tone generator I was using. But steady tones being blanked out is not an obstacle to the experiment, since one can hear any tone that is being transmitted long enough with the receiving phone to be sure. To recapitulate the result of the expriment: tones up to 6000Hz that were fed into the microphone of the transmitting cell phone were audible in the receiving phone, while tones of 6100Hz and higher were not audible.

Natsu
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

A follow-up on the observation that a steady tone will be blanked out after a short while: a web search for "Hacking the GSM codec to pass FSK data through" will lead to an article written by an amateur radio operator who also discovered this behaviour of the cell phone system when trying to send a frequency shifted tone signal (FSK) via GSM mobile phones.

dust2dust
Mayor / Maire

Can your sound generator make a warble effect? Maybe the phone wouldn't choke on that. Or maybe the different kinds of sound like square/triangle/sawtooth. Or have two windows playing at different frequencies enough to hear the difference.

But if a test scenario between different devices can hear the higher frequencies then you'd know. Indicator or not.

Natsu
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

Not to forget, @Nezgar and @computergeek541 had already delivered the first chunk of the evidence, so I just expanded the research...

Natsu
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

I cannot prove anything here. All I have is evidence. 🙂

Natsu
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

@dust2dust

These phones only show minimal information on screen: "connected"; the duration of the connection, and the number one is connected to, plus an icon that changes from a horizontally placed receiver, which to me means "hung up", to an icon that shows a dial pad and some moving dots, which to me means "something is being transmitted". That's all...

Natsu
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

Something else to report, an interesting "side effect" of the tests with a sound generator: a steady tone is only transmitted for a few seconds and then blanked out. I don't know the reason but suspect this could be related to a noise reduction feature connected with the codec - this seems like useful functionality, since in practical circumstances one would not want to hear any steady tones (whistles, etc.) coming over the phone...

dust2dust
Mayor / Maire

Oh so you didn't find a test scenario that proved-out the existence of HD Voice - indicator or not?

I think I found my phone is on AMR-HR. Spent a little bit of time unsuccessfully trying to figure out changing it to AMR-FR.

Natsu
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

Tried 7000Hz once but nothing was transmitted. No further testing...

No HD Voice indicators on these phones - but they are used in Asia and Europe where 3G HD Voice is standard,,,

dust2dust
Mayor / Maire

But wait there must be more. Great stuff by the way. I think the objective test is the best option. So did you find a test scenario that could deliver above 6100hz? And if so, was there any indication at either device?

Great logical elimination test. 

Natsu
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

The answer turns out to be right in our faces LOL.

I have noticed in the past, using Koodo and, more recently, PM, that even with my cheap flip phone the sound quality is at times almost as good as VoIP, depending on who I talk to. That had made me suspect that in some cases HD voice was kicking in, and some of you have confirmed that this is entirely possible under the right circumstances. So I decided yesterday to do some structured testing with some collaborators.

 

I gave one person the same kind of cheap Ushining phone I use myself (F230) and another person an even cheaper one that I use exclusively for certain work related communication (W182), and yesterday and today we did some subjective voice quality comparison tests involving three phones and the VoIP softphones we all use for calls abroad (Microsip). In the softphone we can preset the codec to be used, and we used G.711 for some tests and G.722 for others.

 

Here is what we agree on:

1. When using any of our cellphones to call VoIP set to G.711, the sound quality is acceptable but the sound is muffled ("s", for example, sounds like it is spoken through a thick cloth)

2. When using any of our cellphones to call VoIP set to G.722, the sound quality is better (sharp "s" quite audible)

3. When using any of our cellphones to call another cellphone, the sound quality is best (sharp "s" very crisp and generally a more natural, bright voice sound)

 

Wanting some objective data, a went online looking for a tone generator - the one I decided to use is very simple - you can set the frequency of the tone and you can turn the sound on and off as needed. (How to find it: type "online tone generator" in one word, plus ".com"). Using that tone generator I played tones at different frequencies through a set of fairly cheap headphones and had them picked up with one of the phones while connecting to another phone. I checked 400, 1000, and 3000Hz, which were clearly audible in the receiving phone, then 5000 and 6000Hz, which were also clearly audible. 6050Hz sounded "broken up", and 6100Hz was completely inaudible. Getting frequencies of up to 6000Hz transmitted means that a better codec than G.711 has to be used, and that can in this case only mean G.722.2 = AMR-WB (aka "HD voice").

 

Good enough... 🙂


@Natsu wrote:

@computergeek541

Agree on not wanting to use 10-year old batteries - I'd look for 1 or 2 year old phones.

And apps are not an issue at all in my family, since we don't use smartphones... 🙂


LTE has been available in Canada for about 10 years. Models generally haven't been made in large quantities that don't have LTE compatibility over the last bunch of years.  If the thinking is to get an older model but one that hasn't been used much, there isn't any real way to know the history of the phone or how long it it has been used or how the battery has been treated.

Natsu
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

@computergeek541

Agree on not wanting to use 10-year old batteries - I'd look for 1 or 2 year old phones.

And apps are not an issue at all in my family, since we don't use smartphones... 🙂


@Natsu wrote:

@Nezgar 

Thank you, too, for the specific information, especially the codec details. What I wanted to know.

With 3G in the US gone now, I imagine there will be enough 3G phones on eBay or such for little money in the near future, and I should get some for my family (PM users) so that we can enjoy our conversations with a better audio quality in the remaining 3 years of the 3G era...


I don't suggest that. LTE has been around for quite some time and I would say  that pracitally every new device released in the llast 5 yeers is already VoLTE compatible.  It's not just the ability to the connect to the LTE network that you'd be missing out on with a phone that only has 3g network capbilities, but also that these devices will be very old.  With most phones these days having internal batteries, you wouldn't want a used phone with a built-in 10-year-old battery.  There's also the issue of security updates for the software on the phone and that apps won't work unless a more up-to-date operating system is installed.

Natsu
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

@Nezgar 

Thank you, too, for the specific information, especially the codec details. What I wanted to know.

With 3G in the US gone now, I imagine there will be enough 3G phones on eBay or such for little money in the near future, and I should get some for my family (PM users) so that we can enjoy our conversations with a better audio quality in the remaining 3 years of the 3G era...


@Natsu wrote:

@computergeek541

Thanks for the specific information.

So HD voice is actually available, but it doesn't work across networks (where have I heard that line before?) Some family members also use PM, so between us it should work, then, with the right phones... worth looking into...

 


Unfortunatley, there is much misinformatoin on the intternet, and even a quick Google search reveals information that is factually incorrect.

 

There is a device compatibility factor, but I would say that most phones made in the last 10 years or so support the technology.  For HD vocie to work, both parties in the call have to be using it.  Personally, I did notice it  was enabled when I made a call to someone using Virgin Mobile.  Some phones won't even tell you that it's enabled during a speicfic phone call.  I supsect for most people, the audio CODEC used is a non-factor and that many wouldn't notice the difference unless it was pointed out.

Natsu
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

@computergeek541

Thanks for the specific information.

So HD voice is actually available, but it doesn't work across networks (where have I heard that line before?) Some family members also use PM, so between us it should work, then, with the right phones... worth looking into...

 


@Natsu wrote:

@JL9"is it imperative to have this?"

Not at all, and I am certainly not going to buy a smartphone just to get VoLTE, but I thought it would be nice to have on 3G if at all possible. 🙂


@Nezgar and I have been trying to inform everyone that Public Mobile does in fact have HD voice.  VoLTE doesn't mean HD voice.  They are two seperate things although HD voice is available at carriers that support VoLTE.  Either way, Public Mobile does not offer VoLTE, so getting a new phone with that feature will yield no immediate benefits if that's the reason for buying it.

Natsu
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

@JL9"is it imperative to have this?"

Not at all, and I am certainly not going to buy a smartphone just to get VoLTE, but I thought it would be nice to have on 3G if at all possible. 🙂

Nezgar
Mayor / Maire

Yes, most mobile carriers in Canada support "HD Voice" on 3G, but usually only when on the same "family" of networks ie, calls between these groups will usually support HD Voice:

  • Telus / Koodo / Public
  • Bell / SaskTel / Lum / Virgin / Lucky
  • Rogers / Fido / Chatr / Zoomer
  • Freedom might support amr wb with Rogers

HD Voice on 3G uses the G.722.2 aka GSM-AMR WB CODEC at a sample rate of 16KHz vs the regular 8Khz of regular NB-AMR.

 

I've personally confirmed HD voice calls working on phones as old as the BlackBerry Z10, Q10, Z30, Samsung Galaxy S4 forward, various iphones from the last 5+ years -- none of these phones even support VoLTE except the BlackBerry KeyONE which does.

 

VoLTE does support even better CODECs with even higher sampling rates like Extended AMR-WB (AMR-WB+) with 8, 16, 24, 32, or 48 kHz (and technically even stereo) and the latest and greatest being super wide band Enhanced Voice Service (EVS) up to 48Khz. I personally have no idea how much of these two modes are employed by Canadian carriers at this time though.


@Natsu wrote:

Dear humans, here is a question Google cannot help me with:

Is there such a thing as HD voice on any of the 3G network in Canada?

Or, more generally, is there any 3G network in Canada with codecs providing better voice quality than G.711 or G.729?

Thanks in advance for relevant information!

 


HD Voice is provided through a CODEC. The technical requirements do not make LTE mandatory.  Public Mobile does do HD voice for phone calls, but I have only noticed it when calling other Bell or Telus customers. This was as reported by the device (an LG G6 that I no longer have). Another carrier,  Freedom Mobile also advertised (they were Wind Mobile at the time) that HD Voice was available on their network, and this was at a time when the their network was entirely 3g/HSPA.

JL9
Mayor / Maire

Unfortunately not, is it imperative you have this? As the quality is still more than suitable for everyday calling whether personal or business.

BKNS27
Mayor / Maire

@Natsu 

With all the background noise like traffic etc. I don’t see any advantage of HD voice.

3G voice is good for me.

Yummy
Mayor / Maire

No HiFi, stereo, surround sound at PM. Just plain 3G sound.

hTideGnow
Mayor / Maire

HI @Natsu   HD voice available with VoLTE but PM is having voice on 3G only.  No HD voice here  

dust2dust
Mayor / Maire

Not 3G. HD Voice, that might also just be a marketing term for VoLTE, needs VoLTE at both ends.

I searched "hd voice canada" and found lots of stuff about hd voice. Seems Rogers and Fido and interacting with Freedom. Telus and Koodo offer VoLTE.

LeePublic
Deputy Mayor / Adjoint au Maire

I don't think so, not on the cheaper Tier 3 carriers but I think the main Big Three and 2nd tier carriers may offer VoLTE. 🤔 

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