Anyone got any experience of audio quality issues.

I have two accounts, one with Sipgate and one with voip.co.uk and a
Sipura SPA2000 which I've only just managed to get working (since I
changed from a Belkin to a Netgear router.)

On Sunday evening when I got all working I was talking to a (local)
friend using Sipgate, first through another voip provider and later
through Sipgate (changes at his end.) He has 8Mb ADSL, I have 4Mb
cable. The audio quality was good and clean albeit with a little low
level hiss.

However for incoming calls (I haven't yet loaded the Sipgate account)
most calls to me from Sipgate got the voicemail, so last night I
reconfigured to voip.co.uk. In two calls to my daughter on Orange, one
from her to me and one initiated by me, the audio was distinctly
choppy/burbly. There was no DAB-type bubbling mud, just the audio was
clean but missing bits. If anything it was marginally better when I
called her, and both times she was in the same (good signal) location.
We both agreed that a conversation in the circumstances was
impossible.

From what I have read here voip.co.uk is usually considered to provide
a better service than Sipgate, especially in terms of audio quality,
but my experience tends to suggest the opposite. Has anyone had a
similar experience and/or can suggest how to improve the situation?
Should I stay with voip and put up with the audio, or should I go back
to Sipgate and try to find out why most incoming calls go to
voicemail?

Oh, and as an extra, I changed the regional settings to those commonly
promulgated as being for UK and what was my original UK-sounding dial
tone is now still a bit UK-sounding-ish, but not really like anything
I've ever heard on a real phone. Anyone got a better setting?

TIA.


--
Woody

harrogate3 at ntlworld dot com