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?
In article <ZFZmi.39288$ri2.28467@newsfe5-win.ntli.net>,
harrogate3 <nospam3@ntlworld.com> wrote:
>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.
The hiss might be "Comfort Noise Generation" - something that's generated
locally to let you know that the call is still there. When a phone goes
totally dead then most people think the connection is broken, and as
this can happen in a VoIP system (some systems use 'silence suppression'
and stop sending data during quiet periods), then sometimes a little
bit of background hiss or noise is injected to keep you happy. Maybe
it's just a bit too loud on this system...
>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.
Choppy is probably packet loss. Did you have anyting else running at
the same time? Big download (or more likely upload?) Running any p2p
applications, etc?
>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?
Do you have any sort of QoS controls on your router? (or is the SPA2000
acting as a router? I've no idea really what functions it has)
Sipgates server is (as far as I can tell) physically located in Germany,
so your data will go over the channel to Germany, then back to London
where they connect into their PSTN connector, so there's a lot of
Internet to go wrong or slow there, although saying that, when I trace
to sipgate from home, it goes over 12 hops, but to get to voip.co.uk,
even though it's in the UK, requires 11 hops (although it's 15ms 'closer'
in ping terms)
So make sure your own connection is as good as possible - QoS on the
router if possible (it's not perfect, but will help), and although I
use sipgate (occasionally), I'd stick to a UK service provider if at
all possible.
Gordon Henderson wrote:
>
> The hiss might be "Comfort Noise Generation" - something that's generated
> locally to let you know that the call is still there. When a phone goes
> totally dead then most people think the connection is broken, and as
> this can happen in a VoIP system (some systems use 'silence suppression'
> and stop sending data during quiet periods), then sometimes a little
> bit of background hiss or noise is injected to keep you happy. Maybe
> it's just a bit too loud on this system...
Or it could be that the impedance setting you have doesn't match the
phone you have connected.
> Choppy is probably packet loss. Did you have anyting else running at
> the same time? Big download (or more likely upload?) Running any p2p
> applications, etc?
Agreed.
> Sipgates server is (as far as I can tell) physically located in Germany,
> so your data will go over the channel to Germany, then back to London
> where they connect into their PSTN connector, so there's a lot of
> Internet to go wrong or slow there,
That isn't always the case. The RTP (audio) doesn't actually have to go
through the SIP server that is controlling the call. But if you are
behind a nat, then it probably does(unless they were clever and
redirected you to a close by nat traversal server)
> although saying that, when I trace
> to sipgate from home, it goes over 12 hops, but to get to voip.co.uk,
> even though it's in the UK, requires 11 hops (although it's 15ms
> 'closer' in ping terms)
"Tim" <nutnews@kooky.org> wrote in message
news:469cb484$0$641$bed64819@news.gradwell.net...
> Gordon Henderson wrote:
>>
>> The hiss might be "Comfort Noise Generation" - something that's
>> generated
>> locally to let you know that the call is still there. When a phone goes
>> totally dead then most people think the connection is broken, and as
>> this can happen in a VoIP system (some systems use 'silence
>> suppression'
>> and stop sending data during quiet periods), then sometimes a little
>> bit of background hiss or noise is injected to keep you happy. Maybe
>> it's just a bit too loud on this system...
>
> Or it could be that the impedance setting you have doesn't match the
> phone you have connected.
>
>
>> Choppy is probably packet loss. Did you have anyting else running at
>> the same time? Big download (or more likely upload?) Running any p2p
>> applications, etc?
>
> Agreed.
>
>> Sipgates server is (as far as I can tell) physically located in
>> Germany,
>> so your data will go over the channel to Germany, then back to London
>> where they connect into their PSTN connector, so there's a lot of
>> Internet to go wrong or slow there,
>
> That isn't always the case. The RTP (audio) doesn't actually have to go
> through the SIP server that is controlling the call. But if you are
> behind a nat, then it probably does(unless they were clever and
> redirected you to a close by nat traversal server)
>
>
>> although saying that, when I trace
>> to sipgate from home, it goes over 12 hops, but to get to voip.co.uk,
>> even though it's in the UK, requires 11 hops (although it's 15ms
>> 'closer' in ping terms)
>
> And calls can go through different servers :)
It's almost certainly a configuration/equipment problem. I've been using
Sipgate for as long as they've been operating in the UK (3+ years) and
apart from when I was first setting up, and using a softphone, I've
*never* had an audio quality problem. One-way audio, yes, when SIP
settings weren't quite right, but quality has always been as good as the
PSTN.
BTW Sipgate do have some server closets located in the UK, but I don't
know where (London, probably Docklands, at a guess).
In message <469cb484$0$641$bed64819@news.gradwell.net>
Tim <nutnews@kooky.org> wrote:
> Gordon Henderson wrote:
> >
> > The hiss might be "Comfort Noise Generation" - something that's generated
> > locally to let you know that the call is still there. When a phone goes
> > totally dead then most people think the connection is broken, and as
> > this can happen in a VoIP system (some systems use 'silence suppression'
> > and stop sending data during quiet periods), then sometimes a little
> > bit of background hiss or noise is injected to keep you happy. Maybe
> > it's just a bit too loud on this system...
>
> Or it could be that the impedance setting you have doesn't match the
> phone you have connected.
harrogate3 wrote:
> Anyone got any experience of audio quality issues.
>
> I have two accounts, one with Sipgate and one with voip.co.uk and a
I'll stop you there.
You have a cable connection which will be from virginmedia.
If you check the virginmedia.announce or whatever it is newsgroup you
will notice a national collpse of the network.
look into it deeper and you'll see far more going on.
Most users even on 20Mb package are unable to get anywhere near decent
download speeds.
Mine is struggling to get to 1Mb at anytime in the evening.
During the day I often have to shut doen the cable connection completely
and allow my sip accounts to re-register on my ADSL connection as
communication is impossible over VOIP through cable.
I'd bet a big lump of money on the problem being your cable connection
not being able to give you enough bandwidth.
2 Meg, 4Meg, 10 Meg or 20 Meg, nothing is giving usable service on an
evening.
I have just downgraded from 20 Mbps to 2 Mbps to serve out my 30 day
cancellation, then I'm off to a 2nd ADSL connection to back up my
existing ADSL connection.
GymRatZ wrote:
> harrogate3 wrote:
>> Anyone got any experience of audio quality issues.
>>
>> I have two accounts, one with Sipgate and one with voip.co.uk and a
>
> I'll stop you there.
> You have a cable connection which will be from virginmedia.
> If you check the virginmedia.announce or whatever it is newsgroup you
> will notice a national collpse of the network.
>
> look into it deeper and you'll see far more going on.
> Most users even on 20Mb package are unable to get anywhere near decent
> download speeds.
>
> Mine is struggling to get to 1Mb at anytime in the evening.
> During the day I often have to shut doen the cable connection completely
> and allow my sip accounts to re-register on my ADSL connection as
> communication is impossible over VOIP through cable.
>
> I'd bet a big lump of money on the problem being your cable connection
> not being able to give you enough bandwidth.
>
> 2 Meg, 4Meg, 10 Meg or 20 Meg, nothing is giving usable service on an
> evening.
>
> I have just downgraded from 20 Mbps to 2 Mbps to serve out my 30 day
> cancellation, then I'm off to a 2nd ADSL connection to back up my
> existing ADSL connection.
>
> Good luck.
>
> Pete
> --
> http://www.gymratz.co.uk
> To Serve & Protect!
> :¬)
I'll second that, since the "upgrade" a couple of weeks ago my
VirginMedia cable connection has been diabolical (North
Manchester/Rochdale region). It goes completely down several times a
day and when it's up the speed reminds me of the bad old 56k dial-up
days. I too will be voting with my feet soon.
On Thu, 19 Jul 2007 09:56:27 +0100, Paul Hayes
<nomailforme@polog40.org.uk> wrote:
>GymRatZ wrote:
>> harrogate3 wrote:
>>> Anyone got any experience of audio quality issues.
>>>
>>> I have two accounts, one with Sipgate and one with voip.co.uk and a
>>
>> I'll stop you there.
>> You have a cable connection which will be from virginmedia.
>> If you check the virginmedia.announce or whatever it is newsgroup you
>> will notice a national collpse of the network.
>>
>> look into it deeper and you'll see far more going on.
>> Most users even on 20Mb package are unable to get anywhere near decent
>> download speeds.
>>
>> Mine is struggling to get to 1Mb at anytime in the evening.
>> During the day I often have to shut doen the cable connection completely
>> and allow my sip accounts to re-register on my ADSL connection as
>> communication is impossible over VOIP through cable.
>>
>> I'd bet a big lump of money on the problem being your cable connection
>> not being able to give you enough bandwidth.
>>
>> 2 Meg, 4Meg, 10 Meg or 20 Meg, nothing is giving usable service on an
>> evening.
>>
>> I have just downgraded from 20 Mbps to 2 Mbps to serve out my 30 day
>> cancellation, then I'm off to a 2nd ADSL connection to back up my
>> existing ADSL connection.
>>
>> Good luck.
>>
>> Pete
>> --
>> http://www.gymratz.co.uk
>> To Serve & Protect!
>> :¬)
>
>I'll second that, since the "upgrade" a couple of weeks ago my
>VirginMedia cable connection has been diabolical (North
>Manchester/Rochdale region). It goes completely down several times a
>day and when it's up the speed reminds me of the bad old 56k dial-up
>days. I too will be voting with my feet soon.
>
Same rubbish here for London with 2mb Virgin ADSL, and Cable Virgin.
Im off as well tomorrow to another ISP on ADSL Max.
> Same rubbish here for London with 2mb Virgin ADSL, and Cable Virgin.
> Im off as well tomorrow to another ISP on ADSL Max.
My ADSL MAX gives me a rock solid 6.5 Mbps any time of the day.
ALthough, being in a VM cabled area would have it's advantages.
Either way, VM will be shoving all their traffic from all the combined
networks down the same pipes so any ISP that's NOT VM will give an
infinitely better service.
Right, just off to get my 2nd phone line booked up now so I can dump
everything that's anything to do with VM.
"GymRatZ" <bigone@gymratz.co.uk> wrote in message
news:5kPni.345$By5.111@text.news.blueyonder.co.uk. ..
> Brian wrote:
>
>> Same rubbish here for London with 2mb Virgin ADSL, and Cable Virgin.
>> Im off as well tomorrow to another ISP on ADSL Max.
>
> My ADSL MAX gives me a rock solid 6.5 Mbps any time of the day.
> ALthough, being in a VM cabled area would have it's advantages.
>
> Either way, VM will be shoving all their traffic from all the combined
> networks down the same pipes so any ISP that's NOT VM will give an
> infinitely better service.
>
> Right, just off to get my 2nd phone line booked up now so I can dump
> everything that's anything to do with VM.
The connection may be *very* slow here, but at least I don't suffer any
problems that affect voip. My problem is more with video streaming.
> The connection may be *very* slow here, but at least I don't suffer any
> problems that affect voip. My problem is more with video streaming.
Chances are you could well be effected, you just aren't making a call at
the time.
I use (used to use) my VM cable connection for VOIP calls both incoming
(over voipfone.co.uk) and outgoing (mainly voipcheap.com)This is for our
shop phone, so it's in use most of the day with 2 VOIP lines and 4
computers networked and internetted 2 PC's being used continuously for
e-mailing and browsing, so we notice any problems straight away, wheter
it's calls dropping straight to voicemail or loss of audio etc.
many calls often come through fine, but every so often all calls screw
up, and customers can be very persistent trying to get through so they
call and re-call and call again.
That's the point I realise it is going to be just another VM failure day
and shut the thing off completely. It saves so much hassle.
mattpark wrote:
> You should rule out your net connection first.
>
> Run a tracert to sipgate's server just to check if your traffic is
> taking an overly funky route. Post your results back here.
>
> Also, visit here - http://testmyvoip.com/
>
> Check preserve speech quality
> Pick London in the drop down list (no German test point im afraid)
>
> Let me know what results come back. It should give you some idea of any
> packet loss you are having on your line.
But I know full wellvoip is extremely intermittent down to un-usable
very often on Cable yet a shut-down of cable connection forcing all sip
accounts to re-register on my adsl connection/ IP rectifies every
problem every time.
Day in/ day out this has proven to be the case...
Except for today.
It looks like VM reverted back to a previous configuration or something
last night as lots of folks were reporting much better speeds and Cable
modem has not needed to be shut down today.
However I'm still leaving cable for 2 ADSL connections as I have far
more faith in B.T. routing my traffic than I do in Virgin Media after
the last months fiasco.
Audio quality 
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