[Ekiga-list] Congratulations + some soundproblem using Ekiga under Linux

[Damien Sandras]

Hi,

Le samedi 29 septembre 2007 à 00:40 +0200, Christian Belle a écrit :
> Hi Damien !
> 
> I have tried quite a few phone tools under Linux, but I like the usage of 
> Ekiga best.
> 
> However after installing it (Suse 10.2, 64 Bit version, used soundcard intel 
> ICH 7) I had the problem that the sound quality would be pretty poor: the 
> high frequencies were lacking in such a manner that I (and the person I 
> talked to) sounded as if we had a speech problem keeping us from properly 
> pronouncing "s" and similar sounds.
> 
> (Recording and playing sound with other applications was never a problem in 
> spite of the old Alsa drivers... also using the microphone of my headset)
> 
> This was about half a year ago, using google I found out that this Intel 
> Chipset had problems with some ALSA drivers under Linux, so I postponed 
> the "problem".
> 
> Now I upgraded to the latest Ekiga (2.0.11) and the latest ALSA drivers. The 
> progress was that the (really) useful internal Ekiga soundcheck now shows 
> _perfect_(!) quality (even better than skype) but when calling 500 at ekiga.net 
> or when using my german provider (1&1) to call my analogue mailbox, the sound 
> problem still exists.


The druid audio test works in wideband mode (16 kHz), while the german
provider or 500 at ekiga.net require narrowband mode (8 kHz). Skype always
uses 16 kHz, while most SIP providers use the 8 kHz mode.

What I think is that you might have a problem with ALSA recording at 8
kHz, which would explain the problem.

A suggestion would be to remap the "default" ALSA device like explained
here :
http://wiki.ekiga.org/index.php/Getting_several_applications_using_the_sound_card_at_the_same_time_%3F

You will then configure Ekiga to use the "default" device, and it should
work.

You can change settings like :
rate 44100

It will force the hardware capture and playback to occur at 44.1 kHz,
and the conversion to 8kHz will be done by the software. Most probably
that it is better to do it by the software than by the hardware as you
experience problem in the latter case.

CC'ing the users list as it might be interesting (could you subscribe
and continue the thread there ?)

Thanks,
-- 
 _     Damien Sandras
(o-      
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