2. tech-talk
  3. 1229212989

Telephones for Audiophiles?


This may be slightly off topic, but I was thinking of Audiogon today when looking at Blue Tooth devices.

I discovered yesterday that I have over 10,000 rollover minutes on my cell phone.

Why?

Because I absolutely can't stand the way it sounds. On reflection,I dont know how any self respecting audiophile could stand the static, the drop outs, and the general fidelity that makes a Bose wave radio sound like a cost no object, state of the art, high resolution device.

If I am dying of a heart attack and need an ambulance, I might reach for my cell phone.

But otherwise, I go out of my way to wait for a land line and feel like I am insulting anyone if I put them on speakerphone. How people talk on cell phones for hours, or try to conduct any serious business on them is beynd me.

Is anyone else here sensitive to this? Are there any telephones, whether wired or wireless that have met your audiophile standards for clarity or quality?

And if I have to use a mobile phone, is there a wired or wireless headset or earpiece that sounds better than others?

Thank you.
cwlondon
almarg's avatar
Ag insider logo xs@2x
almarg
9,670 posts
 
LOL!

-- Al
wireless200
415 posts
 
Landline is 0 to 4 KHz. (sampling rate 8 KHz and 8 bits for 64 kbs. Nyquist rate must be twice highest frequency). This is why a T1 is 1.544 MB/sec. 24 trunks times 64 kbs plus some overhead bits.)
What people don't know about cellphones is they're not sampling in the normal sense as we think of it as audiophiles but actually all the sounds are *synthesized* by vocoder. Your phone takes pitch, inflection, tone, etc. information and sends that information over the air and the vocoder merely re-synthesizes that information into sounds. That's why digital phones sound that way. They normally transmit 13 kbs at most. Average is much lower. It's done that way for capacity reasons. Much less information per user needs to be transmitted that way. The vocoders used to be, probably still are, set up for particular languages as well and that has an effect, if you're speaking another language than the country you're in speaks and has the phones set up for.
albertporter's avatar
Ag insider logo xs@2x
albertporter
4,949 posts
 
They normally transmit 13 kbs at most. Average is much lower. It's done that way for capacity reasons. Much less information per user needs to be transmitted that way.
Wonderful information Wireless200, sounds like you know what you're talking about.

That reads like the perfect system for the carrier to maximize tower use and get the largest number of users on at one time. With cell phones, time (minutes used) is money.

As I wrote in an earlier post here, it was amazing what those old, powerful analog Motorola's could do voice quality wise, mine was indistinguishable from a land line.

Several years ago when digital was being pushed hard, Southwest Bell refused to move my big Motorola from old to new car. When I pressed him as to why, he admitted the analog Motorola used enough bandwidth to displace 50 or 75 digital phones on the same tower.

No wonder they sounded so good, and no wonder Bell wanted them replaced with digital. I'm sure it's expensive to put up a tower, I've heard some scary stories about how much they cost, especially when there's no space available on the ground and space on top of a building must be leased.
magfan
1,583 posts
 
Wireless, what happens in Europe where many countries have several languages in common use? The Swiss, for example are a real linguistic crossroads.
As for the rest, no wonder it sounds like your talking underwater thru a can and string.
wireless200
415 posts
 
Magfan, I believe the origin or family of languages has enough in common that it is less of an issue. European comes from common origins more or less. On the other hand an Asian language with all the tones and inflections spoken on a European language optimized vocoder would have a challenge being sythesized correctly. Vocoders have probably become pretty sophisticated since the early days. Even in the US, a lot of languages are spoken so the motivation for multi-language use is compelling.
More to discover