Teamspeak hands down.
Quality can be set to far surpass skype. Google hangouts is decent, considering googles codec integrates HE-AAC.
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Teamspeak hands down.
Quality can be set to far surpass skype. Google hangouts is decent, considering googles codec integrates HE-AAC.
I have done many tests with Teamspeak, Skype and Mumble. And I Skype has the best audio out off all of them. This might just be my testing but the masses are still using Skype and its for a reason.
I saw a thread early today where someone said that there are other options to skype. What other programs/services could podcasters use for high quality audio and video?
They use skype because its convenient, thats why I use it. But If I was focused on audio quality? You can alter the quality of a teamspeak server.Quote:
Originally Posted by RadarGaming
But thats not even the point. The big one that pod casters dont take into consideration (anyone that's done radio streaming or transcoding, back me up here) is your digital sound processing and DSP stacks.
Most the time when I mention this, They say ," ohhh, uhhhh, I'm recording with (name a $50-100 audio recording program) ..... "
NO NO NO NO NO..... I wish I could hit you on the head with a rolled newspaper.
Go get a second sound card, and set up a recording source with some AISO programs. You want to complain about all these streaming audio programs, but you have no post audio production, and that's the BIGGEST advantage you have over live streaming.... JEEEESE.
If you want to have a show with another person, and their on board with what your doing:
A) Tell them to load up audacity.
B) Talk to each other through the telephone, with the telephone NOT in speaker mode. Record your conversations locally, and try not to talk over each other.
C) One person sends the other the convo with the Audacity file. A half hour, to one hour edit? No one will know your not in the same studio. Export to codec of choice, and that's a wrap.
OR, just go get a program like Radiogate, and put that on a second soundcard, and let that AISO magic process the(name your VIOP of choice) audio.
Radio tool for DSP?. Record from a different source, and use AISO magic.
http://www.stereotool.com/
If you are looking for other options when it comes to video/audio communication for your podcast you should look at Zoom.US. the audio and video quality is better than google Hangouts. I wouldn't say the audio is better then Skype but if you are looking to do group video calls it works great.
In Skype 7 we will see the Opus codec make its debut. We will see a nice boost to the audio quality :)
I have been writing about opus for a while. The thing about Opus is your not going to get "premium" quality over a lot of audio codecs, but at lower levels, it does sound better to me than a lot of HE-AAC+ audio at the same bit-rate.Quote:
Originally Posted by andrewzarian
Theirs a lot of speculation of what opus actually "does" and what skypes intent with it is.
Opus is one of open source codec developer Xiphs new"er" projects. It took concepts of Speakx, vorbis, and flac, and rolled it into one codec.
At lower bitrates, I would of taken vorbis over it, sounds a little better than speakx,
At mid range, around the 48-56k mark, I would have taken it over HE-AAC+
At higher levels, obviously its going to beat out Mp3, but so is vorbis. The only reason ogg didn't make MP3 obsolete is the lack of support for it.
But the big thing here is Im sure skype is adding support for this reason. Its more of a "swiss audio knife" of codecs, and will allow better quality adjustment on there end, and allow them to use less bandwidth to do so. NOW, will this mean they will open up that spectrum wide enough to really outdo their current quality? Thats the million dollar question.
You might want to play with this codec a while to really determine if the new skype is going to be right for you. You can preview it by using foobar, and transcoding an MP3/Wav (technically, wav, because the codec is going to process the audio raw). OR, if your curious to hear how it will sound in a live streaming environment?
Use an Icecast 2.3.x (cant remember the newest build release from xiph) / (karls heyes trunk Icecast newer releases) and stream to that server using lunar cast, who has already added the codec in its options for streaming.
Lunarcast is free, Icecast is free. Both take a little work under the hood to set up.
If your looking for a high quality video alternative to skype? Veetle. Hands down.
It seems like Veetle is a live streaming platform. Similar to Justin.tv or Ustream. It wouldn't work if you are trying to have two way communication
Are these free services?
Yeah I didn't catch that earlier. For 2 way skype is the easiest.Quote:
Originally Posted by oscarmartz
ooVoo up to 12 friends for free.
http://www.oovoo.com/home.aspx
They've been around a long time and keep trying to change their business model without making a dent in Skype.
I wish I could +1 this right now. Going to check it out today. Good call cseeman.
Cseeman:
I have never had much luck with oovoo. From peoples recommendation I have checked out Zoom.us and im impressed.
Several vendors are sneaking up on wideband audio and video. Some examples are Blink/SIP2SIP through http://sip2sip.info, TeamSpeak, Zoom.us, and Bria. For now, Skype is king, but things may be getting ready to move around a little bit.
