[asterisk-users] Best Codec

[Chris Bagnall]

> I know that g729 is the king-all, but I want to know what the rest of
> the professional are using out there.  g729 has a cost involved, so does
> the cost really offset the performance?  Or is it better to go with g711
> to start off?

I'm wary of using g711 of public broadband networks. Although theoretically the bandwidth should be there, many consumer ISPs appear to be rather overloaded at certain times of day, so that 256k theoretical (235k real-world) can easily drop to between 100 and 150kbps. Throw in even a small amount of light web browsing and you'll start to get g711 packet loss.

g729 is good for speech but very poor for music on hold. I've found speex to be a reasonable compromise - voice quality is similar to g729 (subjectively it's very difficult to tell the difference), but MoH quality is noticeably better.

Of course, if your endpoints are SIP hardphones or ATAs you may be forced to use g729 simply because so few hardware devices support speex.

It'd be interesting to see some comparisons or comments from people using g726 as this does seem to be supported by quite a few hardware devices.

Regards,

Chris
-- 
C.M. Bagnall, Director, Minotaur I.T. Limited
For full contact details visit http://www.minotaur.it/chris.html
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