Quote from: SteveInWA on March 11, 2017, 04:41:35 PMSo essentially, VTech is using a meaningless term, similar to calling a grocery product "all natural". Just to be clear, though, wideband audio, aka "HD Voice", in the telephone industry, usually means that the product supports one or more of the wideband audio CODECs (G722.2 AMR-WB and/or OPUS). The OBi IP phones do so, and the sound quality on a true wideband call (the entire path supports WB), sound fantastic compared to the typical narrowband call.
Wikipedia has a good write-up here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wideband_audio
As it turns out, I think I had a VTech phone all along, so I didn't need to go buy one to follow OBi tech support's suggestion... I did some research and found out that VTech owns the AT&T brand for telephones, and VTech does manufacture at least some AT&T phones. The AT&T cordless phone that I had been discussing above actually does look like a VTech phone, and I hadn't noticed this earlier, but that AT&T's cordless handset is stamped "HD Audio" on the back. So I assume this is actually a VTech-mufacturered phone.
That being said, as I noted earlier, the scratchiness is heard on both my Panasonic and my AT&T cordless handsets. I hear the scratchiness to a much lesser degree using the AT&T's
corded handset, but it's really just on the cordless handset that the call becomes difficult to understand.
I tried using a different AC adapter on the OBi202 today. That didn't help with the scratchiness, so I don't think a bad power brick is the problem.
I also signed up for Callcentric today and linked it to the OBi's Phone2 port, leaving Google Voice on the Phone1 port. I still hear the scratchiness on Callcentric calls. Switching my cordless phone's connection back and forth between Phone1 and Phone2 (to compare Google Voice vs. Callcentric), I don't hear any difference. The call quality is equally bad on either service.
I've attached a recording I made, using the OBi202's web interface (using the OBi202's IP address as the URL), calling the echo test number. I recorded it two different ways, one using the AT&T phone's cordless handset (the attached file), and one using its corded handset. The recording sounded exactly the same using either handset, so I didn't bother attaching the 2nd recording.
Note that my own voice sounds pretty clear in the recording, but OBiman's voice is very scratchy. Perhaps this is simply because his voice is not very high-quality on OBi's end, but the scratchiness gives you an idea of exactly what I am hearing even when I am speaking to a live person, using a cordless handset. A live person often sounds at least as bad as Obiman's voice here, if not worse. Some live calls are much worse than others.
I'm curious if anybody else hears OBiman's voice sound noisy like this, when they call the echo test number at **9 222 222 222 ?
I still plan to go buy a 5.8 GHz phone today, as the last thing I can think of to test.