Dodgy audio connections conceal more than just words

heh

all my calls are usually made with the 5 and 3 year old battering each other in the background. Either that or the 8 year old is playing something loud on the ipad. On this system they would probably think im not even who I say I am or my policy number is not the one connected to my name etc. Plus my blood starts to boil when you get put on hold and asked the same questions again, then passed to someone else who asks you again, of course you will get stress accents.

Consumers have an easy way to spot liars

It's not hard for someone to tell if a cold-calling telesales person is lying. Just as soon as they say

"Hello Zir, my name is ........ William" you know you're on a loser. If the very first sentence out of their mouths is such an obvious untruth, what's the point in believing, or even listening to, anything else they say after that?

Motorcycle sounds for inducing stress?

Well that's helpful for me since I live close to a very noisy and aggressive mid-life-crisis type who faffs about all day on his two-wheeled willy extension. I think there's a fair chance I'm going to sound stressed.

I guess all those spy agencies want HD voice..

I mean, what better way to secretly gather biometrics than to use the one thing you cannot avoid in a phone call?

This is why I don't like services like Viber and Siri - you're giving a company in a nation that isn't above spying on everyone and their dog voluntarily a voice print. Now is Apple more a hardware than an info merchant, but Google voice is an obvious candidate to do the same.

Paranoid? Nope - I worked with these people. The size of their haystack is more important than the needles because the haystack draws the funds. It's not about those few needles anymore - they just form convenient excuses.

"a half-megabyte phone system"

What does that mean? Do you mean half-megabit with that being the codec's bit rate?

Higher quality audio ??

At my place, they switched on the G.722 codec for higher quality internal calls. They were inundated with complaints from users because all internal phone calls sounded "wrong"

chicken and egg

The post my "A Non e-mouse" goes to show why this isn't likely to take off any time soon.

The general public don't want HD phone calls, it sounds "weird". I turned G.722 on for internal calls in our office and it takes some getting used to.

There's no point in the businesses paying a load of money to BT for HD audio since it'll only work if the entire call path is in HD, including the physical hardware the person at home has.

People are too used to 64kbps G.711a for fixed lines and even lower quality on GSM.

meh

I am always stressed when I talk to my insurance company (Lloyd's/TBS home insurance). They are muppets, often can't find the policy, and will sure as hell try to wriggle out of paying for anything, however obvious. Also, by the time I have got that far, I have usually been listening to horrid hold music and nerve-jangling canned announcements for ages, too.

Why don't I change? Because as with courier firms, they all suck about as much, sadly.

So yes, I always sound stressed, because talking to them is unpleasant and irritating.

Stress? Happy more like!

"The testing involves recordings made by people under stress, induced using headphone-piped motorcycle sounds"

Why would that make you stressed? I watch bike racing most weekends and attend MotoGP at least once a year. I'd sound perfectly happy & relaxed.