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A comment on Why 56k Modems Relied on Digital Phone Lines You Didn't Know We Had. Parent comment

Re:Why 56k Modems Relied on Digital Phone Lines You Didn't K... by OhMeadhbh on Thursday March 06, 2025 @02:26PM (#43284162)
I think it was ubiquitous. NPR in the 90s and 2000s used ISDN to allow many of their commentators to work from home. I think where you hear those crazy 8KHz clipped calls is where it's not an option. Mostly these days remote radio and podcast interviews I hear remote participants sound more like they're on mobile phones: variable voice quality with an almost unbearable latency.
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Re:Why 56k Modems Relied on Digital Phone Lines You Didn't K... by xnx on Thursday March 06, 2025 @02:51PM (#43284417)
Every once in awhile the stars align and I randomly get an "HD" voice call. It's disorienting to both me and the other party how good the quality is.
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Re:Why 56k Modems Relied on Digital Phone Lines You Didn't K... by DecentShoes on Friday March 07, 2025 @03:39AM (#43288345)
HD Voice is genuinely what it's called:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/business-insig...

They really do sound alot better. It always reminds me of the first time I ever made a FaceTime call, in 2010, and the high quality audio was just as interesting as the video.

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Re:Why 56k Modems Relied on Digital Phone Lines You Didn't K... by spockz on Friday March 07, 2025 @12:31PM (#43292144)
It is the reason why we switched to using FaceTime audio. The sound quality is so much better than over the normal voice line. I don’t know how to reliably get HD Voice.
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Re:Why 56k Modems Relied on Digital Phone Lines You Didn't K... by xnx on Friday March 07, 2025 @12:40PM (#43292216)
Another thing ruined by the cell companies. They should be dumb pipes that don't even know what they're carrying.
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Re:Why 56k Modems Relied on Digital Phone Lines You Didn't K... by madwolf on Friday March 07, 2025 @04:59AM (#43288825)
Probably depends on the radio station and area but I work in one and we're actually using something much higher quality for remote radio, for example: https://www.prodys.net/portable-codecs-audio/quantum-lite-2/

If course it has to be pre-planned, someone needs to have the hardware with them. So sometimes there's a spontaneous connection over normal mobile phone. That's something that everyone has with them at all times.

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Re:Why 56k Modems Relied on Digital Phone Lines You Didn't K... by cjrp on Friday March 07, 2025 @06:38AM (#43289357)
Apparently it was still used for commentators at the BBC until 2023 https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ode-isdn-paul-furley/
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Re:Why 56k Modems Relied on Digital Phone Lines You Didn't K... by genewitch on Saturday March 08, 2025 @08:10AM (#43299972)
ISDN was just completely phased out a year or two ago in the US, too.
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