[clpwn]

You're right, that sounds way too fluffy.

To clarify, we're targeting "transparent" sounding audio, not "FLACs or bust" audio. Right now we send stereo 48kHz 96kb/s Opus (CELT, not SILK) that we found hit the voice transparency sweet-spot compared to the lossless audio source. We had used higher bitrates in the past, and could easily go back to them, but quality plateaued at around 96k in our experimentation.

More than choosing sane transparent-sounding encoding parameters, the biggest difference in fidelity by far was choosing the correct microphones and speakers for accurate reproduction of voices.

[sneak]

Voice does not extend above 22.05khz, so using sampling rates above 44.1khz is entirely objectively wasteful and useless, unless your codec only works at 48khz input or something.

Are you using 48khz for a specific reason?

[namibj]

Please read the official Opus FAQ to sampling rates: https://wiki.xiph.org/OpusFAQ#But_won.27t_the_resampler_hurt...

[eqvinox]

44.1 kHz is essentially deprecated on the hardware level since it's annoying to deal with the extra clock. It's a few cents for an extra crystal, way too expensive ;). 44100 also makes for very poor multipliers/dividers to other clocks since it includes 3²×5²×7² as factors. 48000 is much nicer with 3×5³.