[cies]

> They intentionally dropped frequencies from the audio signal so that they wouldn't have to carry the data contained at those frequencies. This is why nobody ever sounded like themselves over the phone.

I remember switching from early GSM phone to a landline because I like to hear my love breathe

[thaumasiotes]

Remember what you like. The facts are that sound over landlines was not crisp, and in fact was a train wreck.

It's particularly ridiculous that you're complaining about digital lines having a low frequency range.

Whatever you remember, it isn't reality.

[slackwaredragon]

I remember landlines fondly, it felt like I could hear people better back then. At the same time, I also remember the 4khz cutoff. It was the reason music sucked over landlines. Like if you were listening to music with a friend from highschool over the phone, it'd have no depth and you couldn't understand half of it from lyrics to beats. Hold music was a lot worse back then, these days it doesn't sound near as bad.

I think for a lot of us later Gen-X and older Millennials, as we age our ears don't work as well as they used to. Especially those of us like me that didn't heed good ear protection. I can't speak for everyone, but I suspect if today me tried to talk to someone on a landline back in the early 90s it'd still suck as bad as it feels like it does with cellphones today. We get more range with our phones now but our ears have a harder time processing it.

Just a thought.

[lxgr]

Very good point – the "landline generation's" ears have aged considerably since the 90s.

On top of that, I think many remember "landline quality" in terms of a relative comparison with potato-quality early mobile phone codecs, analog mobile phones, heavily compressed discounted long-distance calling circuits etc. of the time.

Yes, landlines were better than any of that, but it doesn't mean that they were actually good by today's standards.

[cies]

> by today's standards.

Which? Whatsapp call sound shit. Mobile phone calls sound shit.

I did Mumble to get some acceptable quality.

[lxgr]

> Whatsapp call sound shit.

Not for me; it's way better than any landline I've ever used.

Not sure what we're doing differently – are you sure it's not your or the other party's speaker or microphone?

> Mobile phone calls sound shit.

Not for me either, at least not when EVS ("HD voice") is used, which is more often than not these days when calling friends/family.

2G connections used to sound quite bad, but since 4G, the limiting factor for me has been the other side being on a landline (mostly for business calls), which usually doesn't support wideband audio.

[vel0city]

WhatsApp uses opus for its voice functionality.

The default codec configuration for Mumble is opus.

[cies]

Maybe i dont live near you.

[lxgr]

GSM was indeed heavily compressed (voice channels were only around 12 kbit/s, compared to 56-64 kbit/s on landline), but comparing a modern VoIP codec like Opus (which is what almost every VoIP solution uses these days) to GSM FR or even EFR compression is like complaining about 64 kbps MP3 compressed by an early 2000s codec sounding bad and going back to vinyl for quality.