[Ground-station] FreeDV QSO party, FreeDV GUI as a starting point for P4G?

[Phil Karn]

On 2/24/19 09:18, Michelle Thompson wrote:

> Neither codec2 or opus sound great, even at high rates. I really like
> the high rate aac used by WhatsApp. That's the minimum quality we should
> be delivering. 

Opus has a minimum bit rate of 6 kb/s (though I think it may have
recently been dropped to 5). It definitely outperforms AAC in subjective
listening tests at the same bit rate, and best of all it is completely free.

Because all these codecs (including Codec2) can operate at variable bit
rates, I recommend supporting them. Stations with bigger transmitters
and/or antennas should have the option to run at higher bit rates.
Obviously there may be a least-common-denominator problem with receive
stations, but I think the feature should be there.

You need not support a super fine grained choice of bit rates, but there
should at least be a choice.

Phil