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Comment by nkw | Hacker News Reader

Probably a wide band or at least mid-band codec. One thing I learned working with VOIP is people perceive quality based on what they have been using recently, which for most people is the absolutely horribly stepped on audio of skype, cheap voip, or the cellphone network. Carriers have pretty much let their baseline audio quality go to \\\\ because no one cares anymore. (Remember the Sprint pin-drop campaign?) Now, when you give somebody a wide band high quality audio connection they are blown away.

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Yeah, every once in a while when my wife calls me, we get what I'm assuming is an LTE voice call and the audio is great (AT&T HD voice, I believe). Outside of that, it is amazing how bad the call quality can be. You really notice it when listening to hold music. It is like the audio version of one of those old jpegs that looks like it has been recompressed each time the email was forwarded.

Their dropped packet handling is far far better than Skypes as well - in a dodgy wifi situation linq and skype are all but unusable while slack is crisp.

That is Opus actually, it can conceal up to 30% packet loss from the user, versus traditional G.711 where you can hear 1% packet loss quite easily.

No hate towards you at all, but describing technical things as crisp drives me crazy. Can anyone enlighten me as to why that would bother my brain?

Does a certain region use this or its usage widespread?

It's probably because you have not heard it often enough to just not think about it. If I were to describe a sound as being rectangle, it just doesn't make sense and I have to think about it and try to interpret it. The extra effort in trying to decode the meaning is just annoying. In contrast, you've probably heard the phrase sharp sound. It's equally as technically meaningless as crisp sound, but you probably get it and aren't annoyed by it.

I think you are spot on. If they described the call as clear or sharp, I'd be fine. Crisp seems out of place even though it does convey a similar meaning.

Not sure why it bothers you. Is English your first language? This kind of thing is often difficult for non-native speakers.

Crisp is a word with a few meanings. In this context, it's a metaphor assigning physical qualities to sound. (A crisp dollar bill is smooth and without creases)

I grew up in Appalachia. Does that count? :P

I'm not entirely certain - I use it to describe the opposite of "dull/distorted" sound, kind of a synonym of "fresh". I really have no idea where I picked it up, other than I grew up on the west coast.

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