Which Wideband Speech Codec? Quality Impact due to Room-acoustics at Send Side and Presentation Method

We report on two listening tests to determine the speech quality of different wideband (WB) speech codecs. In the first test, we have studied various network conditions, including WB–WB and WB–narrowband (WB– NB) tandeming, packet loss, and background noise. In addition to other findings, this test showed some codec quality rank-order changes when compared to the literature. To evaluate the hypothesis that secondary test factors lead to this rank-order effect, we conducted another speech quality listening test: Here, we simulated different source material recording conditions (room-acoustics and microphone positions), processed the material with different WB speech coders, and presented the resulting files monotically in one and diotically in another test. The paper discusses why and how these factors impact speech quality.