EKK:LoFi Sounds in HiFi Spaces/Making connection/TeamSpeak

Teamspeak

Teamspeak is a voice communication software, which is intended for using it parallel to online games. So it is developed to have a small cpu usage and to be used with low bandwidth. As listening to music while playing is common there is a new high quality audio codec (coming with TS 3.0) called Opus Music which allows enabling a higher bandwidth for music streaming. Therefore TS might be interesting for live performing music over the internet.

The software consists of two parts: a client software with GUI and a console based server software. Communication partners have to connect to a server to start talking. If you are connected to a server you can create channels, give them names, protect them with passwords and configure the audio settings for them. As there can be many users on one channel at the same time TS offers the possibility for the users to place the other users in a 3D map helping to locate the different voice messages.

Technical aspects

TS offers three control settings for the input signal: push to talk, voice based activation and constant streaming.

You can also activate echo reducing and echo damping, noise reduction and automatic signal normalization, which are affecting the resulting signal.

If the server settings are supporting there are are five different codecs which can be chosen in ten different quality levels:

• Speex low-bandwidth (Quality: 0 - 2.49 KB/s | Quality: 10 - 5.22 KB/s)
• Speex high-bandwidth (Quality: 0 - 2.69 KB/s | Quality: 10 - 7.37 KB/s)
• Speex ultra-high-bandwidth (Quality: 0 - 2.73 KB/s | Quality: 10 - 7.57 KB/s)
• Opus Voice (Quality: 0 - 2.73 KB/s | Quality: 10 - 7.71 KB/s)
• Opus Music (Quality: 0 - 3.08 KB/s | Quality: 10 - 11.87 KB/s)

Tests

I wrote a PD patch to test the distortion of the spectrum and the delay depending on the chosen codec and the settings for the input signal - you can download it here (it might be useful for other communication software as well).