Google Duo’s new audio tech… may be good
So I hesitate to really get into this until there’s a chance for me to do a real world test, but Google Duo is rolling out an audio technology called Lyra that will keep high quality audio going even as low a 30k per second.
For those not remembering, or born after robots screamed on phone lines to assert their dominance, 30k was about what your 28.8K modem wished it could pull back in 1994.
2mbit is what Zoom currently requires for a single screen, or 60-80kbps for audio (6-8K).
Your average landline used about 56k for audio, ISDN recording studios used 128 historically. So basically the Lyra audio codec is, from the sounds of it, giving about a 90-128k performance for 30k real time.
What the interesting part here is the codec to clean up language, compress and real time it. At least on the demo it seemed to be … well, good. There’s supposedly an AI language-based component for cleaning up and shipping audio data.
What’s not highlighted in the demo above is what happens to the video when you hit these 2G speeds? That remains to be seen. Also if you’re now on a 2G network trying to video call and can’t see anything, perhaps the solution is to hang up and use the phone as a phone?
