Voice Codecs Explained

The following article will introduce you to the basics of voice codecs that are used in Voice over IP technology for compressing voice signals. You can also read about the codecs that are supported by the Ozeki Phone System. If you are interested in voice codecs and different file formats, read this page and you can also find a video about the topic.

Audio codecs are such computer programs that compress and decompress digital data according to a certain audio format such as MP3, WAV and AVI. Audio codecs are responsible for sound transmission.

voice codecs explained
Figure 1 - Voice Codecs explained

Codecs in General

A codec is a computer program that is responsible for transforming signals and data. In most cases codecs are used for transmitting and storing data.

VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) technology uses different codecs to convert analog voice signals into digital ones. The transmission of sound is a vital part in communication and therefore VoIP technology uses several different audio codecs. To be able to initiate communication, the following devices are needed: a microphone, loudspeakers or a headset.

Ozeki Phone System and the audio codecs

Ozeki Phone System XE uses integrated audio codecs for the trouble-free communication. Integrated audio codecs ensure good sound quality because they use noise reduction and jitter-buffer.

Audio File Formats

  • MP3

    • Mp3 is a digital audio file format. It is one form of compressing audio data. In spite of the fact that it loses some amount of data during the compression, there will be no change in the quality of the sound.

  • WAV (Waveform Audio file format)

    • It is the file format of Windows and IBM. Unlike Mp3, it does not compress data but it is able to store compressed data. Since it does not do compressing, the size of the audio files are big and therefore the transmission of WAV files through the Internet is not frequent.

  • AVI (Audio Video Interleave)

    • It is a file format that stores an also plays both audio and video data. It is one of the oldest fil formats that can run on many operating systems, like: Windows, Linux, Unix.

Supported codecs by Ozeki Phone System

  • G.711
  • G.722
  • G.726
  • Speex
  • iLBC
  • GSM

Ozeki Phone System supports several different audio codecs and therefore it provides better quality communication. The article above gave you an overview about audio codecs that are supported by the Ozeki Phone System.

Take a look at the following pages to get more information:

More information