Comparison of Audio Quality of Teleconferencing Applications Using Subjective Test

ABSTRACT

The human need to communicate and connect during the Covid-19 pandemic has led to the increasing use of teleconferencing applications. Users naturally pay attention to audio quality in choosing a teleconference application from many available and easily accessible applications. Audio quality is partly affected by the audio coding method used and developed on the application and the noise introduced within the network. This work evaluates the audio quality of 5 popular teleconferencing applications using the subjective test. For complement, objective tests and Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) assessments are also carried out. The standard used for the subjective test is ITU-R BS.1116-3 Methods for the Subjective Assessment of Small Impairments in Audio Systems, which aims to identify small differences between audio quality. The assessment is conducted by comparing the original and compressed audio. The original audio is recorded from the speaker side, while the compressed audio is recorded from the receiver side. Both are assessed using the subjective test method by 20 subjects. The assessment results of each audio teleconferencing application are different, even though some applications use the same codec. We also found that one of the most popular applications tends to have the lowest average score among the tested audio applications. © (2022) by the Audio Engineering Society All rights reserved.