In previous posts I have reviewed VAPPS, Inc.'s audio conferencing service and its recent relaunch to incorporate high definition (HD) voice. To the user it means that all participants calling into the VAPPS conference bridge from Skype will hear the other participants accessing the call via Skype at the full HD Voice bandwidth.

Recently I reported on PhoneBoy's experience; today Pat Phelan, CEO of Cubic Telecom reports on a six hour conference call where, only after the call, he found from his administrator that the call had been booked on VAPPS High Speed Conferencing.

Pricing is very competitive and with full recording of the conferences for free I have just opened an account for Cubic. One extra positive point is the fact that I now find a use for the 3 Skypephone that’s been sitting on my desk for months. I can Skype dial into conference calls whilst out and about at zero cost.

Congrats to VAPPS on an excellent product.

Yesterday VAPPS announced two new directions:

• a forthcoming rebranding of the service, to be called High Definition Conferencing (HD-C)
• publishing of an upgraded Skype Extra supporting nine languages depending on your Skype profile language selection.

In fact I interviewed Ben using HD Conferencing where he used its recording feature to capture our conversation:

Inteview with Ben Lilienthal - High Definition Conferencing

Right-click here to save the podcast for this audio

Ben provided a description of HD Voice, as well as why PSTN and cell phone access has a lower level of quality, and talked about why HD voice is important to a conference call. Note the recording itself is a demonstration of high definition voice; the only editing done to this 16IKHz mono file was to truncate silent spots; there was no background noise filtering or any other effects that might impact the original recording's waveform integrity.

Update: Andy comments on the recording

I for one have been using the HiDef service for a while, and actually was one of the first trial set of ears that Ben called on even before his company became a client. The difference is immediately noticeable between a regular audio conference and a HiDef Conference in what can best be described as tone and audio richness.

In both cases the information disseminated by the use of the call recording and podcast tools clearly demonstrates how VoIP in the middle makes for new ways to communicate. For broadcasters and podcasters the tools available today far outweigh what was there only a few years ago, and pretty much have to be putting companies who make high priced audio gear for broadcasters on the ropes. None of what was done cost anyone any money to record, encode, produce and publish. That's flattening and leveling in my book.

Tags: Skype, VAPPS, High Speed Conferencing, Ben Lilienthal, HD Voice, Pat Phelan, PhoneBoy

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