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Question

is Google Voice supposed to be full duplex?

Oct 28, 2012 10:45AM PDT

I'm using "call phone" on Gmail, with my iMac, internal microphone, and external speakers. Good stuff, but my impression is that the other party can't hear me when they're talking. Is this supposed to be the case? Yes, I understand that there is a small amount of latency, but I'm having to ask people to pause occasionally to let me break in.

Now, if it is supposed to be duplex, but I'm not getting that, what might be wrong? Settings? Harwdare?

Discussion is locked

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Clarification Request
While it can do full duplex. Notice what folk say about it.
Oct 29, 2012 5:20AM PDT
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2435928/posts

"Objections:

1.)Placing calls takes...about 7 seconds longer

2.) Duplex is not completely full duplex —you have to wait slightly longer for the other person to shut up

3.)Sometimes you get that mathy, "tinny" sound"

-> I'm left to guess that you want the full duplex you enjoy on POTS. (do I need to expand all telephone acronyms when discussing telephones?) With PANS we get new issues and have to define so much.

--> If you are after the POTS full duplex, then my answer will change to no.
Bob
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what DO folks say about it?
Oct 29, 2012 8:55AM PDT

I don't want to argue semantics about the definition of "duplex". To the extent that Google Voice is not quite full duplex, what makes it not quite? Is it a property of the application, the connection, or the hardware? A "yes, but ..." or a "no, but ..." would be fine.

"Duplex is not completely full duplex —you have to wait slightly longer for the other person to shut up"
That's called "latency". It's pretty independent of whether I can interrupt someone.

The "objections" here don't really answer my question. Perhaps you can point to a "prior discussion" that is less than three years old. I've looked around on the web, and haven't found much of anything useful.

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Good luck.
Oct 29, 2012 9:05AM PDT

While it works for me, it is a mere shadow of POTS when it comes to "full duplex." If I compare it to other solutions they all come up short when we compare to good old POTS.

Good hunting for support for this one.
Bob

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allegedly it is ful duplex, but ...
Oct 30, 2012 3:13AM PDT
http://www.kolabora.com/news/2006/12/14/voip_tools_and_online_audio.htm
http://dots.ecml.at/TrainingKit/Activities/Audioconferences/tabid/2808/language/en-GB/Default.aspx

These folks specifically refer to Google Talk as full duplex. But as you say, it doesn't quite feel that way. Perhaps the short latency makes it hard to interrupt during a pause. That is, the person you're having a conversation with has already started talking when you're hearing the pause. If that's the case, if may be formally full duplex, but it might not feel that way.
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Answer
Yup.
Oct 29, 2012 4:05AM PDT

But as there are so many reasons for it not to be, I won't go into that discussion.

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so many reasons
Oct 29, 2012 5:03AM PDT

Anyone want to try for a halfway useful response? There are so many reasons to believe that one might be able to do better than this.

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OK then yes.
Oct 29, 2012 5:12AM PDT

The answer to the question is yes.

But if it's not full duplex then you could use prior discussions for reasons why.

-> Why I didn't offer any reason is there are so many. They won't fit here and it would be a bad idea for me to offer any given the clues so far.
Bob