Technologies
AMR
AMR-WB (G.722.2)
VMR-WB
AMR-WB+
G.729
G.723.1
ACELP.net
Audio Samples
Related Standards Specifications

G.723.1 — Delivering Highly Compressed Speech at Near-toll Quality

Adopted in November 1995 by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the G.723.1 codec can be used for compressing the speech or the audio component of multimedia services at a very low bit rate as part of the overall H.323 and H.324 families of standards.

G.723.1 offers a dual rate of 6.3 kbps, based upon an MP-MLQ2 codebook search, and 5.3 kbps, based on the unique ACELP® technology platform developed at the Université de Sherbrooke. The higher bit rate has greater quality. The lower bit rate gives good quality and provides system designers with additional flexibility. Both rates are mandatory parts of the encoder and decoder. It is possible to switch between the two rates at any 30-ms frame boundary.

G.723.1 can perform full duplex compression and decompression functions for multimedia, visual telephony, and videoconferencing products. It was optimized to represent speech with high quality at low bit rates using a limited amount of complexity. Music and other audio signals are not represented as faithfully as speech but can be compressed and decompressed using this coder.

By delivering highly compressed speech, this codec is targeted for communications applications where low bit-rates are required without compromising the speech quality. In fact, G.723.1 provides near-toll quality.

Technical Highlights

  • Frame size: 30 ms (240 samples)
  • Lookahead: 7.5 ms (60 samples)
  • Bit rates: 5.3 & 6.3 (MOS at 6.3 is 3.9)
  • Possibility of switching between both rates during real-time operation
  • Optional VAD/CNG (G.723 Annex A)

All additional delays in the implementation on top of the 30 ms (totaling 7.5 ms) are due to:

  • Actual time spent processing the data in the encoder and decoder
  • Transmission time on the communication link
  • Additional buffering delay for the multiplexing protocol


MP-MLQ2: Multi-Pulse Maximum-Likelihood Quantization
ACELP: Algebraic-Code-Excited Linear Prediction