Short YouTube transcript where two speakers discuss the difference between narrowband and wideband audio. Narrowband is described as audio limited to frequencies below ~8 kHz (cutting off higher-frequency information); wideband and super-wideband provide higher quality for speech and music. Historical context is given: G.711 (circa 1960) and hardware/network limits led to the 8 kHz/narrowband standard.
What is the difference between narrowband and wideband?
So if we look at an audio signal, we can look at the audio signal in a frequency domain, and then we have the audio signal that can be categorized into signals that fall into the range from 0 to 8 kilohertz, 8 to 16, and above 16 below 8 is called narrowband. And if you restrict the audio signal to that, you cut off the higher frequencies, but you cut off a lot of information in those frequencies.
Yep. Why do we do that?
Because back in 1960, when G711 was invented, we couldn't transfer more and the devices didn't capture more, so it was decided to do 8khz.
So it was a mixture of what hardware could do in these days and how much we wanted to. How much we wanted to spend on the network for the data that we're sending.
Yes.
Okay.
And these days it's at least wideband if you want good quality or super wideband.
Yep. And then wideband is. Dude. Still for audio, but just for speech. Sorry. For people speaking at the higher quality than narrowband. And above that, it's usually music and other types of data. Okay.