Voice Compression is the Digital Static of the 21st Century

Once upon a time there was the big "digital" promise of clear sound and video because it's either a 0 or a 1, so gone should be the days of static that makes it difficult to understand people on the other end of the line, mirror images in TV signals and 'snowy' images. Well, and it can be very good, until somebody thinks its a good idea to compress that voice signal somewhere in between you and the other side or to compress that digital TV signal just too much so compression artifacts pop-up left and right in the picture all the time. Especially for international calls around the world I am sometimes quite amazed at how bad the voice quality is and how much money network operators ask you to pay for the pleasure. So much for "everything gets better with digital" 🙂