Hi,

We would like to offer you to learn about our new application that performs scheduled voice test calls to a predefined
echo server and then uses our AQuA web service to evaluate the call quality.

We developed it because several VoIP service providers have inquired us for a possibility to make test calls from local machines within
their customers’ network.

A typical example is when you provide VoIP communications to a company that rents its premises (including an Internet connection) in a
business center. In this case it is quite important to monitor voice call quality from different computers in the office space to the
service provider’s server.

This is a cross platform (Windows, Linux, MAC) Java application and uses our latest developments in waveform analysis to evaluate voice call quality: http://www.sevana.fi/aquameter.zip

The setup is simple: our application calls the echo server (apparently provided by the VoIP service provider), plays a reference audio and records the playback from the echo server and can thus provide overall (both ways) call quality analysis.

We are very interested to receive your feedback and feature wishlist. The application is free.

Best Regards,

Sevana Oy/Oü
Finland/Estonia

Using AQuA instead of PESQ or POLQA

• POLQA fixes weaknesses of PESQ. AQuA does not show recognized weaknesses
• POLQA unlikely PESQ can work with all modern speech codecs, voice enhancement devices and network conditions. AQuA algorithm naturally allows this possibility, but also extends it to music clips and wideband audio with sampling rate higher than 48kHz.
• POLQA has higher accuracy than PESQ. AQuA has high accuracy towards P.800 measurements and allows customization (tuning) of perceptual model used in the software.
• POLQA still has limitations that must be considered and overviewed. AQuA has been chosen by many customers for voice and audio quality analysis proving that its possible limitations are not significant.
• POLQA does not have backwards compatibility with PESQ. AQuA provides reasonable score difference with PESQ considering AQuA MOS scores comply with P.800

We would like to announce AQuA v.6.14.8.95 ready for release. You are
welcome to evaluate AQuA MOS scores conformance using this link:
http://www.sevana.fi/test/index.php

Please use Access code “14031975″

What is new in AQuA:

- improved performance
- preset parameters give high MOS score conformance (no need for
parameters adjustments in 80% of cases)
- no need for SOX amplitude adjustment (increases accuracy and calculation
performance)

AQuA is still the best option for active voice and audio quality
assessment with successor attitude towards PESQ and POLQA. Please reach
contact us for AQuA evaluation. AQuA 6.x manual is available at:
http://www.sevana.fi/AQuA 6.x Manual.pdf

Contact us to learn more and get a quote!

Best regards,
Sevana Oy

Even now and then we get questions on how AQuA is similar / different to PESQ. Well, AQuA surely differs from PESQ, because it’s using different perceptual model, returns different parameters (AQuA returns prediction for objective MOS score according to P.800 and PESQ values are from 1 to 4.5 considering that nobody can distinguish MOS 4.5 and MOS 5), has different features, provides more information on reasons for audio quality loss.

We clearly state that AQuA is not PESQ. There are cases which PESQ fails to detect, but AQuA does catch the degradation, read this article Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality (PESQ), and there are reports that state PESQ may not give accurate scores for example in mobile and VoIP end-to-end testing (you can google for “Limitations of PESQ”). However, the point is not that AQuA is better than PESQ, it’s just different, but different in many ways.

We created AQuA to provide VoIP community with inexpensive tool to measure and monitor voice quality in VoIP, mobile, PSTN and converged networks. Currently we have customers that use AQuA for all types of networks including sattelite communications and they are quite happy, because the main point is that one needs to know whether the quality is good or bad and if a tool delivers this information at a certain precision then it’s useful.

When evaluating voice quality in VoIP or other communication network our customers report two main issues:

1. test signal may have different level (RMS amplitude) than the original, and in this case it requires amplitude adjustment that is done by free SOX utility in AQuA 5.x. AQuA 6.x that is ready for release has built in feature to adjust RMS amplitude using our in-house algorithm.

2. test signal may have “silence” in the beginning and / or end of the recorded audio file. In order to synchronize two signals in time domain one can use SOX as well, or use -trim parameter in AQuA, or even both.

There are a lot of parameters one can adjust in AQuA, but in most of the cases they are set to default values and we deliver batch scripts for Windows and Linux with pre-set parameters. Typical test then looks like

Windows: test.bat reference.wav test.wav
Linux: ./test.sh ./reference.wav ./test.wav

To summarize AQuA and PESQ do the same thing differently. If one requires to provide its end customers voice quality score accordoing to International standard, then it’s surely PESQ, because it’s a recommendation from ITU-T P.862/P.863 bla bla bla that costs a lot of money and is provided by different companies as a software / hardware combination, boards, features, bla bla bla… And if you are a VoIP service provider or a mobile operator or DSP algorithms developer then AQuA is your best choice – no royalties, no specific hardware (you want a dialer connected to E1/T1, GSM or sattelite network? then use Asterisk VQM – open source based voice quality monitoring soluton) – just pure voice quality assessment.

If you have questions you are always welcome to contact us!

Best regards,
Sevana Oy

The pool of customers who have chosen AQuA for voice quality assessment in their networks, algorithms and solutions is growing and we would like to have a special post on the blog presenting logos of AQuA customers. Unfortunately not all customers allow us to refer to them and their descent products and services they create with the help of AQuA, so the list is incomplete.