Codec2 โ€“ Open Source Low Bit Rate Speech Codec

Published on 2009-09-16 by Mark VandeWettering

David Rowe is working on a very cool project that should be of interest to hams with an interest in digital communications. Heโ€™s creating an open source, low bit rate speech codec. His target is a usable 2400 bps codec that is free from patent issues, and that can be used in situations similar to the patented algorithm AMBE that is currently used in D-Star networks. Heโ€™s not quite at the point where he has a full codec yet, but heโ€™s begun to make some code available that can encode and decode using his sinusoidal encoder. Heโ€™s also writing up a lot of the theory behind the encoder on his blog, which is frankly a bit beyond me, but not a huge amount beyond me, which means that itโ€™s very interesting reading.

Codec2 โ€“ Open Source Low Bit Rate Speech Codec

David has also done some very interesting VOIP work, including a high quality echo canceler. His blog is always worth reading.