asterisk users - Oct 2004 - disabling "comfort noise", other odd thoughts

Lately I've been working in relative isolation (e.g. at home) and I find 
I like the idea of sharing a virtual audio room with my fellow 
programmers. (We all share thoughts currently via irc).

So I'm listening in a asterisk conference room right now (using SJphone, 
everyone mic muted), and also listening to Bach, both on my headphones. 
During especially quiet passages I can hear the slight crackle of static 
(generated by SJphone?), similarly while talking with someone...

I imagine that most people like "comfort noise" - but we've been
trained
to like it by the existing phone system! me, I'd prefer something visual 
as comfirmation that the other party was still there - and even without 
that visual comfirmation I'd prefer blissful silence in my background 
world.

Is there any way to turn off "comfort noise?". Does asterisk itself
ever
generate comfort noise? (I had no idea until I started writing this that 
it was actually an rfc (http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3389.html) - and 
with a sufficiently smart packet filter I could block it if I wanted to, 
at least across the network )

Side question: Is there a (soft or hard) solution to allowing the 
silence suppression part of the sip spec to work in asterisk?

--
Mike Taht
PostCards from the Bleeding Edge http://the-edge.blogspot.com

Mike Taht wrote:
> Lately I've been working in relative isolation (e.g. at home) and I 
> find I like the idea of sharing a virtual audio room with my fellow 
> programmers. (We all share thoughts currently via irc).
>
> So I'm listening in a asterisk conference room right now (using 
> SJphone, everyone mic muted), and also listening to Bach, both on my 
> headphones. During especially quiet passages I can hear the slight 
> crackle of static (generated by SJphone?), similarly while talking 
> with someone...
>
> I imagine that most people like "comfort noise" - but we've
been
> trained to like it by the existing phone system! me, I'd prefer 
> something visual as comfirmation that the other party was still there 
> - and even without that visual comfirmation I'd prefer blissful 
> silence in my background world.
>
> Is there any way to turn off "comfort noise?". Does asterisk
itself
> ever generate comfort noise? (I had no idea until I started writing 
> this that it was actually an rfc 
> (http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3389.html) - and with a sufficiently 
> smart packet filter I could block it if I wanted to, at least across 
> the network )
>
> Side question: Is there a (soft or hard) solution to allowing the 
> silence suppression part of the sip spec to work in asterisk?

It still needs to be worked on, I think.  There is a comfort-noise frame 
type now, but I don't think it's implemented in SIP, IAX, or any apps.

I imagine that when it is implemented, you'd be able to tell your 
user-agent (soft/hard phone) to not actually generate comfort noise when 
it gets comfort-noise frames.

-SteveK