asterisk users - Feb 2007 - The High Performance Echo Canceller (HPEC)

I recently read about the following new technologies from Digium.  Has 
anyone tried the new HPEC or knows when it will be available?

TDM800P and HPEC
The TDM800P is an 8-port analog telephony interface card, so it fills the 
gap between Digium's 4-port and 24-port cards. Analog phones and POTS lines 
are going to be with us for some time, and demand for support for them 
remains high. The TDM800P is a bus-mastered PCI card, which means it 
installs in legacy hardware and provides better performance than 
CPU-controlled cards.

The High Performance Echo Canceller (HPEC) is a software upgrade to legacy 
Digium cards, and is included with the new TDM800P. The HPEC is supposed to 
be the greatest thing since Lydia Pinkham's Vegetable Compound, and surefire
cure for echo problems. It is host-based, so it's not dependent on the 
interface card. It's free to Digium customers, and available at $10 per 
channel for non-Digium cards.

http://www.voipplanet.com/trends/article.php/3657981

Larry Shields wrote:
> I recently read about the following new technologies from Digium.  Has 
> anyone tried the new HPEC or knows when it will be available?
It's out now, and I've tried it - the difference between HPEC and MG2 
from trunk is stunning - in situations with bad echo where MG2 can take 
ten or more seconds to converge to a reasonable degree, HPEC does it in 
perhaps 300ms - converging on my intake of breath before I say
"hello",
and absolutely no echo after that unless I purposefully go out of my way 
to screw it up (whistling/blowing into the handpiece for instance - even 
then, the malfunction is minimal).

You can now buy it from the Digium website (US$10 per channel), or if 
you have an in-warranty Digium card, email through the serial numbers to 
Digium support and they'll give you a key (this is what I did).

You'll need Zaptel 1.2.13 to make it go.

It does take quite a bit of CPU though - perhaps 70% more compared to 
MG2-trunk for the same number of taps from my rough measurements.

Cheers,
    Nic.

-- 
Nic Bellamy,
Head Of Engineering, Vadacom Ltd - http://www.vadacom.co.nz/

Will this work with SIP channels?  I get zero echo out the PRI but I do
get it occasionally on a LD provider (SIP) we use.  The stock * install
doesn't appear to be doing anything stopping echo on those channels.

Bill

-----Original Message-----
From: asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com
[mailto:asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Nic
Bellamy
Sent: Tuesday, February 13, 2007 3:41 PM
To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
Subject: Re: [asterisk-users] The High Performance Echo Canceller (HPEC)

Larry Shields wrote:
> I recently read about the following new technologies from Digium.  Has
> anyone tried the new HPEC or knows when it will be available?
It's out now, and I've tried it - the difference between HPEC and MG2 
from trunk is stunning - in situations with bad echo where MG2 can take 
ten or more seconds to converge to a reasonable degree, HPEC does it in 
perhaps 300ms - converging on my intake of breath before I say
"hello",
and absolutely no echo after that unless I purposefully go out of my way

to screw it up (whistling/blowing into the handpiece for instance - even

then, the malfunction is minimal).

You can now buy it from the Digium website (US$10 per channel), or if 
you have an in-warranty Digium card, email through the serial numbers to

Digium support and they'll give you a key (this is what I did).

You'll need Zaptel 1.2.13 to make it go.

It does take quite a bit of CPU though - perhaps 70% more compared to 
MG2-trunk for the same number of taps from my rough measurements.

Cheers,
    Nic.

-- 
Nic Bellamy,
Head Of Engineering, Vadacom Ltd - http://www.vadacom.co.nz/

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Can someone comment why only Digium cards still under warranty are 
eligible to use this EC at no cost, versus older cards?

Regards,

Richard

Tzafrir Cohen wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 15, 2007 at 05:35:09PM -0500, Dean Collins wrote:
>   
>> How do you fake echo for testing purposes then?
>>
>>     
>
> A soft phone will normally give you good enough delay. Call a an analog
> phone from a different soft phone. Make sure no over-freindly
> device/software along the voice path kills the echo ;-)
>   
I think you were joking, but just in case anyone takes this seriously...

In practice, that kind of testing is almost useless. You *must* have 
something controllable and repeatable.

Regards,
Steve

In article <13404687B15D66459DAC76C2AEFDE64D580484@mail1.jildent.com.au>,
Boris Bakchiev <boris@jildent.com.au> wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Has anyone noticed degraded voice quality with HPEC?
> I have a client running TE4XX card who configured HPEC for couple of
> channels with echocancel=1024.
> 
> Whenever HPEC is used you get a background static in voice.
> When HPEC is not used everything is crystal clear.
> 
> What could cause this static?
Try using a utility like "top" to see what the CPU loading is with
HPEC.

Cheers
Tony
-- 
Tony Mountifield
Work: tony@softins.co.uk - http://www.softins.co.uk
Play: tony@mountifield.org - http://tony.mountifield.org

Hi Tony,

Its a dual core system and combined CPU usage was 2%.

-----Original Message-----
From: asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com
[mailto:asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Tony
Mountifield
Sent: Thursday, 22 February 2007 12:07 AM
To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com
Subject: [asterisk-users] Re: The High Performance Echo Canceller (HPEC)

In article
<13404687B15D66459DAC76C2AEFDE64D580484@mail1.jildent.com.au>,
Boris Bakchiev <boris@jildent.com.au> wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Has anyone noticed degraded voice quality with HPEC?
> I have a client running TE4XX card who configured HPEC for couple of
> channels with echocancel=1024.
> 
> Whenever HPEC is used you get a background static in voice.
> When HPEC is not used everything is crystal clear.
> 
> What could cause this static?
Try using a utility like "top" to see what the CPU loading is with
HPEC.

Cheers
Tony
-- 
Tony Mountifield
Work: tony@softins.co.uk - http://www.softins.co.uk
Play: tony@mountifield.org - http://tony.mountifield.org