Speex

Speex is open-source voice codec

Quoting from: http://www.speex.org/
Speex is an Open Source/Free Software patent-free audio compression format designed for speech. The Speex Project aims to lower the barrier of entry for voice applications by providing a free alternative to expensive proprietary speech codecs. Moreover, Speex is well-adapted to Internet applications and provides useful features that are not present in most other codecs. Finally, Speex is part of the GNU Project and is available under the Xiph.org variant of the BSD license.

Codec comparisons

Speex is a powerful codec due to its flexibility. However, it is also an expensive codec since it consumes more CPU then G729, g726 or GSM, and just about the same as iLBC (enter ‘show translation recalc 10’ in your Asterisk CLI to view the details). Whereas iLBC comes with atypical 30 ms packets (not good for IAX2 trunking) and PLC (packet loss concealment), speex can be adjusted to your needs through codecs.conf in Asterisk, unlike any other codec.

Debian

Install speex via

CentOS

General

The -dev/-devel packages *might* not be required for operation with Asterisk. Remember to compile Asterisk after speex installation since Asterisk will auto-detect speex presence only during compiling. You may need to perform a `make distclean` in order to force Asterisk to detect SpeeX. At the very least you will need to ‘./configure’.

Please note: Speex Wideband is supported in 1.1+ and the Debian Sarge package is 1.0.X. You may want to visit https://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/xiph/releases/speex/ to find a more current version. The Debian Etch package is 1.1.12.

See also

• Asterisk config codecs.conf: Configure speex details for Asterisk
• Asterisk codecs
• CentOS 5 and Asterisk 1.4.x installation
• CentOS 5.2 and Asterisk 1.6.x installation
• Comparison Table of Speex with other Codecs
• Products with Speex support
• Wideband VoIP
• Wikipedia on speex