Re: Feature removal proposal

I never said that voice activation (or push-to-talk, for that matter) was hard
or difficult.  I've used voice activation and found it straight-forward to set
up as well - I (and some others) just don't like it.  It's a matter of
preference - not difficulty.  There are those of us that prefer the naturalness
and spontaneity that full-duplex constant transmit offers.  This is the closest
that Internet telephony gets to traditional telephony!

Also, I found that John Walker's delay adjustment was a huge help - and there
was nothing the user needed to do to set it up.  If you ever read the mailing
list posts after John implemented the fix, you would have found that this fix
was praised by everyone who had experienced the problem!  In my opinion, it was
among the best two fixes that had applied since I began using Speak Freely.  The
fix was a big relief to me and to those I was using Speak Freely with.

It's true, more bandwidth is used when operating in this mode.  But on today's
Internet - with streaming video, high fidelity stereo music, and large file
transfers - the increase is hardly very significant.

Jeff MacKinnon, KB1RC


Attila Konietzka wrote:

> I really wonder what's so hard and difficult to utilize voice-activation
> when it's available. I really didn't find it difficult to setup contrary to
> what john walker said in his help-file for speak-freely. It reduces lots of
> bandwidth and the delay-adjustment didn't help that much in my opinion, but
> anyway i think this feature is valuable, i am just not sure, if i was using
> it in a proper way.
> Currently i am using sf 7.6a.
> Regards, Attila.
>
> > I would like to again reiterate my strongest recommendation (which I have
> > brought up in prior posts) to retain a feature that was introduced in 7.6,
> > and which you haven't specifically mentioned in your request for feature
> > removal feedback.  That is, the feature that John added which he called
> > "Adaptive Output (Audio) Rate Adjustment" which addresses the long
> > standing and much reported "increasing audio delay" problem.
> >
> > I bring this up because some previous posts have tended to undervalue its
> > importance, not realizing that many users over a long period of time
> > complained about this problem.  More users than one might think prefer to
> > communicate in full-duplex constant transmit mode, rather than utilize the
> > push-to-talk feature.  It is much more natural and "telephone like."  I've
> > encountered users who refuse to operate any other way.  It would be a real
> > shame to lose this much awaited feature after having finally obtained it
> > in 7.6.
> >
> > Also, of lesser importance, I would very much like to see the new (in the
> > Windows version of 7.6) "Systray Icon" feature retained.
> >
> > Thanks!
> >
> > Jeff MacKinnon, KB1RC