General Question

bpeoples's avatar

Why do IP phone manufacturers eliminate sidetone?

Asked by bpeoples (2551points) December 5th, 2008

Side tone is where you can hear yourself in the handset of the phone—it’s actually a side-effect of analog phones. Earlier IP phones I had been using had pretty decent sidetone. Snom, when they updated to version 7, specifically had in their changenotes that they were turning sidetone way down. (Not as a default, as the only way it could be).

The biggest problem here is that you take the fact that you can hear yourself as a cue to talk at that volume. You can actually trigger people to talk quieter by making the sidetone quieter. The lack of sidetone makes people subconsciously talk louder, which turns out to be a bit of a problem in our small offices.

We just switched our office to Aastra phones, and they have the same very-quiet sidetone.

Why would they do this?

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4 Answers

andrew's avatar

FWIW, my ooma has a fairly distinct sidetone.

bpeoples's avatar

Ah, but if I googled it correctly—the ooma is a gateway—that is, it translates your analog phone into a digital signal. Therefore, the sidetone is in your analog handset?

andrew's avatar

I just realized that, yes. Sorry. I’m useless today.

bpeoples's avatar

Andrew—you’re always useful to me. =)

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