voice modem variations

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[ forgive me if this has all come up and been answered in the couple of
weeks since i was last subscribed. :-) ]

i'm ready to take the plunge into voice modem territory, having
now purchased two answering machines which have both had terrible
voice quality.

i've looked for this info in various web.places, but haven't found much.

questions:

 - is there a single standard for "modem voice"? if there are several,
	which offers the best speech quality?

 - what _is_ the data rate for modem voice? i.e. how many bits per
	sample, how many samples per second? does this vary from modem to
	modem? 

 - should i expect a voice modem to do as well as your average digital
	answering machine? better? worse? (i'm pretty disappointed in
	"your average digital answering machine" these days.)

 - what am i going to lose in a cheap modem that i wouldn't lose in an
	expsensive modem (just in terms of voice features -- i don't need
	fax or even data).

 - do modems handle silence detection (so they hang up properly) all by
	themselves? does mgetty have to monitor that and hang up after
	some amount of silence?

lastly, recommendations: i realize this isn't that wide a user-group, and
there's a lot of experience here with just a couple of modem brands, so
i shouldn't expect a wide range of personal experience. but i'm even
open to informed suggestions of the form "i saw an ad for such-and-such a
cheap modem, why don't you try that". :-)

paul

---------------------
 paul fox, pgf@foxharp.boston.ma.us (arlington, ma)


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