Snom D735 - Opus Codec

[k0n24d]

Hi,

i've made a custom template to enable the Opus codec on the Snom D735. From the tests we've made this works really well. Would it be possible to enable the opus codec for the snom phones in the standard templates?

I do know that snom marks this codec as experimental. Maybe a small message telling that this codec is not fully supported would be enough, rather than having the hassle to go through a custom template? Or should we give up on either 3CX or Snom if we want to use opus?

On a side note, the colors in the template render a lot of text unreadable on the screen e.g. in the address book (grey on grey is a funny idea).

We just started with 3CX and Snom seemed to be a "first class citizen", maybe I was wrong assuming this?

 

[k0n24d]

Strange, just got an updated firmware on 3CX for the 735 to 10.1.54.16 (which by the way doesn't seem to exist on the snom site) . Switched back to the default template and upgraded. The interface is now much better in terms of colors and font sizes.
So the only thing left is this codec...

 

[cobaltit]

I do know that snom marks this codec as experimental. Maybe a small message telling that this codec is not fully supported would be enough, rather than having the hassle to go through a custom template? Or should we give up on either 3CX or Snom if we want to use opus?

If you are just interested in playing for the sake of playing, then yes it's either go the custom template route or pick another solution. Certain Yealink phones have OPUS supported in 3CX. If the vendor doesn't believe OPUS is production ready then it would be insane for 3CX to make it available. And there really is no use case for OPUS unless you are using the PBX internally. All PSTN handoffs are G711-based and no provider wants to take the transcoding hit because it's CPU intensive so most won't even accept OPUS for PSTN/off-net calling. This is why OPUS is only enabled in some phone templates (which is the vendor's decision btw) and why it's not the default for any phone or trunk template in 3CX. 3CX is about making a business PBX and OPUS is just not used enough anywhere.

Strange, just got an updated firmware on 3CX for the 735 to 10.1.54.16 (which by the way doesn't seem to exist on the snom site)

Not strange. It's very common for vendors to release specific firmware versions for various PBXs that aren't listed on their sites because they don't want the regular Joe who doesn't read to randomly grab firmware for ABC PBX and try to use the phone with XYZ PBX. Yealink did this for a while and just finally started publishing the 3CX firmwares, albeit in a separate section so as not to mix them up with the standard SIP firmware or Broadsoft firmwares.

The concern you had about the visibility has been around for a while so it's just coincidental that you happened to jump on here and there was a firmware release.

 

[k0n24d]

Thanks for such a full reply.

And yes of course opus can only be used internally or with transcoding on the PBX. We are in process to switching to 3CX and for now we use following codec settings :

Phone apps: opus, g729
Trunks: g711, g729
Desk phones (good internet access): g711, g729
Desk phones (bad internet access): g729

Which seems to give us the best possible call qualities whithout having to transcode anything. The best call quality is reached between phone apps even on bad internet access. This made me want to test opus on the desk phones.

We are testing the Snom 735 right now. But given the fact that most of our calls are internal, do you think we should give up on opus or try another phone with opus support (yealink T54W for exemple) ?

 

[cobaltit]

Well if money is no object then by all means replace the phones with something else. I would think the new T4xu phones would be the way to go with Opus Wideband but it looks like 3CX doesn't have it enabled on those, probably because they share the template with the T4xs models. So as of today, one of the T5x models that has it in the 3CX template would be the way to go. Or simply leave things as you have them now and see how it looks in a year to see if there is more OPUS support all around.

 

[k0n24d]

Thanks for your advice in general and in particular to tell me to double-check in the templates.

In fact 3CX only support opus on the T56 and T58, the other T5x are in the T4x template..

We are just testing desk-phones for now, so it would still be possible to test another model. But this is going to be really to expensive, and the more reasonably priced desk-phones support it too.

It seems like for now using opus means going the custom template way, like in 2018 from what I see in older posts. Only thing for us is to decide is whether we want to use an "experimental" feature on the snom phones or if we want to try one of the yealink phones...