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There are few components which affect VoIP sound quality such as latency, jitter, network equipment, packet loss and bandwidth. Any one of the factor can turn VoIP digital conversation in to a bad parody, resulting in total dissatisfaction.

Factors affecting sound quality for VoIP:

Internet Speed: Sound quality might hamper due to insufficient bandwidth from the internet connection, hence adequate internet speed is extremely necessary for VoIP calls with minimum of 90kbps download and upload speed.

Bandwidth consumption: Bandwidth is dependent on the internet connection offered by the ISP which is shared by are multiple applications running in the computer at the same. Some applications use most of the bandwidth which results in bad sound quality such as delayed voice, noise or echo in conversation.

Network congestion: Network congestion can result in packet loss where the caller will notice some words missed out during congestion. The best solution to overcome this issue is to obtain higher internet speed.

Latency: Latency is the time taken by the voice to travel between different call points. The total roundtrip should not be less than 150 milliseconds for human ears. However it takes around 250 milliseconds which cause distortion and lag in the voice quality.

Jitter: Jitter is occurred when there is a delay in receiving some packets, which could cause delay in conversation.

How to improve sound quality:

Below mentioned are 8 methods to improve VoIP sound quality:

1 - The simplest way to improve sound quality is to make sure that there are no programs running which uses high bandwidth. In that case one has to know the programs which steal heavy bandwidth such as audio and video streaming programs, bit torrent file sharing programs, online gaming or antivirus utilities.
2 - Another method is to create new codecs which is a compression program that compresses video and sound files without degrading sound quality. This data can be transferred over internet with lesser bandwidth and cost.
3 - Some devices are available such as ATH3003, which improves VoIP sound quality through device mechanisms and processing system.
4 - Check the firewall settings and allow VoIP application access for the internet.
5 - Install internet optimizer program on the computer which will improve internet speed.
6 - If you are using wireless connection then try connecting your devices straight through the cable to check if the wireless signals are week or distorted. Wireless or WiFi device could also be one of the factors for sound quality.
7 - Run ‘ping’ command on the command prompt to check the actual internet speed. Get the latency time by dividing maximum round trip time by two. This latency time should not be more than 150 milliseconds. The loss rate should not be higher than 0.5 percent and should be close to zero.
8 - Test your actual bandwidth received by your computer through the bandwidth calculator software and then match it with the agreed bandwidth from ISP.