WhatsApp has announced a slew of new enhancements for its Voice and Video calls, including new features and a new MLow codec by Meta which improves call reliability. The new features include the ability to add up to 32 participants in a Video call across all the users’ devices.
WhatsApp said in a blog post, “Today we have several updates that will make calls across your devices even bigger and better, rolling out over the next few weeks.” The new features include the ability to share audio while you are sharing your screen. WhatsApp says this improves the experience of watching videos together.
Next up, you can now have up to 32 people on a video call across all your devices. Finally, there’s the Speaker Spotlight feature where one can instantly see who’s talking as WhatsApp will highlight the user who is speaking and will show them first on the screen. This is a useful feature for those who regularly go on group voice or video calls with a high number of participants.
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MLow Audio Codec: All Details
Furthermore, audio and video calls on WhatsApp will support the new MLow codec which improves call reliability. Calls made on mobile devices benefit from improved noise and echo cancellation, making it easier to have calls in noisy environments, and video calls have higher Resolution for those with faster connections. Audio is crisper overall, even if you have poor network connectivity or are using an older device, according to WhatsApp.
The Meta Low Bitrate audio codec, aka MLow, achieves two-times-better quality than Opus (POLQA MOS 1.89 vs 3.9 @ 6kbps WB). Meta says the enahnced quality was achieved while keeping MLow’s computational complexity 10 percent lower than that of Opus. The audio samples shared by the company on its website support its statements, as the MLow samples sound considerably clearer than Opus ones.
Meta notes that it has fully launched MLow to all Instagram and Messenger calls and are actively rolling it out on WhatsApp. The company adds that MLow has significantly enhanced audio quality on low-end devices while still ensuring calls are end-to-end encrypted.