Reduced listening effort (decreased cognitive load), resulting in increased productivity and lessened listener fatigue.Ability to hear faint talkers and to understand double-talk (when more than one person is speaking at the same time).Ease of deciphering words that have the close sounds of ‘s’ and ‘f’ and others, often indistinguishable over telephone lines.Easier to recognize voices, distinguish confusing sounds and understand accented speakers.Other outcomes, as identified on the Wikipedia page, include: Skype’s SILK technology, however, expands the audio range to cover 20 Hz to 12 KHz resulting in crisper, crystal clear and more productive voice conversations with little impairment due to accents, poor quality microphone/speaker hardware. As a result wideband audio requires a connection that totally carries the conversation via Internet packets, imposing a requirement for use of VoIP technology for these calls. Beyond Skype’s initial use of wideband audio, many hardware and softphone vendors now support wideband audio with one proviso – the connection between the two end point devices must support wideband audio along the entire call path. Wideband audio (often called “ HD Voice”) expands this range to cover approximately 50 Hz to 7 KHz, resulting in a clearer audio. Since one could usually interpret and understand voice covering 300 Hz to 4KHz, the legacy PSTN is limited to covering this range this limitation allowed the phone networks to carry many more conversations over a copper wire. Normal human speech audio range covers 50 Hz to 14 KHz transmitting this range over the legacy phone network was never possible due to a key parameter in the network’s design architecture. But even when using a PC’s mic and speakers, you’ll notice a difference. When using a suitably equipped stereo headset, Skype-to-Skype calls are “in-your-head” the other party sounds like they are in the same room. However, Skype made a major step forward with the February 2009 launch of its SILK superwideband audio codec. When first launched in 2003 Skype came with a wideband audio codec that certainly represented a step ahead at the time. Skype has been a pioneer in improving the audio quality of a voice conversation. Call a landline and you introduce distortion, you get the “can you repeat that, please” requests and it’s not due to hearing loss! The Skype-to-Skype call is crisp, sharp and crystal clear with no voice distortion. If you’ve recently made a Skype-to-Skype call followed by a PSTN call, you’ve probably noticed a difference in the voice quality of the call.