How To Improve Skype Sound Quality
I’ve been using Skype quite a lot recently after not using it for a year or two. The sound quality has improved a bit over the years, but at times it can still be quite shocking. Recently one of the member’s of my team who’s Brazilian had to return to Brazil for a few days and we didn’t tell anyone where he really was, he was just ‘working from home’! Unfortunately he was using Skype to dial into conference calls and most of the time he sounded like a Darlek.
I have managed to improve my Skype sound quality a bit by following Martin’s instructions and deleting the shared.xml file which contains host cache information which is basically a list of Skype super-nodes and host pairs that are needed to run Skype properly. Sometimes the info stored in this file isn’t optimal for the internet connection, which will degrade voice quality. Martin sums this up as:
Imaging being routed over half the world to call a friend who is living two blocks away from your location.
To delete the shared.xml file just go to (close Skype first)Documents and Settings \Username \Application Data \Skype folder and delete the pesky file and restart Skype.
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Comment by macbook air on 2 November 2008:
I get a buzzing sound only when the other person is talking - any ideas why?