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The Mean Opinion Score (MOS) is the arithmetic mean of individual evaluations and can range from 1 (worst value) to 5 (best value).
In telecommunications, the MOS value is mainly used to assess the quality of voice and image transmission services. It is the result of a defined sequence of several tests in which the subjectively perceived quality of the language or images is assessed by a group of test subjects. The result of the test series is classified in a five-level quality scale. There are already technical measuring methods that are far more objective.
MOS quality scale
Value | Quality | Meaning |
5 | Excellent | No effort is required to understand the language. |
4 | Good | Through attentive listening, speech can be heard without effort. |
3 | Fair | The language can be heard with a slight effort. |
2 | Poor | It takes a lot of concentration and effort to understand the transmitted language. |
1 | Bad | Despite great efforts, one cannot communicate. |
With the MOS, the quality of different speech codecs, voice connections, echo cancellers or image compression algorithms can be compared with each other.
There are three ways to determine a MOS value.
The most common method uses the basically inaccurate "codec" method, because this leaves out the actual hardware components, which lead to further quality losses.
The following MOS examples show the differences between the different codecs.
Codec (Datenrate) | Mean Opinion Score (MOS) Codec | MOS - Send | MOS - Receive |
---|---|---|---|
G.711 (64 kbit/s) | 4,4 | 4,2 | 3,9 |
G.722 (64 kbit/s) | 4,5 | 4,4 | 4,2 |
G.726 (32 kbit/s) | 3,85 | ||
G.729 (8 kbit/s) | 3,92 |
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